British Output Drops Seriously

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 786, 5 October 1929, Page 29

British Output Drops Seriously

Vulnerable Spot In Quota System

SELECTION OF “DUD” FILMS

A series of sensational dismissals has taJcen place recently at the British International Studios at Elstree. These represent only a fraction of the unemployment which must result from the restriction of production.

(| HREE complete units out i of the five now working |J have ceased, fsj On the lowest possible L— estimate, one may reckon that this action has affected 500 people, chiefly picture players, who. by reason of the change from silent to talking films, have already suffered great distress, says the London “Daily Mail.” The curtailment by 60 per cent, of film making at the studios of British International, the leading pictureproducing organisation in this country, is a calamity to the film world. No Films Sold Apart from the fitting of various passages of dialogue, British International have 17 pictures completed and these are sufficient for the next six months. Until that time has expired there is apparently no prospect of a complete renewal of activity at Elstree. British International had reason to expect that several of their pictures would have been acquired for “Quota” purposes, but this expectation has not been realised. Stoll picture Productions, which made, in 1927, “Guns of Loos,” one of the best pictures of the year, and “The King’s Highway,” one of the most successful, has failed to secure any “Quota” contracts, and last year failed to sell for “Quota” purposes “The Price of Divorce” after it had been completed. Gainsborough, which made such pictures as “Woman to Woman,” “The Rat,” and “The Constant Nymph.” has not yet made one “Quota” picture for any American company in this country.

Gaumont Ignored Gaumont, "which has just produced in “High Treason,” a triumphantly successful talking picture, and has profitably made British pictures for more than 20 years, has not sold one picture for “Quota” purposes. British and Dominions, having the only Western Electric producing machines in Europe, and stars like Joseph Hislop and Mark Hambourg, Dorothy Gish and Charles Laughton, has sold only one picture for “Quota,” and now is making none. The very efficient Nettlefold studio at Walton, with the brilliant film Impressario, Walter Forde, has sold only one picture for “ Quota.” Cause of Dismissals British International capable of producing forty pictures a year, having produced, in “Piccadilly,” a perfect silent picture and, in “Blackmail,” the best talking picture in the world, has not sold one picture for “Quota” purposes, which is the root cause of the present series of dismissals. Under the Cinematograph Films Act there is no stipulation regarding the quality of the pictures acquired for “Quota.” There is nothing in the Act to prevent a film agent contracting with a man in the street to produce six reels of something which will be registered as a British picture, regardless of quality, if seventy-five per cent, of its cost has been paid to people of British domicile. There is nothing in the Act to prevent the wiping out of three-fifths of the activity of our most important producing organisation, and so causing tragic unemployment. Between the production of pictures made under the fly-by-night conditions permissable under the Act, and the production of pictures under a stabilised sj'stem, there lies, as far as film workers are concerned, the gulf which separates industrial health and industrial chaos.