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BEFORE THE STORM 49I
Justice. The Film Board was to "heighten the standards of the industry by giving advice to the newly instituted Film Central, which was to obtain and distribute films of educational value." Finally, "a heavy impost" was to be "laid upon all exhibitors showing a net profit of over $2,200 a year"! Presumably, the bill originated in an effort to keep large trusts, especially foreign ones, out of the business. It actually paved the way for the destruction of private initiative. I have quoted from it to highlight the complete contrast with our own system. Since there were only 358 Danish theatres at the time, our American companies considered that it was easier to write them off than to struggle against such obstacles.
In France, the left-wing Cinema Workers Syndicate, seeking a nationalization of the industry, proposed the making of 450 pictures, although the 120 then being made annually were scarcely recovering their cost. A Paris report stated: "It is obvious that the French trade unions would like to make the French cinema a means of propaganda, as already done in Russia."
As German attendance slumped badly in 1938, it was suggested there that more extensive promotion be undertaken to encourage film attendance during the summer months. At the same time, the German Film Chamber was reporting that the public preferred non-German films and that the three longest runs went to two American and one French film. The revival hoped for with government control failed to appear. And it was bluntly reported in a New York Times story that "since the Nazi Government came to power, there has been virtually no foreign demand for German films."
Italy was making a determined effort to become a leading European producer. In one of these years she spent $5,000,000 in the production of 38 features, which was an average cost of $131,580— about like our Class-B pictures. But Italy's annual requirement was nearly 300 pictures; and more than 75 per cent of the 245 films imported were from our studios!
In Mexico, two congressmen proposed "strict prohibition of the importation and exhibition of any picture in English or other foreign language" as a means of compelling alien producers to enter Mexico on a large scale and employ Mexican players and technicians.
More startling reports reached us from Russia. Early in 1938, Stalin's "purge" apparently reached the state-owned motion picture industry. Moscow newspapers reported that the general director, Boris Z. Shumiatsky, was condemned for allegedly permitting a steep decline in production of Russian pictures. Nor did the Soviet cinema apparently do any better as a business enterprise than as a means of popular entertainment. Early in 1938 a New York Times correspondent, Harold Denny, cabled: "The Soviet cinema has been a heavy drain on the