Some argue that one of art’s duties is to shake up power structures—secular, religious, and everything in between. Inevitably, those forces push back. Throughout the 20th century, religious groups wielded enough influence to try to curb the distribution of classic films they found offensive.
Classic Films and Blasphemy Controversy
10 The Life Of Brian
Monty Python’s tale of Brian, an ordinary citizen of Roman‑occupied Judea mistakenly hailed as the Messiah, ignited a firestorm when it hit UK screens. Michael Palin and John Cleese even faced a televised debate on BBC Two alongside Catholic journalist Malcolm Muggeridge and Anglican Bishop Mervyn Stockwood. After rewatching the exchange, Cleese remarked that he was “astonished… at how stupid the two members of the church were and how boring the debate became,” noting the lack of any genuine attempt at dialogue.
The American religious establishment reacted just as fiercely. The Catholic Archdiocese of New York condemned the movie as “a crime against religion which holds the person of Christ up to comic ridicule.” Jewish organizations—including the Rabbinical Alliance of America, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, and the Council of Syria and Near Eastern Sephardic Communities—joined the chorus, labeling the film “a vicious attack on Judaism and the Bible and a cruel mockery of Christian religious feelings as well.”
Despite the warnings, New York audiences flocked to the cinema. A young Mike Huckabee described the film in vivid terms, calling it “a blasphemy against the very name of Jesus Christ…” and warning that the Devil had moved in while God’s people moved out.
9 RoGoPaG
“RoGoPaG” (short for “Let’s Wash Our Brains”) stitched together four shorts, each directed by a European heavyweight: Roberto Rossellini, Jean‑Luc Godard, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Ugo Gregoretti. The title itself is a mash‑up of the directors’ surnames.
Pasolini’s segment, titled La ricotta, sparked the biggest uproar. It featured Orson Welles playing an American director crafting a film about the crucifixion, peppered with sacrilegious lines like “Get those crucified bastards out of here” to spotlight the degradation of religion in contemporary society.
While Pasolini intended to critique the hypocrisy of both church and state—focusing on a thief crucified beside Jesus—many of his opponents missed the nuance and accused him of blasphemy, declaring that “rarely has this tribunal seen such an irreverent derision of the Cross, of Christ, and of his Passion and Death.” He was tried, handed a four‑month suspended sentence under an old Fascist statute for “insulting the religion of the state,” later granted amnesty, but the anthology was banned in Italy.
8 Visions Of Ecstasy
The short Visions of Ecstasy holds the distinction of being the only work ever banned for blasphemy by the British Board of Film Classification. It intercuts imagined lesbian encounters between 16th‑century Spanish nun St. Teresa of Ávila and another nun with scenes of Teresa caressing a crucified Christ and fantasizing about kissing him.
Although the sexual content itself wasn’t graphic enough for a ban, the BBFC argued that the imagery was centered on the crucifixion figure, deeming it “contemptuous, reviling, insulting, scurrilous.” BBFC director James Ferman warned the film would inflame Christian sentiment, and Conservative MP Sir Graham Bright even called for the negatives to be destroyed.
Director Nigel Wingrove challenged the ban at the European Court of Human Rights in 1996. He lost, but the court ruled that blasphemy laws violated the European Convention on Human Rights. When the UK abolished blasphemy offenses in 2008, the BBFC released the film uncut with an 18 rating.
7 Hail Mary
Jean‑Luc Godard’s 1985 provocateur Hail Mary reimagined the Virgin Mary as a modern‑day teenager, while Joseph appeared as an older, sexually frustrated taxi driver. The film also featured erotic imagery of a miraculously pregnant Mary.
The Catholic response was swift and severe, especially in Italy. Pope John Paul II publicly condemned the movie, prompting Vatican Radio to broadcast prayers aimed at “repairing the insult to the Holiest Virgin Mary caused by the film.” Godard offered to halt distribution in Rome, but secular outlets mocked the papal stance, even splashing topless models over crucifixes.
