The Question of Music

In 1923 the newly established Irish Free State swiftly passed the Censorship of Films Act. The act was considered an essential measure for confronting the perceived moral threat that cinema posed to the young, fragile Catholic state. James Montgomery was appointed Ireland’s first film censor in that same year, a post he held until 1940. Montgomery took his job seriously and banned or censored hundreds of films, calling himself a “moral sieve.” Records of Montgomery’s decisions, including his detailed (and often witty) rationales for cutting or rejecting films, were unavailable to scholars until 1998, when the Irish government lifted its embargo on the records. Kevin Rockett first studied these documents in his pioneering Irish Film Censorship (2004). In the present study, I build on Rockett’s work and focus on a recurring but unexplored element in Montgomery’s writings during his first decade as censor: music. Although Montgomery screened films in silence until 1930, internal records show that he often thought about music when he assessed films: he worried about music’s ability to deliver salacious content or magnify a scene’s immoral message; he routinely banned musical comedies and cut scenes that referenced jazz; he even flagged passionate scenes that he feared might draw “the most sensuous of music” in theaters and therefore push audiences into immoral acts. This article uses archival documents in the National Archives of Ireland to trace Montgomery’s thoughts about music and analyze their impact on his decisions, offering new insights into Ireland’s first film censor, as well as shedding new light on music’s place in the censorship debates of the silent and early sound eras.