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44 CELLULOID
them joined the film industry because they were particularly interested in films. Most of them were glad to get a job which was comparatively straightforward, well-paid, and required a minimum of intellectual effort. Most of them had positively no idea of creative ability or what it might mean, and absolutely no judgment of entertainment. Their sole asset was a flair for copying and America was the obvious pattern in front of their eyes.
Those men, once commercial travellers and showmen, now occupy positions of considerable authority in the studio side of the industry. It is in their power to employ the talent out of which British films are made; but it is a matter of common knowledge that they have not the ability to do so. It has never been their job. For the most part, these men who compose our studio-executives, aping the American methods of control, are unable to distinguish a good film from a bad one. The conditions under which the majority of British films are produced to-day are intolerable to any serious-minded person. Still more important, no individual with the sort of intelligence and energy so urgently wanted in the film trade will now accept a post in the British film industry. Instead they are turning elsewhere : the actors and actresses to America, the technicians to the Continent. Why was the first offer of the Dunning Process1 turned down and its
1 A trick photographic device by means of which shots taken separately of two different scenes may be so blended together as to defy detection except by an expert eye. Instances may be observed in the street scenes of Unfaithful and The Street of Chance, the motor-boat chase in Min and Bill, and the more " daring " scenes in Trader Horn.