So where is the clampdown?
It was obvious from the outset that The Idiots could be problematic for the censors. Graphic orgy scenes included footage of "real sex", but this was no cheap porn video. It was a European arthouse movie, directed by Lars von Trier, the respected Danish director who made Breaking The Waves. Von Trier used a video camcorder to shoot his story about a group of middle-class people who pretend to be mentally handicapped and was clearly challenging attitudes on a number of issues, including censorship. Some directors might threaten to withdraw their films if a single frame were threatened, but not Von Trier. He decided to make it easy for the censors by producing a second version with the controversial bits blacked out, Japanese-style. Basically he called the censors' bluff. And it worked. Just about the only black spot on the horizon is the US. "They want more black spots," said a spokeswoman for the Danish sales agents. "It's very entertaining."
The Idiots has been passed uncut in more than 30 countries in Europe, South America and Asia, including Britain, where shots of erections and sexual penetration are virtually unprecedented. It would have been relatively simple for Von Trier to show a scene of naked, writhing bodies, without shots of penetration, and rely on the worldliness of the audience to work out what was going on. The distributors offered to submit the black-spot version to the British Board of Film Classification, but it wanted the hardcore one.
"We considered the view of real sex and group sex to be so brief and so crucial to the story - because after that the group breaks up - that it was OK," says BBFC president, Andreas Whittam Smith. The Idiots, which opens on May 14, is just one in a series of potentially controversial films passed in recent weeks by the BBFC, ranging from sexually explicit European arthouse films to old American horror and slasher movies.
The Exorcist has received clearance for video release for the first time since the introduction of video certificates in the eighties and is now available. The Driller Killer, demon of the "video nasties" hysteria of the eighties, was passed after the distributor itself made cuts. And, after a quarter of a century of prevarication, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was approved for cinema release, and the only cuts were those inflicted by Leatherface. Whittam Smith expected the villain to be "a ferocious and scaring and worrying sort of figure"; all he got was "a feeble figure panting around in a rather wonky mask."
We have certificates for "video nasties", the seal of approval for hardcore sex, and no public or media outcry whatsoever. Whittam Smith is as surprised as anyone. "To tell you the truth I was expecting a big row on Happiness," he says. "It's about child abuse."
Robin Duval, the BBFC director, had similar fears about The Exorcist, after Whittam Smith decided to review the video ban without any prompting from the film company. Whittam Smith concluded it was "a very fine film" and found no evidence of any harm to viewers, which makes you wonder why it was banned in the first place.
In recent times Britain has had the toughest film censorship regime in western Europe. It is only nine months since the Edinburgh Film Festival - which traditionally provides a platform for uncertified films - decided The Idiots was too big a risk in the current "climate of censorship".
Home Secretary Jack Straw had publicly criticised the BBFC's director, James Ferman, for his liberal attitude to the sort of hardcore pornography which has a special certificate restricting it to licensed sex shops. Ferman, who had run the BBFC as a personal fiefdom for almost 25 years, accused Straw of pandering to the "puritanical vote". Straw blocked the appointment of Lord Birkett, the insider choice for BBFC president, and installed former Independent editor Andreas Whittam Smith. Sight and Sound magazine said the appointment was "a sop to Middle England".
Whittam Smith insisted the BBFC's constitution should be rewritten and that ultimate authority be invested in the post of president (ie him). A year after his appointment, Ferman is gone, replaced by Robin Duval, a professional "regulator" from the Independent Television Commission. Everything was in place for a dramatic clampdown on sex and violence. But it has not happened.
There was an early indication last year of Whittam Smith's independent thinking when he passed the violent French film Dobermann uncut, despite reservations from Ferman. There was not a single complaint from the public. The BBFC's own guidelines ban erections and penetration even in sex videos, but it had made an exception in the case of the Japanese classic Ai No Corrida, passed in 1991 after a 15-year delay, and Whittam Smith and Duval cited it as a precedent in their decisions on both The Idiots and Seul Contre Tous.
However there is a wonderful get-out clause attached to the BBFC guidelines for every certificate: "Context may justify exceptions". But is that the context of the films or the context of the censors? Against all the odds, has the toughest film censor in western Europe adopted a new liberal strategy? "I would rather you judged that," says Whittam Smith. "I'm not setting out to be either liberal or restrictive." Put it another way - would The Idiots have been passed uncut three or four years ago? "Possibly not."
