The Cine Technician (1953-1956)

88 CINE TECHNICIAN June 1956 YEARS OF CONSTANT STRUGGLE Forsyth Hardy Takes A BACKWARD GLANCE JDACKWARD-looking glances are J-* in fashion. The cinema is celebrating its diamond jubilee : film progress over sixty years is being plotted, traditions are being surveyed, memories of the early years are being stirred. These are innocent enough pastimes and no great harm can come of them. They may even provide the occasion for a little justifiable preening. My own film memories scarcely reach back to that first performance in the Regent Street Polytechnic. When I began writing recent and who can say round which corner the next will be met? The basic problem, which scarcely needs elaboration here, is the inability of British films, which must compete with American films in Britain, to compete successfully with them overseas, and particularly in America itself. This is an over-simplification; but I think it gets to the root of the matter. When I first started writing about films, the products of British studios were decidedly unpopular in the cinemas. I recall an exhibi DANCE PRETTY LADY Directed bj Anthony rVsquith about films The Singing Fool had just arrived and the first era of film-making was ending. 1 cannot, therefore, comment at first hand on the full sixty years of British films : the reference books, the jubilee editions, and the reminiscences of the surviving veterans are there to cover the earlier period. Booms and Depressions My predominant impression of British film-making over some thirty years is of a continuous struggle, with booms and depressions at irregular intervals. We are at the moment in a period of comparative calm; but the last film crisis is still comparatively tor who told me that he always carefully obliterated any reference to a British film's origin from stills he proposed to show outside his cinema. In 1928 cinemas were showing only 5 per cent British films and the films shown were seldom among "the biggest moneymakers of the year". In this at least there has been a complete transformation. For those who remember the minimal support given to British films some thirty years ago there must be a sense of satisfaction in seeing queues for Tin Dam Busters and A Town Lifc< Alice and in noting that whenever an exhibitor has been having a lean time he can grow fat again with a revival of <:> n< i it n or Doctor in the House. It was not always so! In the late 'twenties British International Pictures at Elstree was the main source of British films. I remember visiting Alfred Hitchcock shortly after he had made Blackmail. He was full of his plans for that odd misfire of a film Rich and Strange, and for others I seemed to recognise in those made during the 'thirties. In the grounds of the studio were discarded props for Atlantic, one of the most ambitious films attempted by BIP and a half-success only because of limited resources. Elsewhere Anthony Asquith was making Dance, Pretty Lady from Compton Mackenzie's novel, a film which gave an early demonstration of his skill and sensitivity as a director. Difficult Years Film-making, however, scarcely flourished at Elstree during these difficult years when films of the box-office power of The Broachcmi Melody, Rio Rita. All Quirt on th Western Front. The Big House and Hell's Angels were reaching the cinemas from Hollywood. The big British effort came at last with the opening of Shepherds Bush studios by Gaumont-British and the launching of London Film Productions and Denham Studios by Alexander Korda. I have vivid memories of the making of both Rome Express and The Private Life of Henry VIII. The first launched a film-making effort which, if it did not reach the heights, produced a flow of entertaining films which became almost as popular as the equivalent films from Hollywood and sometimes much more. It was a period which produced Hitchcock's The ThirtyNine Steps and Tin Man Who Knew Too Much and Robert Flaherty's Man of Aran, as well as the comedies with Jack Hulbert and Cicely Courtneidge. Korda's film was much more revolutionary in its impact. Its world-wide success and fabulous profit (it would be interesting to have an up-to-date figure I created the first boom in British filmmaking. This was indeed a rich and strange chapter in the British