The BBFC was established in 1912 as the British Board of Film Censors, under the aegis of the Incorporated Association of Kinematograph Manufacturers, by film trade associations who preferred to manage their own censorship than to have national or local government do it for them. The immediate impetus for the board's formation stemmed from the furore surrounding the release in the UK in October 1912 of the film
From the Manger to the Cross, about the life of
Jesus. The film, shown at the
Queen's Hall, London, gained considerable publicity from a great outcry in the
Daily Mail, which demanded: "Is nothing sacred to the film maker?", and waxed indignant about the profits for its American film producers. Although the clergy were invited to see it and found little to be affronted by, the controversy resulted in the voluntary creation of the BBFC, which began operating on 1 January 1913. The
Cinematograph Act 1909 required cinemas to have licences from local authorities. The Act was introduced for reasons of public safety after
nitrate film fires in unsuitable venues (fairgrounds and shops that had been hastily converted into cinemas) but the following year a court ruling determined that the criteria for granting or refusing a licence did not have to be restricted to issues of health and safety. Given that the law now allowed councils to grant or refuse licences to cinemas according to the content of the films they showed, the 1909 Act, therefore, enabled the introduction of censorship. The film industry, fearing the economic consequences of a largely unregulated censorship infrastructure, therefore formed the BBFC to take the process 'in house' and establish its own system of self-regulation. By paying a fee of £2 for every reel of film viewed, and by appointing a panel of viewers under a censor, none of whom had any film trade interests, the growing cinema industry neatly created a censorship body which was both self-supporting and strictly impartial, and therefore was not swayed by any sectional interests inside the film trade or outside it. The board's offices were originally at 133–135
Oxford Street, London; the building is located at the junction of
Wardour Street, a centre of the
British film industry for many years. Unlike the American
Production Code Administration, which had a written list of violations in their
Motion Picture Production Code, the BBFC did not have a written code and were vague in their translation to producers on what constituted a violation. However, some clarity would come in 1916 when the then president of the BBFC,
T. P. O'Connor, listed forty-three infractions, from the BBFC 1913–1915 annual reports, during the
National Council of Public Morals: Cinema Commission of Inquiry (1916), indicating where a cut in a film may be required. These included: • Indecorous, ambiguous and irreverent titles and subtitles • Cruelty to animals • The irreverent treatment of sacred subjects • Drunken scenes carried to excess • Vulgar accessories in the staging • The
modus operandi of criminals • Cruelty to young infants and excessive cruelty and torture to adults, especially women • Unnecessary exhibition of under-clothing • The exhibition of profuse bleeding • Nude figures • Offensive vulgarity, and impropriety in conduct and dress • Indecorous dancing • Excessively passionate love scenes • Bathing scenes passing the limits of propriety • References to controversial politics • Relations of capital and labour • Scenes tending to disparage public characters and institutions • Realistic horrors of warfare • Scenes and incidents calculated to afford information to the enemy • Incidents having a tendency to disparage our Allies • Scenes holding up the King's uniform to contempt or ridicule • Subjects dealing with India, in which British Officers are seen in an odious light, and otherwise attempting to suggest the disloyalty of British Officers, Native States or bringing into disrepute British prestige in the Empire • The exploitation of tragic incidents of the war • Gruesome murders and strangulation scenes • Executions • The effects of
vitriol throwing • The drug habit, e.g., opium, morphia, cocaine, etc. • Subjects dealing with
White Slave traffic • Subjects dealing with premeditated seduction of girls • "
First night" scenes • Scenes suggestive of immorality • Indelicate sexual situations • Situations accentuating delicate marital relations • Men and women in bed together • Illicit relationships • Prostitution and procuration • Incidents indicating the actual perpetration of criminal assaults on women • Scenes depicting the effect of venereal disease, inherited or acquired • Incidents suggestive of incestuous relations • Themes and references relative to '
race suicide' • Confinements • Scenes laid in
disorderly houses • Materialisation of the conventional figure of Christ. Some decisions from the early years are now subjected to derision. In 1928, the board's examiners report famously claimed that
Germaine Dulac's
surrealist film
The Seashell and the Clergyman was "almost meaningless", but: "If there is a meaning, it is doubtless objectionable." Informal links, to varying degrees of closeness, have been maintained between the BBFC and the Government throughout the Board's existence. In the period before the
Second World War, an extensive but unofficial system of political censorship was implemented by the BBFC for the
Home Office. As the cinema became a socially powerful mass-medium, governments feared the effect of its use by others for propaganda and as happened in the
Soviet Union and
Nazi Germany discouraged any expression of controversial political views in British films. This trend reached its climax during the 1930s. Following protests from the German Embassy after the release of a film depicting the execution of
Edith Cavell (
Dawn, 1928, dir.
