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THE BRITISH FILM
studios would have stood with it and would have acted independently of the dialogue innovation. If one company had been content with small profits and a gradual increase of its output, developing its knowledge of the silent film, there would have been some tendency, some initiative, some independence in the British cinema of whch to write. As it was, the studios tried to transform their inadequate knowledge of film-making into ' the new technique ', and continued with their slavish imitation of the American cinema.
The importation of foreign talent did not have the same influence in British studios as it did at an earlier date in Hollywood. It will be remembered that the work of Lubitsch, Murnau, Pommer, and Seastrom had serious effect on the minds of the younger school of American directors. But in Britain, Arthur Robison, E. A. Dupont, and Henrik Galeen, three directors of talent, have had no effect on the Elstree school. On the contrary, their ideas were totally misunderstood and unappreciated in our studios. Foreign directors failed to discover in Britain the collectivism and team-work so vital to film production. They were unable to understand our idea of picture-sense and we were at a loss to interpret their filmic outlook. {E.g. Robison's The Informer and Galeen's After the Verdict; yet these directors had earlier been responsible for Warning Shadows, Manon Lescaut and The Student of Prague. The conclusion to be drawn is obvious.) Dupont alone attained to some measure of success in Piccadily, but only because he employed a German cameraman and architect.1 The importation of foreign talent was due to the eternal craze for a picture of international appeal. Producers were convinced that the inclusion of a foreign star would give a film an instant attraction in other countries. For this reason, Lya de Putti, Lars Hanson, Hans von Schlettow, Anna May Wong, Olga Tschechowa,
1 Werner Brandes and Alfred Junge; the latter subsequently made his home in England and created some of the best sets of the renaissance of British films. (E.g. The Canterbury Tale, Colonel Blimp, A Matter of Life and Death, etc.)
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