Minutes of evidence taken before the Departmental Committee on Cinematograph Films (1936)

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE 101 23 June, 1936.] Mr. D. E. Griffiths, Mr. S. Eckmax. Mr. J. C. Graham, Mr. J. Maxwell and Mr. F. Hill. [Continued. quota pictures cannot be distributed abroad, they are not good enough. If we could make fewer pictures and spend more money on them we should give those pictures the benefit of our world organisation in distribution. Whether that would be of any benefit or not to the British Empire it is not for me to say, but I think it would, and the pictures that are made now never get outside the country. 993. Yes, your argument that the producer would be injured by a larger output of good British pictures would rather depend on the price. If the exhibitor pays more for a good picture than he does for a bad picture the producer wall get it back? — Not quite — that is hardly the criterion. The point is that there are only so many play-dates available in the country. There are a certain number of theatres, and each theatre has got 52 play-dates if it has a weekly programme, or 104 play-dates if it changes its programme mid-week. If there are an extra hundred or so pictures thrown on the market which are going to compete with us, i.e., if they are good marketable pictures instead of " quickies " as hitherto, then there is going to be double the competition that there has been in the past for the available play-dates. The exhibitor pays for a picture a percentage of his Box Office takings, and if you get the play-dates the money comes, but if you do not get the play-dates you cannot get the money. 994. (Chairman) : Thank you. 995. (The Hon. Eleanor Plumer) : In your first memorandum your recommendation really amounts to this, a reduction in renters' quota? — Yes. 996. What would happen if there were no renters' quota? — Well, speaking from the producers' point of view, and from the Renters' Society point of view, we would have no objection. 997. No, I do not imagine you would? — Some British producers would, but in my own case I would not mind for we can use all our studio space for our own productions. Probably the deputation you had from the F.B.I, would, because they are mostly people who have got studios to let, and they want to let them and if possible get compulsory tenants by statutory necessity. Your real trouble would come from the exhibitors, who would squeal. They would say, " You are putting a burden on us, and you have taken no definite steps to ensure that we shall be able to carry out the burden you have imposed on us," and probably they would argue further that in a court of law a contract that was impossible of performance was not enforced, and that an even higher duty rested on the legislature to see that a burden is not imposed which is incapable of being carried out. 998. So that you think really, in equity, the two go together? — I am afraid, much as I should Kke to, I cannot see any other answer to that question. It was considered very carefully by the Trade with Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister in 1927, when we were considering the framework of the Act, and that was the basis of the discussion then. 999. And your experience of the working of the Act would bear that out? — -Undoubtedly, that is part of the complaint now, that 50 per cent, of the pictures that are available to-day are so bad that they cannot use them. In other words they say, " The law is a dead letter; the law has put the burden on us, but the machinery it created to deliver the goods to us is not working, it is delivering goods which we cannot use." (Mr. Graham) : My point was that the law put that burden on the foreigner only, so whatever your law is you have a duplication. You have got the situation that the foreigner was first making pictures, and the British producer looks round and sees something in this business and goes into it of his own volition and makes pictures. and you do not put him under the law, you cannot require anything from him, but you have to require only from the foreigner, so you get a duplication. 1000. Yes, I see your point. Then in paragraph (&) you say, assuming " that this modified number of pictures are produced under conditions as to cost and otherwise that will ensure their being effective " : well, we have been discussing the question of cost, but what conditions and safeguards come under "otherwise"? — (Mr. Maxwell): I am afraid it is a terminological exuberance. 1001. I rather thought so. Then turning to your a i -nit nt of evidence, Mr. Maxwell, you speak in paragraph 5 of the second memorandum about the inadequate supply of skilled personnel? — Yes. 1002. That is a real difficulty? — It is very serious. That is the creative talent that precedes the actual " shooting," that is the photographing of the picture in the studio. The people we want for that are. first of all, a producer, the man who organises the details of the production, approves of the story, gets the scenario prepared, etc. We also want a director, or even before the director we want scenario writers. That is our biggest difficulty in this country, to get people who can write scenarios, bearing in mind that until 1927 there was little occupation for such people, and therefore assuming no occupation they do not exist, and they did not exist, and we have had to find and train them, and we have had to go slowly on account of that. I know, I speak from experience, because I have been working on production in this country since 1927, and keeping up a large annual output of pictures. We have had to go along slowly, and we find it difficult to get a supply of personnel, writers particularly, who can write for the screen. It is no use telling me, " Mr. So-and-so is a playwright ", or " Mr. So-and-so is an author " ; that does not meet the problem. He must have the peculiar talent of being able to tell stories in terms of pictures on a screen, to make drama in the terms of pictures, not to make drama in terms of words. Good directors who can take the scenario and dramatise it on the floor with actors, are also difficult to get. We have a number, but not a sufficient number. Of all those who are tried out some have succeeded and are working to-day, others have been scrapped to go back to where they were before, and it is a matter of trial and error, but we have not got sufficient of them. Even in Hollywood wTith their experience of thirty years that is still their major problem, to get the people who can create things for the screen, the writers, the producers, and the directors, and in a minor degree the actors, but we have usually plenty of actors. 1003. I see in your memorandum you do not mention any question of shorts at all. We have had a good deal of evidence about that? — No, we, of course, are mainly concerned with feature length pictures. Shorts, as you probably know, have not been of much moment in this country, although I can speak personally with some knowledge of shorts. I put it this way, that we have been the whole time devoted to trying to solve the major problem of making feature pictures, which are the most important things for the maintenance of the theatres and the most likely to yield your money back. I have some knowledge of shorts because I took over a company, the British Instructional, that had been making these for years and was financially a failure. For a year or two after we took it over we continued to make shorts, all these Secrets of Nature about the " Love-life of a beetle " and that sort of stuff, but we found we lost money on them, the general public unfortunately did not seem to be interested or got tired of them, and we had to give it up. 1001. Would ili.it be partly due to the development of the two-feature programme? — Yes, we found in tho silent picture days when the two-feature programme was not so common then' was a distinct niche which the shorts filled, but the two-feature programme had a definite effect in leaving very little room for anything else in the programme except the news reel.