certification

The perception of different certifications has changed dramatically since films such as Hitchcock's 'Vertigo' or 'Strangers on a train' was made. In that period sex and violence were not acceptable to show, violence was also very discrete and there would be very little gore. Hitchcock's older black and white films were mostly PGs, these films contained fairly frequent drug use, however no misuse of drugs and certainly no use of any hard drugs.

Nowadays however drug use or abuse is very much more in the spotlight, on the BBFC website a 15 certified film in terms of drug use is shown as,

"Drug taking may be shown but the film as a whole must not promote or encourage drug misuse. The misuse of easily accessible and highly dangerous substances (for example, aerosols or solvents) is unlikely to be acceptable."

Therefore in this day and age, I feel that a Hitchcock film such as "The 39 Steps" would be certified as probably a 12A or 15, even though violence levels are very discrete and kept to the minimum.

Because of this I will certify my thriller opening as a 15, this is so it would be acceptable to use similar styles and ideas to those of Alfred Hitchcock, such as characters smoking tobacco but nothing that would be anymore extreme than that.