Depict sin truthfully, without glamour
Scripture shows murder, adultery and betrayal. Catholic art has never been squeamish. The question is not whether sin is shown. It is what the film wants the audience to feel about it, and whether it tells the truth about what sin costs.
- The glamour test. Does the camera love the sin more than the sinner? Is the wrong choice made attractive with no cost the film takes seriously?
- The sentimentality test. Sentimentality is also a lie. Sin without weight, and conversion without cost, are as false as glamour.
- The proportion test. Show enough that the audience understands. Do not show so much that the film becomes the thing it condemns.
Nudity and the actor's dignity
An actor is a person, not a body you have licensed. Some things are never necessary: actual sexual contact; exposure beyond what the actor agreed to in writing before casting; footage of undress that is not in the scene; pressure on the day to go further than the agreement. And a minor is never, anywhere, shown in any state of undress presented sexually. There is no tasteful version of that.
- Closed set. Minimum crew, monitors off outside the room, no phones, no stills without the actor's consent.
- Intimacy coordination. For any scene with sexual content or nudity, use a trained intimacy coordinator, a rider that states exactly what will be shown, modesty garments, and a rehearsal with the coordinator present. This is now standard practice and it protects everyone in the room.
- The closed-door test. Ask whether the scene would still work if the door closed. It almost always does. Many of the best films about desire show very little.
- Abuse and assault. The fact can be told; the act need not be shown.
Violence and its meaning
The Passion is a violent story and so is every martyrdom. Violence shown truthfully tells the truth about sin and about courage. The question is whether the violence means something and whether the film treats suffering as real. Does the audience feel the cost, or enjoy the spectacle? In a martyrdom, the martyr's body keeps its dignity. Gore is not devotion.
A Catholic set has no excuse for a safety shortcut. Stunts have a coordinator, weapons have a licensed armorer, and live ammunition is never on set. Not once.
Language
People swear. A dockworker in 1950 who talks like a catechist is not truthful. Blasphemy, though, is different from profanity. Using the name of God or of Jesus as an expletive is something a Catholic film decides about on purpose. Some makers never allow it. Some let a character do it once to show who he is. Decide; do not drift into it. Every strong word also narrows the audience, and the parishes and families you may want to reach are the first to fall away.
Clergy and religious
Neither hagiography nor contempt. A priest who is a plaster saint is as false as a priest who is a monster. The honest middle is a man with a vocation and a temperament, who prays, fails, and prays again. The same is true of a sister, a brother or a bishop.
- Know his life. The difference between a nun and a sister, a monk and a friar, a diocesan priest and a religious. Get the vesture and the liturgy right; see Depicting the sacraments.
- Scandal in the Church is real and may be shown. If you show it, tell the truth, put the victims' dignity first, and do not use it as a shortcut for "corrupt institution."
- If a real priest or religious appears as himself or herself, get the superior's permission and agree in writing what he or she will do.
Children on set
Safe-environment norms apply. Dioceses in the United States have safe-environment offices with standards for adults who work with minors: background checks, training, and the rule that an adult is never alone with a child out of sight of others. If your production is on church property or has any Church involvement, those standards apply to you as a matter of diocesan policy. Adopt them anyway. Ask the diocesan safe-environment office what it requires from a production, and ask before you cast a child.
- A parent or guardian on set at all times, and a studio teacher or child welfare worker where state law requires one.
- Two adults present whenever a child is being worked with. No exceptions for the director.
- No photographs of children by crew on personal phones, and a changing space used only by the child and the guardian.
- A child is never placed in a sexual situation, even implied, and is never on set while adult content is filmed. Schedule around it. Explain any violent scene to the child and the guardian in advance.
- Your chaplain, if you have one, needs the same clearance as anyone else.
How CFDb will read the finished film
This site uses two systems. The first is a classification in the USCCB style: A-I for general audiences, A-II for adults and adolescents, A-III for adults, L for a limited adult audience because of content many adults would find troubling, and O for morally offensive. The second is the Bells rating, a score from 0 to 5 that combines critic and user reviews. A film classified L is held below the top of the Bells scale, and a film classified O well below it. How ratings work explains both in detail.
What moves a film from A-III to L or O is not its subject. It is the treatment. Two films can show the same act and land in different places, for exactly the reasons on this page. What a filmmaker can do is decide, before the first day of shooting, which audience the film is for. If you want parishes to screen it, the choices above are the levers. And a film does not need to be A-I to be Catholic. Many of the best Catholic films are A-III.
Wherever a real decision depends on any of this, ask a priest you trust. Ask before the shoot, with the script in his hands, not after picture lock.