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INTRODUCTIOX.
This analysis of film finance may seem in parts to touch the realms of fantasy. Its rich figures and the spectacular flutters with fortune which lie behind (hem, are, however, as near as we can make it, the truth of the matter. The story itself was published in outUne in the January number of World Film Xews and not the least ardent of its readers was the intelligence section of one of the bipger banks concerned. Within a week came the news that the lavish credits till now advanced to the film industry, were to be brought under review.
It may, therefore, be a useful moment to publish the full account from which the World Film Xews' story was taken. It is the work of the Film Council, a small research group, which a few enquiring members of the film industry set up some months ago to study the social aspects of the cinema. We felt a lack in the information trotted out, and often very ably, in the trade papers, fan magazines and film columns of the newspapers. We wanted to look behind the gossip, rumours, hunches and half-truths of Wardour Street and create for ourselves a more satisfactory body of information. We were conscious — and who in the film industry is not ? — that many of the facts which we daily encountered in our work were considered by the j oumalists too hot to touch and that aspects of the film industry of great social importance remained unstudied.
At odd corners of the field we have Mr. Rowson doing able research on cinema attendances, Mr. Bernstein looking into the tastes of his suburban audiences, and the Film Institute holding a conference on the reactions of children ; but, unlike other great industries, the film world lacks an Intelligence Department. Matters of concern to its o^ti commercial success, like the reaction of audiences in different communities and the conditions governing the market in other countries, and matters of social value like the development of the cinema outside the theatres, are more a matter of rumour than of solid knowledge.
This industry in which millions of pounds are invested and on which millions of people have come to depend for their spiritual sustenance, still operates, like any ^-illage grocery store, on rule of thumb ; and not all the thumbs are ' thumbs of gold.' Without denying the virtue of those hunches which must, in showman as in artist, press beyond calculation, this is an unsatisfactory state of affairs, which should be mended if we are to make the most of a great national opportunity.
It is the more dangerous to muddle along m an industry in which the difference between showTuanship and racketeering is often slight and may pass in the confusion unnoticed.