Whittam Smith, and indeed the legislative framework, differentiate between films in the cinema and videos in the home, which can more easily be seen by unsupervised children. It seems typical of Whittam Smith's relative naivety that it had never previously occurred to him that videos could be slowed down or paused while viewers examined a sequence in slow motion. Some viewers may be tempted to do this to study criminal techniques, he says.
But when it comes to adult audiences in the cinema, Whittam Smith's philsophy is simple. "There is an overwhelming duty on the board to interfere as little as possible with what adults want to see, unless what is portaryed on the screen is illegal." Whittam Smith maintains this was always his view: it is the definition of a liberal approach.
Among the many elements which the British censor must now consider is the right to free expression under the European Convention of Human Rights, though there is no question of Britain adopting the same standards as France, where the sex scenes in the new film Romance have attracted considerable media attention on both sides of the Channel in the last few weeks. Whittam Smith did intervene in the case of the French film Seul Contre Tous, which contains a longer scene of penetrative sex than The Idiots, which he considered breached the Obscene Publications Act. It occurs when the central character visits a cinema to watch a porn movie. The BBFC was able to blur the image of the film within the film and leave the sense of the scene intact.
Whittam Smith may not have changed his fundamental views on censorship, but he has quickly learned that cutting films is no easy task. That is not entirely true: it is perfectly easy to cut films, or stick black spots over offending bits; the difficult thing is to censor them without the audience realising they have been censored. "I originally thought 'Oh well, if there's a problem, we can cut our way out of it'," he says. "That's not really an option. Anything good is too intricately made to cut."
Taking the scissors to Happiness was never feasible. Todd Solondz's film interweaves the lives of various New Jersey characters, including a pathetic, overweight man who gets his kicks from obscene phone calls, and a devoted father who is attracted to pubescent boys. There are a couple of scenes in which characters masturbate: the act remains unseen, but the end-result is shown, in the first instance, hitting the wall, and, in the second, being licked by a dog. They are no more gross than the hair gel scene in There's Something About Mary.
The acts of pedophilia take place off-camera, though the father subsequently confesses to his son. "It's very, very powerful," says Whittam Smith, "a searing conversation between the child-abusing father and his 10-year-old son."
It is the most serious and poignant scene in the film, ending with both characters in tears. To cut the scene would be to destroy the film - it would be as well to ban it. The film attempts to understand the depth of the father's compulsion, though that is not to say it condones it, and his life is utterly destroyed. "I passed it with some trepidation, because I fancied there could be a big row," says Whittam Smith. "To my amazement the Mail liked it and Chris Tookey gave it five stars." The BBFC has received few complaints about any of these films. The Exorcist and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre elicited more letters of support than complaint. Amazingly the news that the BBFC had approved the video re-release of The Driller Killer brought no complaints at all.
Whittam Smith is unsure why there has been so little controversy. Both he and Duval believe it is only a matter of time, but they are preparing their defences every step of the way. The BBFC now issues statments to explain how it arrives at decisions, and they have the effect of forcing critics to engage in debate on specific points. Or not at all. Whittam Smith and Duval have made themselves available to the press, whereas journalists could get access to Clint Eastwood more easily than Ferman. In line with the new policy of glasnost the BBFC has belatedly decided to appoint a press officer and is currently advertising the post.
Ferman disliked banning films and had a habit of simply postponing decisions, hoping the fuss would die down, while managing to infuriate everyone, including small distributors who had paid sizeable sums for films which lay gathering dusk in the BBFC offices. "It just seemed to be completely wrong, whenever there was a problem, to sit on it," says Whittam Smith. "If it's difficult - get the answer out as quickly as you can."
Distributors are delighted with the speed with which he and Duval are making decisions, with the decisions they have been making, and with the readiness to look again at old films and videos. Is there any move to re-release A Clockwork Orange, which was withdrawn by Stanley Kubrick and would need a new certificate now? There have been no representations on it. How about Salo, Pasolini's final film, a portrait of degradation in fascist Italy? Whittam Smith has never heard of that one.
In Whittam Smith, the government seems to have appointed a censor who brings none of the prejudices of Middle England and the pro-censorship lobby to the post, but the open-mindedness of someone who knows hardly anything about films. He will learn film history on the job. It is too early to say what his own place will be in that history. But it seems unlikely that he will be taking a chainsaw to films, much to the relief of the industry and of cineastes.
 The Exorcist is out on video this week, Happiness goes nationwide on May 7, The Idiots opens on May 14.