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THE FILM SINCE THEN
one thing wrong with them. So many of them simply were not films in the sense that American audiences understood films. Most of them, commendably, centred round themes. But the theme was either ' implied ' or stated in the dialogue, which was incomprehensible, or failed to materialise at all. Never by any chance was it built into the film as an essential part of the structure. Trade critics in the United States, puzzling to find the basic defect which we all sensed in British films at the time, characterised it as ' lack of continuity \ Climaxes, both of sequences and of a film as a whole, were elided. The major events always seemed to take place ' off screen \ That this technique, if such it could be called, was in direct opposition to all established cinematic method need not be emphasised. But its glaring inadequacy was pointed up in the United States by the fact that, for the distribution and exhibition reasons given above, British films were shown to the basic, the primitive cinema audience — children and very simple people, to whom the Western, the melodrama, and the slapstick comedy of Hollywood were the long accepted forms of entertainment. How could the products of the Denham rose-garden be expected to flourish?
I detail all this some twelve years later because it may have certain bearing on the present position of British films in the world market, an aim which seems to fascinate most British producers. As is well-known, the abrupt collapse of City-financed, mushroom-growthed British production took place in 1937, and for the remainder of the years of uneasy peace there was little film activity which added up to anything. Wrote the Association of Cine-Technicians : ' The collapse of the film production boom of 1937 has had far-reaching consequences. For thousands of technicians, electricians, carpenters, plasterers, make-up men, writers, actors and directors it was disastrous. The responsibility for the muddle, mismanagement and inefficiency was not theirs, but they were the first to suffer. Months of unemployment were to follow. Savings slowly disappeared, cars, houses and other personal possessions had to be sold
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