Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1950)

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Picture* Cant St £*14 like Canned fyefa Individualized Showmanship Ti HESE tough times are giving the alibi merchants of the motion picture industry a field day. The wise-guys, the carpers and the calamity janes in all branches of our business have taken over, almost drowning out voices of the men with vision and courage. They blame everyone and everything but themselves for the boxoffice slump: television, the Korean crisis, shortage of cash, bad movies, shrinkage of overseas markets, and President Truman. They argue, debate, discuss, parley, abuse and sue. And what does all this claptrap accomplish? Nothing. To paraphrase an eminent Britisher: Never have so many talked so much to so little purpose. Happily, however, in contrast to the do-nothing attitude of these phophets of doom, one encounters occasionally the thinking, clear-eyed movie man who asks intelligent questions and gives intelligent anwers. While admitting that present conditions are bad, he points out that some factors are highly promising. Television, he may tell you, has quickened the demand for visual entertainment, and video can never hope to match the film theatre in what it offers. Korea should have heightened the people's desire for escape from the ugly realities of life, in his opinion. And whatever the theorists might say about the mounting cost of living and the installment debt, he will probably point out that private and public spending has never been higher. What, then, is wrong with the industry? Since he has obviously probed for " the correct answers, you can believe him when he says: "Nothing, fortunately, that can't be corrected by a little straight thinking, a little plain talking, and a lot of imagination and human energy. We have to individualize our exploitation of movies." America Growing Up Speak to the foreign observer and you will hear the view that the most astonishing feature of American life is the almost frightening speed with which the people are emerging from ado^scence and suming the responsibilities of adult nationhood. There has never been anything like it before — anywhere. It is the phenomenon of the century. In communities where pig-feed, shell-grit and the price of pumpkins were the dominant themes of conversation ten years ago, they talk now of Stalinism, inflation, democracy. They can tell you who Tito is, what the United Nations stands for (or against). A decade ago they'd have thought the Iron Curtain was the wire-netting 'round the chicken-run. '"two world wars in one generation, and the looming of a third, have made world citizens of the Americans. To satisfy their ever-increasing appetite for knowledge, culture and education, they buy prodigious numbers of magazines like Reader's Digest", "Time", "Life", "Quick". They join book clubs, listen to "Town Meeting of the Air". They are By LEONARD COULTER Cxctu^e BULLETIN feature 'EVE' & 'CYRANO' Demand Spet ialized Showmanship desperately eager to equip themselves for the new role in which fate has cast their country. They are growing up in a great hurry. The motion picture industry, in its approach to the problem of selling films, has not kept pace with this dramatic transformation. It is not capitalizing the public's thirst for knowledge and enlightenment. The distributor and exhibitor evaluate a film's boxoffice chances on the basis of previous experience with similar pictures. They assume that if they use the old tried and trusted selling techniques, the movie which made money yesterday will make it again today. When they discover that, in fact, it doesn't, they go searching for an alibi and end up with some idle panacea like the one that Hollywood should henceforth use color exclusively. TV Not Satisfactory Substitute To be candid, the impulse which used to send people to the cinema is no longer effective as it used to be. If the motion picture existed purely as a vehicle of entertainment, we might as well put up the shutters and go looking for jobs in TV. Eut the film is more than that. It is a great educational force, a propaganda weapon of colossal influence (else why should dictators ban U. S. pictures?) a perennial source of social enlightenment and cultural intercourse. The gayest musical, the lightest comedy, can contribute equally well with the drama to the publics eagerness to be "in the swim". If it were not so, the legitimate theater would have succumbed years ago. It is very doubtful whether people find television a satisfactory substitute for the cinema or the theatre. They merely accept it as the next best thing and acceptance is made easier by the fact that video is as "handy" as tap water. Yet the motion picture industry, largely ignoring the trends of our times in its selling methods, continues to promote and publicize films in the old-fashioned, mass-distribution way. Much as it hurts to say so, let's admit that too many moviegoers have come to regard motion pictures as lacking intellectual qualities. They don't take them seriously, on the whole. Audiences can be — and are — moved emotionally. But theii minds have become conditioned to attending a theater, not as a center of interest, but as a place of entertainment pure (we hope) and simple. That being so, what chance of doing the business they deserve have such pictures as "All About Eve," "Cyrano de Bergerac" and other so-called "intelligent" films? None ,ii all as long as the public, the distributor and the exhibitor approach them from the same intellectual viewpoint as they would Abbott & Costello or Gene Autry. "Nonsense," says the booker. "I know my own business best. What would be the good of showing a picture like 'Cyrano' in a mining district? Why, they couldn't even pronounce the title." i C.nntin nctl on I'ape 24* b'EC EMBER 18 19 5 0