Miracles And Sacrilege: Roberto Rossellini, The Church, And Film Censorship In Hollywood

'My dad shot his film The Miracle with friends: with Anna Magnani, his great love and an extraordinary actress, and with Federico Fellini, who provided the scenario. The story moved them. They certainly did not expect to be accused of sacrilege, nor could they have imagined that their film would end up in the United States Supreme Court. Within days of opening in New York, however, The Miracle became the subject of a great legal struggle concerning whether principles of free speech should apply to film. Until now, I did not know just how intense this struggle was, nor did I know how much the existence of artistic freedom today may be traced back to this important court decision. Dr. Johnson's book tells this extraordinary story. I am pleased to see this aspect of my father's legacy so thoroughly illuminated.'-Isabella Rossellini

"Miracles and Sacrilege" is the story of the epochal conflict between censorship and freedom in film, recounted through an in-depth analysis of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision striking down a government ban on Roberto Rossellini's film The Miracle (1950). In this extraordinary case, the Court ultimately chose to abandon its own longstanding determination that film comprised a mere 'business' unworthy of free-speech rights, declaring for the first time that the First Amendment barred government from banning any film as 'sacreligious.'

Using legal briefs, affidavits, and other court records, as well as letters, memoranda, and other archival materials to elucidate what was at issue in the case, William Bruce Johnson also analyzes the social, cultural, and religious elements that form the background of this complex and hard-fought controversy, focusing particularly on the fundamental role played by the Catholic Church in the history of film censorship. Tracing the development of the Church in the United States, Johnson discusses the reasons it found "The Miracle" sacrilegious and how it attained the power to persuade civil authorities to ban it. The Court's decision was not only a milestone in the law of church-state relations, but it paved the way for a succession of later decisions which gradually established a firm legal basis for freedom of expression in the arts.