In France, the Confederation of Catholic Family Relations and the Alliance Against Racism and for the Respect of the French and Christian Identity tried to force a ban, yet a Paris superior court judge refused. The film largely screened without incident, though a group of demonstrators broke into a Versailles theater to slice the reels, and at Cannes a shaving‑cream pie was tossed at Godard’s face.
Down under, Christian leader Fred Niles railed against the film’s availability, claiming that without prohibitions, filmmakers could portray Jesus as a criminal and Moses as a brothel keeper.
6 The Devils
Ken Russell’s The Devils adapts Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun and John Whiting’s play, which in turn dramatize the 1634 execution of French Catholic priest Urbain Grandier for witchcraft.
The film pits Grandier against a central government eager to raze Loudun, but the real spectacle centers on Sister Jeanne, a sexually charged nun who becomes possessed by the Devil. Her obsession with Grandier paints him as a sorcerer, drawing the ire of Cardinal Richelieu.
British activist Mary Whitehouse led folk‑guitar sing‑alongs outside cinemas showing the film, and the UK’s Obscene Publications Act forced substantial cuts. The notorious “rape of Christ” scene remained hidden until 2002. In the United States, the MPAA initially slapped an X rating on the censored version, prompting Warner Brothers to trim further to secure an R.
Italian authorities were equally alarmed. A planned press screening was scrapped over fears of police intervention and Vatican fury. L’Osservatore Romano condemned the work as a “perverted marriage of sex, violence, and blasphemy.” Critics echoed the condemnation: The Christian Science Monitor called it “an offensive mockery of Christianity,” while the Los Angeles Times labeled it “despicable and degenerate.”
Ironically, the uproar birthed the nunsploitation subgenre, with Italian filmmakers releasing even more blasphemous titles like Suor Omicidi (“Killer Nun”) and Le Scomunicate di San Valentino (“The Sinful Nuns of St. Valentine”). Defenders later argued that Russell’s film merely depicted blasphemy without committing it.
5 The Miracle
Released in Italy in 1948 as Il Miracolo, the story follows a simple peasant woman who believes she is the Virgin Mary. She is coaxed into drinking with a vagabond she perceives as St. Joseph; after being raped and losing memory of the assault, she declares she has experienced a miraculous conception.
Villagers ridicule her, parading her with a counterfeit halo before she ultimately seeks refuge in a church, where she undergoes a religious epiphany while giving birth.
The Vatican expressed grave objections, noting that the film presented a “serious religious issue,” yet it stopped short of an outright ban, acknowledging its artistic merit. In New York, City License Commissioner Edward McCaffrey deemed the film “personally and officially blasphemous” and prohibited its showing.
Distributor Joseph Burstyn challenged the ban in court, eventually winning when a judge ruled that McCaffrey needed State Board of Regents approval to censor films. Meanwhile, the Catholic Legion of Decency condemned the picture as a “blasphemous mockery of Christian religious truth,” prompting Cardinal Francis Spellman to order 400 New York parishes to read a sermon denouncing the film as a “despicable affront to every Christian” and a “vicious insult to Italian womanhood.”
Picketing erupted outside the Paris Theater, with the Catholic War Veterans accusing the film of reflecting “the writings of Moscow” and the American Legion claiming it ridiculed American principles. The New York Board of Regents eventually labeled the movie “sacrilegious” for linking the Immaculate Conception and Virgin Birth with “drunkenness, seduction, mockery, and lewdness,” but the Supreme Court later ruled that the term “sacrilegious” was too vague to justify censorship under the First Amendment.
4 The Council Of Love
Austria’s 1985 production Das Liebeskonzil (known in English as The Council Of Love) adapted Oskar Panizza’s 1894 anti‑Catholic satire set in the late 1400s. The play portrays God as an infirm elder, Mary as lascivious, and Jesus as a cretin due to the sacramental consumption of his flesh and blood.
In the narrative, a disillusioned Holy Family, fed up with the Borgia papacy’s excesses, asks Satan for a punishment; Satan suggests inventing syphilis. Panizza himself faced trial over the original play.
