International photographer (Jan-Dec 1934)

Eight -ni T h INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER April, 1934 WHY AMERICAN PICTURES LEAD IN BRITAIN By Alfred C. Moore, Journalist [In the February "International Photographer" Alfred C. Moore described some of the reasons which account for the popularity of American motion pictures in the United Kingdom. In this second article he explains some social considerations which tend to favor the appeal of American pictures to British movie patrons. — Editor's Note] ^MIT is a proud boast in England among clergymen y| S'V'j of the Establishment, doctors, lawyers, active llilSil aiu' rctn'ed officers of the Services and the rest r*aV..«2SJ of the upper middle class that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton College, Windsor — which in this instance is symbolical of the playing fields of the "public" schools throughout the kingdom. So that this statement may be properly understood by Americans, it must be explained that in England a "public" school is a more or less exclusive kind of private school. This contradiction in terms has its origin back in a past century and, since it is not material to this article, we will let it pass. The upper middle class forms, numerically, but a small proportion of the population of the British Isles. Stodgy tradition is dear to their hearts. Most of them believe that Brittania still rules the waves and that the United States is a lost colony. These people are untouched by the vulgar virility of the New World. Everything American and anything savouring of Americanism is "not quite nice" — even barbaric and repulsive. They rarely enter a motion picture theatre, and, when they do, they choose one of those pale blue British-made picturized stage plays in which the actors and actresses (yes, actors and actresses) pronounce last year "lahst ye-ah" and do that as if it hurt them. A few of the upper middle class who are not so upper might condescend to view a "Dinner at Eight" or a "Guardsman" and criticize it afterwards. They would probably have Mae West listed in their precinct as Public Enemy Number One, and there's only one way you'd get them into a "cinema" where her pictures are billed ; you'd have to chloroform them! At the top of the social ladder, up above the heads of the upper middle class, is the blue-blooded aristocracy and nobility — cultured, travelled people who live in a rarefied atmosphere of feudal castles, baronial halls and manor houses. Many a scion of these elect probably goes for Miss West in as big a way as the American college boy does, but he wouldn't tell his ma ! Way down far below the social registerites and the middle classites live "the people", numbering more than three-fourths of Britain's population. These millions who work in factories, mines, shops, offices and on the land form the great motion picture going public of these Islands. They know life in all its stark reality. They have to. To them, Mayfair and manor houses are just names — places inhabited by beings alien to them in speech, thought and social habits. As yet but incoherently expressed, the ideals of true social democracy are shaping in their minds. Today, many of them hear in the painfully-pronounced broad "a" a challenge to the achievement of these ideals. When they seek brief respite from the dreary monotony of their drab existence, where do we find large numbers of them? Lining up outside motion picture theatres paying their sixpenses or their shillings at the box office to live a couple of hours with real folks who graphically portrav, for their distraction, the primitive emotions of mankind — lose, hate, joy, sorrow, jealousy, friendship, greed, generosity, fear and courage ; who speak with an accent and intonation foreign to the watching hearers in the darkened auditorium, but far less foreign — far more real in human appeal — than the throaty, affected accent of Oxford University and Mayfair. In short, "regular" people — the kind, the watchers feel, that would not high hat them if they could step out of the screen into the auditorium. It matters not that the action takes place somewhere between the North Atlantic and the North Pacific, because that is merely incidental to the story. It matters not that the scrap between the boys trying to bum their way East takes place on a freight train rolling across the plains of Nevada, because the boys are in imminent peril of being knocked out of the car on to the track and killed. And the watchers in Nottingham, Newcastle and Glasgow are very anxious that nothing so dreadful will happen because they have seen the youngsters in their homes in a West Coast town ; have seen how the honest father of one of them was laid off at the cement works due to the depression ; how the kid, not wishing to be a burden on his family, courageously leaves the distressed home to find work some place else. And the audience in Nottingham and Newcastle and Glasgow knows just how bad you feel when you are up against stark realities like that. The audience is not deeply perturbed by the misfortunes of Sir Cyril Hawleigh's son, who is compelled to resign his membership of the Blankshire Hunt on account of the old man having lost the last chunk of his inherited fortune in the terrible Consolidated Tea stock debacle. Nor are the watchers distressed when the youth has to take a humble position on a bank clerk's stool because they are figuring it was time he got down to a job of work anyway. Moreover, they subconsciously resent the suggestion of overwhelming superiority in the youth's accent and manner when he patronizingly jokes with the doorman, because lots of them are doormen, or were, or will be, or are connected with somebody who is. And when the broke baronet's son goes off on his annual vacation with the bank manager's daughter and philanders about with her on the snows of St. Moritz, they find it just about as thrilling as a harp recital. But you can't expect British movie makers to know that because they think in terms of the upper middle class, and they are convinced that it would be sheer heresy to think any other way. No sir! British studios apparently don't know it, but the Battle of Motion Pictures, so far, has been lost on the playing fields of Eton. Ready Now ♦ ♦ ♦ $ 1 00 FRED WESTERBERQ'S CINEM ATOGR APHER'S BOOK of TABLES Please mention The International Photographer when corresponding with advertisers.