Israeli Film Censors Rejecting More Flicks

Israel’s Film and Theater Censorship Board banned 20 films last year, twice the number it had rejected a year before, it was reported today. Levy Guery, chairman of the body which is an agency of the Interior Ministry, said that it wasn’t that the board was getting tougher but that the films were getting raunchier.

He said the 20 films banned in 1972 contained either excessive violence or too explicit sex. He said the board reviewed 554 films and features last year and in addition to the 20 rejected outright, 153 were permitted for viewing only by persons over 16 and seven for persons over 13. He said the board was currently considering a French film by Claude Beri titled “Sex Shop,” which it screened for the press. He said the board did not get hard core pornography for review because the distributors apparently knew it would be rejected.

He said the censors dealt mainly with “borderline cases.” One such apparently was the Marlon Brando movie “Last Tango in Paris” which the censorship board passed despite some public protests. Guery said the film was “tragic and depressing, serious and with a small number of unconventional scenes, but not pornographic.” He said “other films are much worse.”

The national executive board of the Workmen’s Circle announced today that its 55,000 members across the country and their families have joined the meat boycott. The Jewish labor fraternal order said that its senior citizens home and infirmary in the Bronx with over 500 patients is on a meatless diet this week.

Weidenfeld and Nicholson, the British publishing house, announced today that Premier Golda Meir has agreed to write her memoirs for publication sometime in the spring of 1975. The contract for publication of the book was signed in Jerusalem.