Motion Picture News (Nov-Dec 1925)

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2124 Motion Picture News Compulsion Not the Answer (Continued from page 2121) pictures offered to the market). The American bill contains, in all probability, personalities whose names are household words in our homes ; the British bill presents utter strangers. Laying aside all points, but saying that the theatre advertising is equal in each case — which bill will attract the public? And if the British bill loses money, who is to pay the loss? It would seem to us that the British picture — as it stands today — will have to receive a subsidy from this market. Let us also, in fairness, consider Mr. Nathanson's predicament. We know, first hand, that Canada today is far from being a country of easy motion picture profits. A land of great distances and sparse settlement, distribution is highly expensive there. Censorship is bad. Local ordinances are restrictive. Theatre attendance is low per capita. But, without this information, the recent balance sheet of the Famous Players Canadian Corporation indicates clearly enough to us that only through the benefits of circuit management does this group of theatres pay at all. Would The Kinematograph suggest to Mr. Nathanson that he undertake the marketing to his public of a new line of untried goods to the end of fostering British production? If so, how should he go about it and still pay dividends on his capitalization? American theatres and British theatres alike must buy pictures which the public wants. Otherwise they will go out of business. If goods are forced under compulsion upon the motion picture public — anywhere, in Great Britain, France, Germany, America — the whole motion picture industry will go out of business. There is no royal road to profits in any business under the sun. To short cut economic processes, to substitute compulsion for the natural give and take of supply and demand is to invite disaster. This is beyond argument. We do not argue here against "compulsion" simply because the American trade does not want it, or fears it, etc. Nor are we at all blind to the fact that the American manufacturer leans heavily today on the foreign market, has geared his cost up to it, and must have its income. We are opposed to "compulsion" because it is utterly uneconomic. It invites disaster to the whole trade. It takes no cognizance of public demand and therefore of the exhibitor's interests, British and . American exhibitors alike. It is highly desirable, and obviously so, that reciprocal film relations between Europe and America be brought about — desirable in the interests of the European trade and the American trade, and in the interests of the motion picture and its continuing hold upon the public fancy. But the fundamental remedies must be economic ones. They involve capital, manufacturing ingenuity, market knowledge, sales, advertising — all the essentials of modern business progress, and development. Britain Must Face Facts, Rowland Declares By WILLIAM A. JOHNSTON (Continued from precceding page) "So there you are. The thing to do is to look the facts squarely in the face. If the public everywhere prefers American pictures, then the thing to do is to give the public the kind of goods it is buying. And to do that the thing to do is to stand up head and shoulders with American producing resources. Just so much as any foreign producer fails to do that, just so much will the public fail to respond to his efforts as against the American made picture. "The British public would much rather have British pictures. But when people go seeking amusement they follow their whims, not their flag. They always will. The amusement business isn't a matter of patriotism, nor of theory. It is a plain matter of giving the people what they evidently want. If the public anywhere wants American pictures they will go to see them or else quit going. So I simply say give them the quality of entertainment— all of it, which the American producer provides."