So here we are again. Another ageing auteur, Wim Wenders this time, has dutifully yanked one of his own films from circulation because it contains a topless scene with a then-teenage actress. The film is 'The Wrong Move' from 1975.
The actress was 14. The director is now 79. The reaction from the UK arts world: predictable hand-wringing, pearl-clutching, and a neurotic urge to sanitise the messy, morally ambiguous product of an earlier era.
Let me be clear: this is not a defence of child exploitation. But it is a lament for the loss of historical context, artistic integrity, and the courage to view works of art as artefacts of their time rather than as indictments of our own. The Victorian era was obsessed with covering piano legs for fear they might arouse.
We are not so different. We cover our screens, pretending that removing a film from the digital shelf is a moral act. It is not.
It is a performance. And it signals a cultural decadence that would make Gibbon weep. When we cannot look at a 50-year-old film without demanding it conform to contemporary ethics, we have abandoned the very idea of art as a conversation across time.
We have chosen instead the safety of a sterile, self-congratulatory silence. Wenders, no doubt, is acting out of genuine concern. But he is also acting out of fear.
And fear is a poor guide for either art or morality.
