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Bernard-Henri directed me to an incomplete list of films condemned by the Legion of Decency. The wikipedia entry noted that “Legion-organized boycotts made a C (for Condemned) rating harmful to a film’s distribution and profitability.” Apparently not in Manila, where audiences flocked to “indecent” movies like Rocco and His Brothers, La Dolce Vita, and Les Girls starring the fabulous Cyd Charisse, who possessed probably the longest legs in cinema.

European arthouse movies were popular because you could always count on some nudity. Remember how the MTRCB gave Belle Epoque an X-rating in the Nineties, thereby bringing to the viewers’ attention a subtitled foreign movie they would otherwise have ignored?

The Rated C included Ernst Lubitsch’s Design for Living and Madame DuBarry, Queen Christina starring Greta Garbo, Howard Hughes’ The Outlaw, Powell and Pressburger’s Black Narcissus (Nuns driven bats by the beauty of the Himalayas!), Jules Dassin’s Rififi, And God Created Woman starring Brigitte Bardot, Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless and Masculin-Feminin, Francois Truffaut’s Jules and Jim, Luis Bunuel’s Viridiana (I’m sure the condemnation made him deeply happy), the James Bond movie From Russia With Love, Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain, and the Clint Eastwood starrers A Fistful of Dollars, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and The Outlaw Josey Wales (Someone doesn’t like westerns). Many filmmakers would be proud to be in that list.