What the World’s Watching

Movies with excessive violence aren’t big box office in Germany, and one reason may be that the country’s movie industry, in effect, censors itself.

Censorship is forbidden by the constitution, but an organization called FSK (Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle, or “voluntary self-control”) checks German and foreign movies for violence and sex scenes and recommends the minimum age for audiences.

If cinema owners let children watch movies recommended for older youths, they risk heavy fines--up to losing their contracts with distributors.

The system seems to work: In 1999, no explicitly violent movie made it into the top 5 in German cinema rankings.

The last bloody blockbuster was “Terminator II” with Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1993. But what critics here call “soft violence” movies such as “The Matrix” made it to the top. According to Berlin freelance movie critic Markus Liedtke, however, that was not because of its violent scenes: “The audience is rather interested in the special effects. That’s what made them storm the cinemas in 1997 when ‘Independence Day’ came into German theaters.”