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May 1958
FILM & TV TECHNICIAN
257
gently. It was Sir Alexander Korda who said years ago that no film has ever earned its full potential from the box office. How right he was. Exhibitors continue to have this silly policy of films running for one week or three days and seldom longer because of an antiquated booking policy.
Why is it, for example, that in
As a leading projectionist said at a recent inter-union meeting, a few are quite happy to drop out reels two and seven of a supporting film in order to make sure that nothing interferes with their slavish adherence to such timetables.
Why is it that apart from the development in the sales of ice
other when one of the major circuits has an outstanding film the other circuit also has to show a real top-notcher so that, as members of the public have said to me, it is impossible to plan one's cinema going. One has to go two or three times in one week in a month and then may very well wish to skip the remaining weeks.
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the large seaside towns where the public is changing each week throughout the summer we can have plays and variety programmes running unchanged throughout the whole season, whereas the same treatment is seldom accorded to a film ?
Why is it that cheap morning matinees which were quite a feature of film exhibition in London and similar large cities before the war are no longer operated? If the answer is financial, why aren't other means sought to cater for those numerous members of the public who cannot go to the cinema in normal times because they are working?
Why is it that exhibitors slavishly stick to their routine of opening and closing times?
cream nothing has been done in recent years to help attract patrons back to the cinemas ? Why is it that, so many a parent tells me, films at school holiday times are frequently of such a character that children cannot go to them or at least have to be accompanied by adults? Surely cinemas can find out intelligently in advance what the school holidays are and plan their programmes accordingly.
Why is it too that if by reason of diabolical weather or some other special cause a film which is expected to attract the crowds has a rough time on its first time round such film seldom comes back again to catch the public which under normal circumstances it would have had? Why is it, too, that in order to compete with each
Members can, I am sure, think of many other examples of unenlightened policy of the cinema owners and the first thing they must learn if they wish to stay in business is that they must completely reorientate their ideas.
There is another point which needs airing. The National Film Finance Corporation has rendered valuable service to British Film Production and indeed without it there would be no independent production today. Now it seems to be getting in a groove. On a shortterm basis it seems to be running out of money and unless the Government acts quickly, the N.F.F.C. may not be able to finance all the worthwhile independent productions which it
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