WILY GERMANS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4767, 22 October 1924, Page 3

WILY GERMANS.

THEIB FILM INDUSTRY. HOW THEY SAFEGUARD IT. The German film industry is able to contemplate big schemes of commercial aggression chiefly because it has secured possession of its own home market as a basis for its operations (states the “Daily Mail’s” Berlin correspondent). Behind tbits market stands a population of 60,000,000 Germans, to say nothing of the small States on Germany’s periphery which have all been drawn into her economic film orbit If she can capture the British market into the bargain, or even get a good slice of it, her position in Europe will be rendered invulnerable.

it was during the war that Germany, thrown entirely upon her own resources by reason of her isolation, for the first time learned to depend altogether upon herself for her supply of films. Under this system of complete natural protection, a system born of circumstance, her big business men and financiers were not slow to visualise the economic potentialities of the film as an article of mass consumption.

The war over, Germany was obliged temporarily to forswear her pre-war policy of monopolies and jealously protected industries. For a time it almost looked as if her film industry was to be smothered under a flood of foreign products. The gigantic American industry was.known to be casting longing eyes at the very desirable German market, by far the most remu neiative on the Continent.

But the Germans were not to be caught napping. In spite of the nominal opening of their frontiers, German economic experts soon hatched out a scheme infinitely more effective than any tariff barrier could have been in keeping out the foreign article

At the prompting of the big filmproducing concerns the Economic Council of the Reich decided that there should be no ban out on the actual import of foreign films into the country. Foreign films were to be allowed to cross the frontier unhampered by tariff restrictions. This policy looked extremely liberal and was calculated to disarm criticism in other film-producing countries.

Foreign firms wishing to sell films to Geimany soon discovered, however, that there were very real difficulties to be overcome -before a foreign film could find its way on to a German screen Foreigners found that the German Government has passed a law known as the Contingent Act, empowrering the Germain Department of Foreign Trade to fix from year to year a maximum number of metres of foreign film that might in any one year receive the censor’s stamp. Without this stamp, of course, no film can be shown in a German theatre.

The maximum length of - foreign film that may be stamped for distribution has in the past three years been fixed at 250,000 metres a year. This length corresponds roughly to some 125 big pictures, or less than onetenth of the normal needs of a. film market of the size of Germany. When it is remembered that in Gieat Britain the foreign films screened amount to no less than' nine-tenths of the total number shown, and that in France 85 per cent, of the films shown are foreign produced, it will be seen that Germany believes that in commerce, at any rate, charity begins at home.

The Germans claim that the'limit set by the law to the quantity of foreign films that may be screened is a sufficiently generous one, and one whtoh, while adequately protecting the home industry, leaves a reasonable’share of the trade to the foreigner. Representatives of the American film industry in Berlin, however, take a very different view of the. matter, and the emphatic language in Which they express their disapproval of the Contingent Act leaves no doubt as to the efficacy of the measure.

Under the Contingent Act the German Government reserves to itself the right to permit the import of a further 140,000 metres of foreign films, about which nobody seems to have any exact information. The general theoiy in the film trade is that the Government finds it convenient to keep this extra allowance up its sleeve for use in special emergencies, such as arise when commercial agreements with other film producing countries are being concluded. it must not be imagined that there are no voices raised among the Gelmans themselves against the present film policy. Many of the renters and exhibitors in this country would be on'y 100 glad to see the present restrictions banished altogether and a system of absolute free trade in films introduced. The men at the head of the big film concei ns, however, who have the eai of the Government and also the backing of financial institutions like the Deutache Bank and the Dresdner Bank, take a different view and point out that to remove this check woull lead to the same dumping in Germany as has had such disastrous results on the film producing industries in the countries which have encouraged unrestricted foreign competition.