The Curse: Film and the Churches in the Western Isles 1945 to 1980

Abstract

Focusing on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, this article looks at the interaction between religious culture and film between the 1940s and 1980s. Its first main feature is an examination of the causes of the closure of the Playhouse cinema in Stornoway in 1977–79 and the role of the Calvinist churches and the local authorities in this and other film censorship. It identifies a growing vigour on the part of some churchmen, notably of the Free Presbyterian Church, and the role of one of them in publicly imposing ‘a curse’ upon the manager of the Playhouse for daring to schedule the film ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ with its ‘blasphemous’ depiction of Jesus Christ. It notes the increasing attempts of local politicians in the 1950s, 60s and 70s to impose stricter religious formulae through statutory powers, especially after the creation of the separate Western Isles Council in the mid 1970s. The article explores church and lay attitudes to cinema through oral testimony, the tensions between urban and rural with Lewis, and the wider social, cultural, linguistic and demographic contexts in which both opposition to, and tolerance of, cinema need to be understood in an island less estranged from modern media than might be supposed.