Rediscovering censorship to understand the struggle of contemporaneous age-oriented movie rating systems

In Italy, since 1913, producers were required to obtain approval from a ministerial committee before screening their films in theaters. The committee could either censor the whole film or impose cuts. This paper explores the relationship between cuts and images through the analysis of some movies that were (or were not) cut for reasons not immediately clear: Godard’s Une femme mariée, Fellini’s La dolce vita, Anonioni’s Il grido and and Rosi’s Salvatore Giuliano. Are cuts decisions (or lack of them) always related to the film’s topic, or may they depend on the images narrating the topic themselves? Did it ever occur that images were used as a pretext for cutting something different from what was stated? After having reasoned upon these and other questions, the paper analyses advantages and disadvantages – for the freedom of artistic expression – of the possible juridical approaches to films rating. Indeed, the Italian State can no longer censor films, but it is still in charge of establishing whether they are suitable for everyone or adults only.