The Cine Technician (1953-1956)

June 1956 CINE TECHNICIAN 89 film story. There was a wild scramble to repeat the success of Henry VIII; but many producers — and more investors — learned that the popularity of that film did not depend on costumes alone. Even Korda found it difficult. With Douglas Fairbanks he made The Private Life of Don Juan. When it was shown he said : " When London Films make a flop they make a big one ". Talents Emerge Out of this topsy-turvy period, however, there did emerge a number of unmistakable talents. Carol Reed made Laburnum Grove, Robert Stevenson Tudor Rose, and Michael Powell The Edge of the World. In another sense Turn of the Tide was to have a significance in the film world far beyond its importance as a film. But too many films — 212 in 1936 alone — were being produced for stability. Too many of them were failures in every sense of the word. And so the first boom ended. Wartime Achievement Paradoxically the war gave British cinema its period of maximum achievement. Its impetus gave a new urgency to the themes and treatment of British films. When, after the first disruption, filmmaking was resumed, the directors found that the old stuff of peacetime movie had little meaning for audiences in the midst of threat and privation. The documentary directors found the answer by taking their stories from the drama around them : Squadron 992, London Can Take It, Target for Tonight; and the feature-film directors followed with One of Our Aircraft is Missing, Next of Kin, In Which. We Serve. There was a merging' ofTTIF documentary style with its insistence on realism and the story film, concerned with people. As Dilys Powell has written, " It took a war to compel the British to look at themselves and find themselves interesting ". Receptive Audiences When we emerged from the war British films were in a strong position, in both the creative and the commercial sense. It had been demonstrated that British audiences were receptive to the imaginative interpretation of everyday life. It had been demonstrated also that films which achieved this interpretation were popular overseas. In the post-war period these concepts have not at all points been preserved. But they have not been discarded and British films have the individual and distinctive style of which they were once innocent. Ealing A major contribution to this individuality has been Ealing with its satirical comedies and socially conscious dramas. Will those virtues survive at their full strength now that Ealing is working in collaboration with an American company? The first films made under the new regime will indicate the continuing strength of the Ealing tradition. Economically the post-war period has not been free of crisis. The major one was in the spring of 1949 when sixteen out of twentyseven British film studios were idle and twenty per cent of the industry's 8,000 workers were out of a job. Arguments begun then about a fairer distribution of the revenue obtained at the box-office, continue unabated, especially in relation to the amount which goes to the Treasury in the form of Entertainment Tax. The existence of the National Film Finance Corporation and the British Film Production Fund is a recognition of the financial problems the industry faces. Not many, I imagine, would sug gest that they are the ideal solution. Looking Forward The opportunity of looking back on a jubilee occasion also gives the privilege of looking forward. I would like to see British films get a little closer to everyday life in this country. J. B. Priestley once brought the charge that " Most of our films lack authenticity and richness of background. They suggest not ordinary English life but a kind of musical comedy and light farce world, made up of stage sets and character actors." That charge is still to a large extent justified. The quality of authenticity carried over from the war years has dwindled. It has survived in the films made today on war themes; but the producers have been reluctant to apply it to peace-time stories. Television and radio can make drama acceptable to a huge audience out of the everyday lives of the Groves and the Dales. Is there no lesson for our film-makers in this? Could they not make more films which would not depart far from ordinary life and yet would make us laugh and cry and wonder, so that we would go out and see our own country with fresh eyes? CINE QUIZ DO YOU KNOW 1. WHO THEY ARE ? 3. WHO PRODUCED IT? 2. IN WHAT PICTURE ? 4. WHO WAS THE PHOTOGRAPHER ? (Answers on page 95)