Subsidising Films
By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT
Cinema attendances in this country have now dropped below the annual rate of 600 million, a lower level than any of the experts had expected, for it is only 35 per cent. of the peak attendance in 1946. Yet the revenues of several of the `super-colossal' films which the American companies now tend to make—in place of half a dozen of the conventional type—have exceeded anything seen at the box-office in earlier days. The conclusion is inescapable. People will now go to a cinema—the occasional `night-out' excepted—only if they can see something which the television screen cannot offer, such as the Ben-Hurs or the latest sex-tease of the Misses Monroe and Bardot, or just an enthralling story splendidly acted, like Peter Finch's Oscar Wilde.
This being the austere new basis of the film business it is pretty certain that our State film bank—the National Film Finance Corporation ---has been making things worse instead of better by accelerating the decline in cinema attendance. Undoubtedly the majority of the films which it -has' financed have tended to drive people away from the cinema. According to its last report 170 of the 292 films it has helped to finance in the eight years to 1959 were unprofitable and recovered overall only 65 per cent. of their costs before crediting the production levy. There was, happily, an improvement last year because four out of the forty-four films financed were excep- tionally profitable, but there were also substan- tial losses and the directors of the Corporation remark that 'the general run of pictures is, on average, still unprofitable.'
This is not intended to be a criticism of the film bank itself. It is doing its best in an impos- sible situation. It has only lost £4,134,000 of the taxpayers' money in eleven years. It has un- doubtedly helped to reduce production inefficien- cies, although it complains that 'unnecessary expenditure on many films still arises through extravagance and a lack of planning and efficiency' on the part of the producers. It rightly points out that films would cost less if the trade unions dropped their restrictive practices. (For example, the ACT insists on a full sound crew of engineers on location if dialogue is included, even if the words could be more economically recorded later on in the studio by post-sychron- isation.) It also makes the good point that people might go more often to the cinema if the places were modernised, made more comfortable and better ventilated, although I doubt whether it intended the full savagery of its remark : 'The surroundings in which a picture is shown can be as important as the picture itself.' The criticism 1 make is the fundamental criticism I have made before of the films Act—that the film bank as constituted is the wrong way to help British films, that to subsidise producers Tom,, Dick and Harry and turn out a mass of bad or indifferent films which drive people away from the cinemas is the reverse of what the nation really wants. If subsidise we must, then hand out fat contracts to the really good and successful producers (a panel of honest and intelligent critics could quickly pick them out), and pay the bad producers a reasonable fee not to pro- duce. It might stop a further drift to television.
There may be a moral in the sequel to the British Lion story. When this company was used by the film batik as an instrument for helping Tom, Dick and Harry, it lost the £3 million loaned to it. It is now independently managed, though still owned by the NFFC, its managers have been given some deferred equity shares as an incentive and its producers are very 'select.' For the year to March last it actually made a profit of £127,000 and Mr. Douglas Collins, the chairman, is hopeful that it will continue to keep out of the 'red.' But it is regrettable that its profits over the next few years will include instal- ments (£100,000 in all) received from FIDO (Film Industry Defence Organisation) for keep- ing seventy-five of its old films off the television screen. Those films belong to us, the taxpayers who loaned the money, and we would much prefer to see some of them rather than the modern trash being sent over from America. The two big combines, Associated British Picture Corporation and the Rank Organisation, have learned the lesson of the British Lion story. I believe that they have now cut out production losses by a much more careful selection of the successful producer. They are no longer pre- pared to subsidise the bad and inefficient. Both have turned, of course, to television. The last report of ABPC revealed that 621 per cent. of its trading profit was derived from television and Lord Rank has said that in a short time half the profits of his organisation will accrue from non-film interests. Each is trying out the conver- sion of shut-down cinemas to bowling alleys, but this seems to be an expensive pastime. Two new ten-pin bowling alleys at Birmingham and Liver- pool are costing the ABPC over £250,000. Such conversions must necessarily be slow. But as Mr. John Davis, the managing director of the Rank Organisation, said recently in an article, the film industry must go on rationalising itself by closing down redundant cinemas: perhaps less than half will survive. Is it not time to carry out the rationalisation of production to match the rationalisation of exhibition—by closing down the bad producers? That needs a drastic change in the method of subsidisation by our State film bank.
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