The film till now : a survey of world cinema (1960)

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THE BRITISH FILM the already mentioned Gaumont-British film, High Treason, which was made by a director with over fifty productions to his credit. It is not, moreover, as if British studios were insufficiently equipped or inadequately staffed. On the contrary, the technical resources of Elstree, Welwyn, Islington, and Walthamstow are as good as, if not better than, those of almost any other country in Europe, a point upon which every foreign visitor will agree. The trouble lies in the way in which these excellent resources are employed. A good film and a bad film pass through the same technical process. The amount of good and the amount of bad in each depends upon the minds which control the instruments. It need scarcely be reiterated that Britain is the most fertile country imaginable for pure filmic material. Our railways, our industries, our towns, and our countryside are waiting for incorporation into narrative films. The wealth of material is immense. When recently visiting this country, S. M. Eisenstein expressed his astonishment at the almost complete neglect by British film directors of the wonderful material that lay untouched. Why advantage had not been taken of these natural resources was exceptionally difficult to explain to a visitor. Oxford, Cambridge, Liverpool, Shrewsbury, Exeter, the mountains of Wales and the highlands of Scotland are all admirable for filmic environment. Nothing of any value has yet been made of London, probably the richest city in the world for cinematic treatment. Grierson alone has produced the fine documentary film of the herring fleet, the epic Drifters. This film, good as it was, is but a suggestion of that which waits to be accomplished. But what British company is willing to realise these things? British International Pictures, it is true, have made The Flying Scotsman under the direction of Castleton Knight, but what of it? Anthony Asquith made Underground, but became lost in the Victorian conception of a lift-boy, in place of the soul of London's greatest organisation. Instead, our studios give forth Variety, Splinters, The Co-optimists, 315