Focus: A Film Review (1950-1951)

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132 THE PATIENT NEEDS A BLOOD TRANSFUSION [Lyn Lockwood, the author of this topical and interesting article, is a film script-writer. He and Bernard McNabb created the script for the film : It’s Not Cricket ] The crisis which descended with startling suddenness upon the British film industry a year ago has now reached its peak. At the moment of writing, the large Denham and Pinewood studios, for the first time since they came under the control of J. Arthur Rank, have not a single picture in production between them. Furthermore, the Film Finance Corporation, brought into being to help the independent producer, has exhausted its funds without noticeably improving the situation and without being able to look forward to a profit on the majority of its various investments. This very unhealthy state of affairs cannot be attributed entirely to complicated financial set-ups or production extravagances. While it is true that a large amount of money has been lost chasing the American will-o’-the-wisp market with expensive prestige pictures, it is unfortunately equally true that a good deal of money has been lost, and is now being lost, on economical films designed primarily for the home market —films which should, with average success, have shown a profit. It is this slumping average return from box offices all over the country that is in the main responsible for the present production stagnation and that has led to the demand for a remission of entertainment-tax to the producer. Two 3'ears ago, when the industry was expanding to meet the 40 per cent quota, the film designed for the home market was being produced on a budget round about £100,000. So marked, how ever, has been the downward spiral of receipts that producers are now trying to make pictures of international class on the same figure of £100,000, while more modest productions are being budgeted at £60,000. This decline in returns from the cinema means only one thing— lack of interest on the part of the public. And here we approach the core of the present problem. An industry, in order to survive, has to maintain a continual flow of new blood, new ideas and fresh experiments. This is particularly true where the commodity being produced is entertainment, but on examination we find that the British film industry is, of all industries, the least inclined to experiment with new ideas and new blood. It is a regrettable fact that anybody with ambitions for a film career has to overcome, in this country, a slough of apathy that would daunt anyone without the constitution of a rhinoceros. Occasionally a new star is born — but only very occasionally and then probably by accident. In the last five years the British studios have produced one young woman with genuine star qualities in Jean Simmons. There are, of course, a number of starlets, but these, though the are able to look decorative at the bedside of that very sick man, the British film industry, are hardly likely to revive the patient. In the same period three star men have heen launched on film careers — Richard Todd, Michael Denison and Trevor Howard. In fact, since produc