The Film Foundation Chair, Martin Scorsese recently announced that an Italian Court has ruled that TV Internazionale, a television company in Italy, violated the moral rights of DGA Lifetime Achievement Award-winning director Fred Zinnemann, when it broadcast a colorized version of The Seventh Cross.
TV Internazionale, which showed the film twice, once in 1996 and again in 1997, was banned from ever showing the film again in colorized form, required to destroy all colorized copies of the film, and ordered to pay damages.
Director of such legendary works as High Noon (1952) and the DGA Feature Film award-winning movies, From Here To Eternity (1953) and A Man For All Seasons (1966), Fred Zinnemann made The Seventh Cross (1944), a drama about the horrors of pre-World War II Nazi Germany, in black and white as a deliberate, artistic choice. Zinnemann, who was also awarded The Film Foundation’s first annual John Huston Award for moral rights in 1994, passed away in 1997.
The complaint was filed in 1999 by his son Tim Zinnemann and the litigation was conducted by Arnold Lutzker, Washington DC, in coordination with Francesco Rampone and Maria L. Cuichini, Studio Legale Chiomenti, Rome, Italy. Tim Zinnemann charged that the airing of the altered version of the film damaged his father’s artistic honor and reputation. With its final ruling in favor of Zinnemann, the court sent a clear message that Italian law stands behind the rights of all film artists, regardless of nationality.
The Artists Rights Education and Legal Defense Fund Council, established by the Board of Directors of The Film Foundation, supported the Zinnemann family in this case, and considers the ruling an affirmation that the director is the author of the motion picture and that the integrity of the work is entitled to protection and preservation. The concept of “moral rights” maintains that the altering of a work without the artist’s permission can harm the reputation or honor of the artist and is therefore unacceptable. Therefore, this ruling ensures that filmmakers’ work is protected from alteration when it is exhibited in Italy.
Elliot Silverstein, Chair of the Artists Rights council, stated, “This decision has been a victory for film directors. But it is ironic that there is more protection for an American director in Italy than there would be for the work of an Italian director in the United States or even for an American director in his/her own country.”
In making clear its interest in safeguarding the moral rights of film directors, Italy joins France, where another artists’ rights case has been decided. In 1991, the Supreme Court of France ruled that the colorized version of director John Huston’s 1950 film The Asphalt Jungle could not be distributed in theaters or broadcast on television without the director’s approval.
