THE BIRTH-CONTROL OF BRITISH PICTURES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 257, 26 May 1944, Page 20

THE BIRTH-CONTROL OF BRITISH PICTURES

OME of you may have noticed a small cable message the other day,’ stating that an attempt was to be made to establish a chain of theatres in Australia devoted exclusively to the screening of British pictures. This interested me, not only because it recalled similar attempts in the past, but because it raises the whole question of the present status of British pictures in relation to those from Hollywood. It may not be very generally realised that the British Quota system is still operating-that much-discussed piece of legislation which ensures that at least one film in five seen by New Zealanders originates outside Hollywood, and under which American distributors must find some room on British screens for British pictures. In the long run, the Quota has probably saved the British film industry from extinction, but not before it had almost succeeded in ruining it. For, of course, by its very existence the Quota implies. that; if left to itself, Hollywood would capture the whole Englishspeaking screen; and when the Quota first came into force, this would almost certainly soon have happened, for the British industry was then in a very bad

way, quite unable to compete on equal terms with the giant studios of America. * * * HIS new move in Australia to operate a chain of exclusively British theatres may be more successful now than previously, partly as a reaction against American influence, partly because the war has increased patriotic sentiment towards Britain, but largely because British films, though still made under Quota, must now cost at least £10,000 to produce. But an even more salutary form of birth-control operating against inferior British films than the minimum expenditure clause in the Films Act has been the war itself. Shortage of manpower and materials, and other restrictions, have meant a reduction in the number of individual British studios and some pooling of available resources-in brief, fewer and better pictures. Those are the material aspects: but I think the war has also had some spiritual effect. on the quality of British films. It is, probably, no accident that the best films of this war have been those produced in a country which much more than America, has felt the effects of it. The war has been a little too close to be treated by British producers entirely as a glamorous adventure, and the British picturegoing public is rather less ready to put up with shams than it used to be. Fairies cannot survive at the bottom of anybody’s garden alo with an airraid shelter. Hollywood) on the other hand, is still pursuing a policy of isolationism towards the true nature of the war. So we have had from wartime Britain such an outstanding war picture as In Which We Serve, and such relatively good ones as Next of Kin, Salute John Citizen, The Foreman Went to France, and (apart from its technical inaccuracies) The First of the Few. Nor has the British industry in the past four years been wholly obsessed with the war atmosphere. It has taken time off to entertain us with the wholly delightful comedy of Quiet Wedding and the wit of Major Barbara; and-perhaps most notable of all-it has given us that excellent social document Love on the Dole. There may be others I have overlooked, but as it stands that is not a bad record. I doubt if Hollywood can equal it, " * " JN spite of all the foregoing, however, the chief difference between the average British and American film is still the sound of the players’ voices, Notwithstanding the progress of British pictures and the fact that they are now holding their own (in this country and elsewhere) against the Americans, in every essential particular they closely follow the Hollywood pattern. Apart from accent, the most noticeable superficial distinction is the humour, and here I doubt if the comparison has always been in favour of the British product. In my opinion, bawdy buffoonery of the Mae West variety or the (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) slick wise-cracking of the average Hollywood comedy is often more honest and healthier than the sniggering suggestiveness and covert sexiness, derived from pseudo-Continental models, of so many British farces, particularly those of the Tom Walls era. There is another angle of comparison. Although the movies have shown us a distorted view of American society, they have at least shown us a good deal of America. There cannot be many places in the States which script-writers have not at one time or another used as settings for stories. We have probably been into more. parts of New York and Chicago via the cinema, than we would have visited if we lived there; we know what farms in the Middle West look like; we know some spots in Washington as well as we know the centre of Wellington; we have travelled from Massachusetts to Montana, from Louisiana to Arizona. And from time to time, in films like Our Town, Dead End, and’A Man to. Remember, we really. have learnt. something about how Americans live in those places. British films have never done that for Britain, certainly not to the same extent. London-yes, we’d probably know our way round Scotland Yard, St. Paul’s, Trafalgar Square, and we'd recognise 10 Downing Street if we passed it: those places are as familiar to us by sight as almost any place in New Zealand. Now and then we’ve béen taken to Oxford or Bath, while innumerable travelogues and "featurettes" and rather fewer fulllength films have drawn our attention to the Beauties of the English Countryside and the Stately Homes of Britain: but it is a picture-postcard acquaintanceship, and just about as satisfying. How often by comparison, have we been taken into the Welsh coal-mining valleys, or into the Black Area of Lancashire, or the slums of Glasgow or London? How often have we been among the crofters of Scotland and the tin-miners of Cornwall? Only rarely, in pictures such as Owd Bob, Love on the Dole and The Stars Look Down, or in occasional documentaries of the Grierson School have we really had the feeling of having visited some of the less showy places of Britain and of having got to know something of the inhabitants. Since American films so greatly outnumber British films, it is to some extent understandable that we should have been introduced to more American. "types" than English, Scots, Welsh or Trish. It remains true, however, hat British film studios have been too nd of relying on the stock stage characters of London "bobby," Cockney, noble lord, illiterate charwoman, country gaffer, and effete parson with which to people their stories, while largely neglecting their country’s rich resources of character and scenery. On the acting side, the average British film is usually the equal, and often the superior, of its American counterpart, while on the technical side (which of. course includes photography) it is likely to be inferior. But the real point is that British films — unlike those of France, Russia, and Germany-have never developed any distinct national "style."’ They have mostly been imitators of Hollywood, seldom innovators. For this reason I feel that any new attempt to set apart theatres sacred to British films is based on an unreal distinction, and is therefore likely to fail in the long run.