On Sunday, I went to a one-off screening of the renowned film Quadrophenia (1979), starring Phil Daniels, Leslie Ash and a number of other actors who went on to become bigger stars through the 1980s and beyond. I enjoyed it a lot, especially the sound design, but my focus today is the content rating.
To give you a brief overview, any film intended for cinematic release must first be submitted to the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) who give it an age rating and advice to audiences regarding the type of content to expect. In that regard, it performs a similar role to the Motion Picture Association in the USA.
Each classified film begins with a black card including the age rating and the advice. I noticed it was given a ’15’ certificate, so nobody younger can see it. I also noted it was an older style of certificate from 2002 and appeared to be a 35mm print rather than a digital one, suggesting it hadn’t been reclassified for some time.
There is strong language from the start of Quadrophenia, not to mention flashes of nudity, which likely nudges the ceiling of that age rating. Out of curiosity, I had a look into the justification on the BBFC website and found an unusual pattern.
The cinema release was rated ‘X’ in 1979, which is now obsolete, but equivalent to an ’18’ certificate today. It was then reclassified ’15’ in 1996 and 2015. However, the home entertainment release was rated ’18’ in 1986, 1998 and 2006. I’m unable to find a justification for the difference in the two levels.
Meanwhile, something interesting had happened at the tail end, after the credits. The audience briefly saw a blue ‘NC-17’ certificate. It’s unclear why this appeared, so I can only assume there had been an mix-up somewhere. Confusingly, ‘NC-17’ means nobody under 18 will be admitted.
The MPA website directed me to FilmRatings.com, which said it was given an ‘R’ rating in 1979. This indicates that an under-17 can only see the picture with an accompanying parent or adult guardian. Again, I was unable to find a justification for the difference in the two levels.
In the UK, film ratings have been mandatory since 1912 and in my own experience, they generally err on the side of being too strict, so I was surprised a ’15’ was even entertained. It is possible to seek guidance before shooting a frame, though, and I’m reminded of correspondence between Edgar Wright and the BBFC about the question of strong language in The World’s End, which was subsequently passed at ’15’.
But I do think this rather quaint system, now more than a century old, will become obsolete in our lifetimes in favour of self-policed ratings.
The BBFC has a partnership with Netflix which allows the streamer to assign ratings to its own output, subject to regular audits. With the trial extended into 2028, I don’t doubt we’ll see the major Hollywood studios enter into similar partnerships, freeing up the classifiers’ time for other work.
I even suspect we might one day see the end of such systems completely. There is no mandatory age-rating system for even the most violent or explicit novels. The publishers instead target the right audiences instead through marketing. We’ll see what happens with films.
Gavin Cameron 