Released in 1924, Murnau’s film was not screened in Ontario until 1928. During the winter of 1925, F.W. Murnau’s masterpiece, The Last Laugh, was shown to a very exclusive group of Ontario movie-goers. The audience was the Ontario Board of Censors, and while they were no doubt impressed by the film’s dazzling cinematography and lack of subtitles, the film was banned simply because it was made in Germany. Murnau’s film was screened in other provinces and shattered box office records in the United States, but provincial treasurer W.H. Price, under whose authority the censors sanitized cinema, maintained that with the … Continue reading The Last Laugh: Banned in Ontario