MovieChat Forums > Maladolescenza (1977) Discussion > The true legality of the movie

The true legality of the movie

posted 17 years ago by kalvinharp
1 reply | jump to latest

Over the past several months, i have made numerous posts on this movie trying to justify it being legal. I have heard from both the liberal side and the conservative side. The first time i saw this film was about 4 years ago and becuase of what i went through in my time of adolescence i found it both very disturbing and very true to life. Having talked to many in legal standing, I can tell you, as well as being a sociology- criminal justice major, that this film is 100% legal in the United States protected under the 1st amendment as is nudist films and videos. Today i received a smack down questioning my logic on the legality of the film, no doubt from a very closed minded conservative who is for censorship. I emailed him back in private and decided to tell him why the film is legal and my reasoning, below is a copy of the exact text i emailed the person.
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"judging from your comment history.......you tend to comment on films dealing with pedophilia and nudity the most, and after reading your comments i come to a few conclusions........either your are a closet pedophile (and/or) you are an extreme conservative who can not hold an intelligent debate (probably a huge Bush - Cheney supporter) do you have nothing better to do than condem a movie to which i found confort in to help understand how and why i had a difficult preteen-young teen time in my life.

However if you dont have anything better to do, you should comment on some of my other favorite movies:

You Are Not Alone (1978)
Angela (1995)
Thirteen (2003)
American Beauty (1999)
Bastard Out Of Carolina (1996)
Lord of the Flies (1963)
Pretty Baby (1978)
The Little Girl who Lives down the lane (1976)
Flowers In The attic (1987)
Mommie Dearest (1981)
Fallen Angel (1981)

all these movies deal with very touchy subject matter but helped me understand what i went through while growing up. I was emotionally, physically, and sexually abused while growing up and these were movies i could relate to.

I hate what was done to me in the past, but i have to move on. I have become a activist against censorship and an advocate for free speech. Just because a movie has nudity in it, even disturbing nudity such as in Spielen wir Liebe (1977) does not mean it should be illegal, or is illegal. These movies are protected under the 1st amendment, the same as nudist videos, some of which have children in them, are legal. I suggest you read the part about child pronography more carefully again, about not having any artistic, scientific, or social value(s).
However, what you said was true that any child pornographer can say that his video had artistic value or merit, but in most cases we would not be dealing with a professionally made video by a production company, we would be dealing with, at most, a home studio used to distribute child pornography filmed with sexually explicit titles and such, as was seen up until child porn was declared illegal in the late 1970s in the United States.
Just becuase a movie assumes a child is having sex does not make it illegal or child porn for that matter or else many of the films in the list above would be illegal. As of this time and the current child pornography laws as they stand, Spielen wir Liebe (1977) remains legal to own, sell, and distribute in the United States.
You may have reported the copy of that movie being sold on ebay, but the auction was not cancelled. I have had an aution cancelled on me with ebay before, it was a cable descrambler that i tryed to buy back in 1999, so i know what it looks like when ebay cancels an auction. I will give you that Spielen wir Liebe (1977)has been reported on some child porn rings in the late 1990s so pedophiles do watch it, but just becuase some pedophiles watch it does not make it illegal, the only thing illegal about that movie being posted I read was a copyright violation. The sad fact is a pedophile will find situations in just about any movies with children in it to satisfy him or herself, but to make all those movies illegal is unpractical and irrational.
We have to also remember that Spielen wir Liebe (1977)was made back in the 1970s before the child porn scares and pedophilia outrage that we saw with such cases as Jonbenet Ramsey and Danielle van Dam. We must also take into consideration that this film was made in Europe, if it had been made in America I could agree with you that the producer's motives were sexual in nature. However in europe, like it or not nudity is alot more tolerated from either sex and of any age. Women are more free to go topless. Men, women, and children are seen naked on daytime TV, even in children's programming. This does not make it sexual, it just makes them more liberal in regards to nudity.

I understand your outrage against this movie and feel your disgust but to say that a film is illegal because of the nudity is out of bound."
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for any more information please respond to this post or check out my comment history about this film and read all my reasoning and replys to both supporters, haters, and people in question about this film........ or email me at kalvinharp@yahoo.com

[–] ian-richardson-1 16 years ago

I am happy to say that I agree with your analysis, but we live in a world that doesn't. I'm pretty sure that a single frame from this movie was enough to get me a legal caution in the UK and membership of that exclusive club, the UK Sex Offenders Register. In the UK, the police followed up every British name that appeared on the Landslide website back in 1999 or thereabouts, informed (wrongly as it turns out) that every such name had deliberately signed up for child porn. We all got the early morning knock on the door, and all computer kit was confiscated and analysed to try to find evidence of CP. I had been around IMDB and similar sites in search of "The Extraordinary adventures of Karik and Valya" the night before, and on one site, a still from this movie turned up. I was informed that it was one of the more serious examples of CP, and that therefore I was, intentionally or not, guilty of "possession of an indecent image of children". I had a choice between caution (i.e. accepting my guilt and "closing" the case) and going to court, dragging the whole thing out for more months and putting endless strain on me and mine. I took the caution because at the time it seemed an easy(ish) way out, but subsequent publicity, and loads of busted windows and such later, I'm not so sure.
My point is that, at least on computer, CP is whatever the authorities say is CP. Oddly enough, if I'd owned this on DVD or video, I don't think it would have counted - I do, for example, own a DVD of Nick Roeg's fabulous "Walkabout" without troubling the thought police, but if I had its closing scenes on my computer, that would have been CP - milder than Spielen wir Liebe but still counting. Because the image was on my computer - in my internet cache for goodness sake where I may not even have chosen to see it - I'm officially a paedophile. I assure you, I'm not.
Most of us, if we surf the net at all, have probably got some "CP" somewhere in all the internet detritus we accumulate. Lands' sakes, my local supermarket has a category 2 CP picture on one of its gift cards! The Law (at least in th UK) is whatever it chooses to be, and all the rational argument on this board or anywhere else won't change that in the current climate. Take no chances, wash your computer regularly, don't keep anything even slightly dodgy on your hard drive: that's what DVD's and USB's are for!
A melancholy PS: more than 35 UK citizens have committed suicide in the aftermath of this police operation, many hundreds more have lost access to family, reputation and careers. I doubt many of them were fully paid up paedophiles, just innocents caught up in something incomprehensible.