When the Otto‑Preminger‑Institut attempted to screen the film—combining footage from a Roman performance with reenactments of Panizza’s trial—the Innsbruck diocese petitioned prosecutors to charge the institute for “disparaging religious doctrines.” After a private judge screening, authorities seized the film, forcing would‑be viewers to endure a live reading of the script.
The case escalated to the European Court of Human Rights, which ultimately upheld the Austrian courts, stating the film constituted an “abusive attack on the Roman Catholic religion according to the conception of the Tyrolean public.”
3 Viridiana
Luis Buñuel’s 1961 masterpiece Viridiana sparked controversy not solely for its blasphemous undertones but for the provocative imagery it evoked. The plot follows a young nun, drugged and nearly raped by her uncle. After the uncle’s suicide, she distributes his estate with a dubious cousin, gradually losing her faith.
The film culminates in an implied ménage à trois involving the nun, her cousin, and the cousin’s lover. A memorable tableau shows beggars arranging themselves in a pose reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, only for the photographer to lift the nun’s skirt, flashing the assembled group.
The Vatican newspaper denounced the work as blasphemous, and Franco’s ultra‑Catholic regime in Spain banned it despite its Cannes Palme d’Or win. Buñuel recounted that Franco ordered all copies burned; he smuggled the negatives to Barcelona, concealed them under a bullfighter’s cape, and developed the film in Paris.
The film didn’t see a Spanish release until 1977. When asked about his intent, Buñuel clarified, “I didn’t deliberately set out to be blasphemous, but then Pope John XXIII is a better judge of such things than I am.”
2 The Last Temptation Of Christ
Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel The Last Temptation of Christ was condemned by the Catholic Church, and the author was excommunicated from the Greek Orthodox Church. In 1988, Martin Scorsese adapted the book, insisting the film was “not based on the Gospels but upon this fictional exploration of the eternal spiritual conflict.”
Scorsese’s vision portrayed Jesus wrestling with his dual humanity and divinity, even fathering children with Mary Magdalene in a Satan‑induced vision. Evangelical leaders, notably Jerry Falwell, blasted the movie, calling it “pure blasphemy” and demanding that Universal Studios be held accountable for “libel, slander, and ridicule” of Jesus Christ.
Reverend R.L. Hymers organized a Fundamentalist protest outside a synagogue he believed MGM’s head frequented, warning that the studio could “probably expect violence.” Mother Angelica, a prominent television nun, labeled the film “the most blasphemous ridicule of the Eucharist” and warned it could “destroy souls eternally.”
On the eve of its premiere, 25,000 protesters gathered before Universal’s Los Angeles studios, prompting several theater chains to cancel screenings. Blockbuster Video refused to stock the title, a policy that persisted until the chain’s dissolution. The 1990s saw renewed protests during TV broadcasts in Canada and Russia.
1 L’Age d’Or
After the surreal shock of Un Chien Andalou (1929), Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí were commissioned by aristocrats Marie‑Laure and Charles de Noailles to craft a follow‑up feature. The result, L’Age d’Or, was deliberately longer and more unsettling, aiming to provoke the middle class.
The film’s avant‑garde imagery skewered bourgeois morality and the rising fascist tide. Notable blasphemous moments include a scene where chanting bishops morph into skeletal figures and an implication that Jesus Christ and the Marquis de Sade are driven by the same force.
Both fascists and the Catholic Church reacted violently. A 1930 screening at Paris’s Studio 28 was disrupted by fascist thugs who beat patrons with blackjacks, assaulted surrealist paintings in the lobby, and forced the theater to shut down. The Noailles family faced threats of excommunication from the Pope and social ostracism from French high society. Paris police banned the film, and its negative was hidden behind seven seals for six decades, only to be smuggled into Britain.
Ironically, the surrealists had hoped for precisely this backlash. The controversy turned the film into a cause célèbre, prompting the surrealists to publish a four‑page spread documenting the damage to Studio 28 and questioning why police allowed such lawless behavior.