Herbert Wilcox), intense political pressure was brought to bear on the BBFC by the Home Office. A system of script vetting was introduced, whereby British studios were invited to submit screenplays to the BBFC before shooting started. Imported Hollywood films were not treated as strictly as British films, as the BBFC believed that audiences would recognise American cinema as representing a foreign culture and therefore would not apply any political messages therein to their own lives. So while the
Warners gangster films and other 1930s Hollywood films that dealt explicitly with crime and the effects of the
Great Depression were released in the UK largely uncut, these subjects were strictly off-limits for British film-makers. During the Second World War, the BBFC's political censorship function effectively passed to the Films Division of the
Ministry of Information, and the BBFC never regained this to the same extent as before the war. The increasing climate of post-war liberalism ensured that from the 1950s onwards, controversies involving the BBFC centred more on depictions of sex and violence than on political expression. There were some notable exceptions:
Yield to the Night (UK, 1956, dir.
J. Lee Thompson), which opposed capital punishment;
Room at the Top (UK, 1959, dir.
Jack Clayton), which dealt with class divisions;
Victim (UK, 1961, dir.
Basil Dearden), which implicitly argued for the legalisation of homosexuality, all involved the BBFC in controversy. In autumn 1972,
Lord Longford and
Raymond Blackburn decided to pursue a matter of pornography classification for the film
Language of Love at the
Court of Appeal before
Lord Denning,
MR; they failed to obtain a writ of
mandamus against the
Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who had refused to intrude upon the BBFC's remit.
Change of name and scope In 1984, the board changed its name to
The British Board of Film Classification to "reflect the fact that classification plays a far larger part in the board's work than censorship". The board's holding company, the Incorporated Association of Kinematograph Manufacturers, aligned its name with the board the following year (followed by another minor alteration in 2003 to
British Board of Film Classification). The first computer game to receive an 18 certificate, on 11 December 1987, was another illustrated text adventure called
Jack the Ripper, also by CRL, which dealt with the infamous real life murders in Victorian London. The horror in both games came through largely in their detailed prose. Had the game publishers reprinted the games' text in book form, it would not have carried a certificate, as the BBFC has no oversight over print media. Both games had numerous certificate stickers all over their covers to emphasise to parents and retailers that they were not intended for children, as computer games carrying BBFC certificates were previously unheard of. The first video game to be refused classification by the BBFC was
Carmageddon in 1997, but a modified version of the game was later awarded an 18 certificate. In June 2007,
Manhunt 2 was refused classification for both its
PlayStation 2 and
Wii versions, meaning that the game was illegal to sell or supply in the United Kingdom. A modified version was made that was accepted by the
ESRB but was still refused classification from the BBFC. The second decision was later overturned by the
Video Appeals Committee (an independent body set up by legislation); the BBFC then asked the High Court for a judicial review of the VAC decision. The High Court ruled that the VAC had made errors in law and instructed it to reconsider its decision; the VAC subsequently ruled that the modified version of the game should receive an 18 certificate, which the BBFC accepted. On 16 June 2009, the UK's
Department for Culture, Media and Sport decided in favour of the
PEGI system to be the sole classification system for videogames and software in the UK. This decision would also, unlike beforehand, allow PEGI ratings to be legally enforced much like the BBFC ratings. Initially expected to take effect from 1 April 2011, the legislation was put into effect on 30 July 2012.
Netflix and the BBFC announced an age classification partnership on 13 March 2019 where the former will classify their content in the United Kingdom with BBFC ratings. The partnership came at the time when digital media is on the rise worldwide and when parents are concerned about children seeing inappropriate content on video on demand or online gaming platforms. The implementation of BBFC ratings into Netflix UK content took effect at the end of October 2019. ==Responsibilities and powers==