Festival screens banned movies

Banned or censored films are to be screened in their complete and original versions for the first time.

A film festival will show 19 films at the Barbican this autumn, all of which have fallen foul of the British Board of Film Classification since it was founded in 1912.

They include The Last Woman in which Gerard Depardieu mutilates his body with an electric breadknife. It caused such a furore in 1975 that it was never released.

The first banned film was A Fool There Was made by Frank Powell in 1915. Theda Bara seduces a married man who loses his job and abandons his wife and child.

Other films include She Done Him Wrong featuring sex symbol Mae West and one of her most famous lines: "Why don't you come up and see me?" The film was cut by 14 minutes.

Robert Rider, head of cinema at the Barbican, said: "They've got to be seen in terms of the moral climate of the period."

Seduced: Sex And Censorship In The Cinema runs from October 18 to 24.