The Censor

Roberto Rossellini's The Miracle, filmed in 1948 and now current as part of a two-hour, three-layer omnibus titled Ways of Love (TIME, Dec. 18), is second-rate Rossellini despite a virtuoso performance by Anna Magnani. Performing a minor acting miracle herself, she makes almost credible her role as an insane peasant woman who believes she is to bear a holy child fathered by Saint Joseph.

Last week The Miracle made headlines by offending Edward T. McCaffrey, $15,000-a-year license commissioner of New York City and onetime national commander of the Catholic War Veterans. McCaffrey, a holdover from the O'Dwyer administration, has power to grant, suspend and revoke the licenses of the city's movie theaters (as well as of legitimate theaters, laundries, bowling alleys, etc.). After Ways of Love had been running for more than a week, McCaffrey sent the Paris Theater an order to stop showing The Miracle or face suspension--and possibly revocation--of its license. The movie, he said, was "blasphemous."

Indignant New Yorkers pelted Mayor Impellitteri with telegrams of protest. Critics who had panned the movie spoke up for anybody's right to see it. Joseph Burstyn, distributor of Ways of Love, pointed out that after The Miracle was shown in Italy, the Vatican approved Rossellini's plan to do a movie about Saint Francis of Assisi. If the Vatican was not offended by The Miracle, Burstyn implied, who was a mere license commissioner to object? Furthermore, although the film had been "condemned" by the Catholic Legion of Decency as "sacrilegious and blasphemous," it had been passed by the New York state censors, National Board of Review and Customs Bureau.

The commissioner stuck stubbornly to his edict and Burstyn's lawyers went to court. At week's end, State Supreme Court Justice Henry Clay Greenberg threatened a temporary injunction against the edict. "I am concerned," he said, "with whether the commissioner has a right to set himself up as a dictator." At that point, McCaffrey weakened. While waiting for a full hearing this week, he lifted the ban. That evening, any New Yorker with the price of a ticket ($1.50) could see The Miracle and judge for himself whether it was worth all the todo.

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