The Miracle (Film)
"The Miracle" is a 1948 Italian film directed by Roberto Rossellini and adapted from a story by Federico Fellini. The film stars Anna Magnani as a peasant woman who, after a drunken encounter with a drifter, believes she has given birth to Jesus Christ, mistaking the drifter for Saint Joseph. Upon its release, the film sparked significant controversy, particularly from the Roman Catholic Church, which deemed it a "sacrilegious and blasphemous mockery." Despite the backlash, including calls for a boycott and picketing from Catholic organizations, the film was not censored initially.
In the United States, after passing customs and obtaining a license for exhibition, it faced further challenges, culminating in a legal battle that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The court ruled in favor of the film's distributor, Joseph Burstyn, asserting that censorship based on claims of sacrilege violated First Amendment rights. The ruling underscored the protection of films as a medium of free speech and emphasized the separation between church and state. This case, Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, remains significant in discussions about artistic expression and religious sensitivity in film.
The Miracle (Film)
Type of work: Film
Released: 1948
Director: Roberto Rossellini (1906-1977)
Script: Federico Fellini (1920-1993)
Subject matter: A peasant woman believes that the stranger who impregnates her is Saint Joseph and that her infant son is Jesus Christ
Significance: Controversy over this film in the United States led to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that granted constitutional free expression protection to films for the first time
When The Miracle first appeared in Italy in 1948, the Roman Catholic church created a furor over its contents although it did not try to stop its exhibition. Adapted from a book written by Federico Fellini, the film was directed by Roberto Rossellini and starred Anna Magnani as the peasant woman whose drunken sexual encounter with a drifter (played by Fellini) resulted in her pregnancy. Believing the drifter to be Saint Joseph, the woman determines that a miracle has occurred and that she has given birth to Jesus Christ.
In 1949 the film passed U.S. Customs and a New York censorship official licensed it. Its distributor, a Jewish Polish immigrant named Joseph Burstyn, did not show the film until 1950, when it played at New York City’s Paris Theatre. After the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency called the film a “sacrilegious and blasphemous mockery,” the New York City commissioner of licenses stopped the film’s exhibition. Burstyn then went to the state court, which ruled that the commissioner had no right to censor films in that way.
The Catholic church’s Cardinal Francis Spellman initiated a new attack on the film in January, 1951, with a condemnation that he ordered a statement to be read at masses in New York City’s churches. Calling the film a “vile and harmful” ridicule of the belief in miracles, Spellman requested all citizens to boycott, especially by economic means, all immoral films. Catholic organizations reacted by picketing the theater and threatening to bomb the building. The New York Board of Regents chairman, stating that the film had received hundreds of protests, appointed a review of The Miracle. Three regents deemed it “sacrilegious.” After closing the film, Burstyn went to court backed by a leading anticensorship lawyer, Ephraim London.
After a New York appeals court decided against Burstyn, the case of Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson reached the U.S. Supreme Court in April, 1952. Using the concept that censorship by local authorities was not constitutional under the First Amendment, London argued that interference by the church altered church and state divisions. Within a month Associate Justice Tom C. Clark handed down the Court’s decision, stating that since films were an important means used in “the communication of ideas” they were protected by the Constitution’s free speech guarantees. Clark wrote that states could not “ban a film on the basis of a censor’s conclusion that it is ’sacrilegious.’” Justice Clark declared that the government had no right to decide what material was relevant nor to “suppress real or imagined attacks upon a religious doctrine” in any form of available media.