In the middle of WWI, a film called Five Nights caused quite a kerfuffle—in picture houses, but also, briefly, in at least one splendid courtroom as well.
Objectionable features?
Made in West London, in the very studios from which the Ealing comedies would later emerge, the film tells the story of a dissolute young artist. He is shown wooing a Chinese woman in Alaska, falling for his own cousin and having her disrobe in front of him, and shooting a Chinese man dead. He is also shown as the father of an illegitimate child.
No one saw all this before the people of Preston did. Five Nights was shown in the town at the end of August 1915, in the old King’s Palace Theatre. But it was shown there only once.
James Watson was part of the audience that stiflingly hot Monday afternoon. It
