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IX
THE BRITISH FILM
The British film is established upon a hollow foundation. Perhaps it would be more significant to write that it rests upon a structure of false prestige, supported by the flatulent flapdoodle of newspaper writers and by the indifferent goodwill of the British people; inasmuch that a film emanating from the studios of this country to-day is at once enshrouded in a blaze of patriotic glamour by the public, who actually feel that the product (with one or two notable exceptions) is unworthy of its esteem.
The whole morale of the modern British cinema is extravagantly artificial. It has been built up by favoured criticism and tolerance of attitude. If a few critics had consistently written the bitter truth about the British film, if they had criticised it ruthlessly and stringently according to its deserts, I am convinced that this country would have revealed at least half-a-dozen thoroughly capable, intelligent film directors and a group of perspicacious, courageous producers. Well-merited castigation would have laid bare, and therefore more easily remedied, the root of the evil. Instead, there have been British Film Weeks and National Film Campaigns which have nourished the cancer in the industry. As it is, the British film is spoon-fed by deceptive praise and quota regulations, with the unhappy result that it has not yet discovered its nationality.
The British film has never been self-sufficient, in that it has never achieved its independence. Leon Moussinac writes : ' L'Angleterre n'a jamais prodnit un vrai film anglais V a remark that is miserably true. The British film lacks honest conception. It has no other aim than that of the imitation of the cinema of other countries. For its obscure source it goes first to the American, and secondly, but 1 Pcmoramique du Cinema, Leon Moussinac, 1929.
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