MR. RANK'S CRISIS
NOT so very many years ago British films were regarded by the public in this country as a joke (and a bad one at that) and were not seen at all by the inhabitants of other countries. Now, though we still make too many films ranging from the indifferent to the deplorable, the British film industry has proved itself capable of turning out a quality product whose excellence—resulting generally from a certain integrity of approach—has been recognised all over the world. These films are, in their kind, works of art. It is a good thing that audiences in this country should see and enjoy them ; and it is also a good thing that people in other countries should be given a chance of sampling what is, after all, a creditable and attractive expression of British culture and the British character. Some films (though as yet only a few) have shown themselves capable of earning dollars in America. It is, in short, beyond question that both from the cultural and the economic point of view, both at home and abroad, the British film industry in its present stage of develop- ment is a major national asset.
The financial structure of this industry has always been intricate and has generally been unsound. Mr. Rank's statement to his shareholders on Monday left no doubt that this latter weakness has established a paralysing and potentially fatal grip upon the affairs of his own interests, which form an easily predominant part of the whole industry. The immediate cause of this crisis is simple ; for various reasons not enough people have been to sec Mr. Rank's films, and the films have cost far too much to make. Mr. Rank himself pleads guilty to over-optimistic planning. The war-time boom at the box-office has died a natural death, costs have risen—in many-. cases fantastically—and the arbitrary fluctuations of Government policy have been disconcerting and harmful. Mr. Rank complains, justifiably enough, that the burden of a 40 per cent. Entertainment Tax is far too heavy for the industry to carry. In America the equivalent impost is only 20 per cent, and in its gloomier moments Hollywood is apt to com- plain that even that is crippling. There. seems to be a strong case for reviewing the Entertainment Tax position. One school of thought, supported by Mr. O'Brien, a Member of Parliament and general secretary of the National Association of Theatrical and Kine Employees, advocates the immediate return by the Treasury to the industry of £2o,000,000 from Entertainment Tax receipts ; but the institution of yet another form of Government subsidy seems a needlessly artificial remedy. On the other hand there would seem to be a strong case for a reduction in the scale of the tax itself.
It is, of course, the general level of taxation, combined with the rising cost of living, rather than this one particular tax which is the fundamental cause of the film industry's depression. It is probably true of a very large proportion of the population that as long as they cannot save money they will think twice about spend- ing it on cinema tickets ; and the current progress of the National Savings Campaign indicates a far from firm tone in nest-eggs. The extravagant salaries paid throughout all levels of the industry, and the large rewards—often staggered over several years in order to attract a lower rate of tax—which have to be offered to stars, directors and writers, are other symptoms of the same trouble. That is not to say that the industry is not thoroughly wasteful. It always has been, and nobody with the most superficial experience on the set can fail to be struck by the amount of extravagance (often for the rather snobbish sake of extravagance) that goes on. Part of this is undoubtedly attributable to the size of Mr. Rank's organisation and to the atmosphere which permeates much of its administrative side. In so large an enterprise, headed by so rich a man, everyone tends to assume that there is plenty of money about somewhere. Huge sums are light-heartedly spent (and their spending is often publicised by the Organisation itself) on wholly inessential objects, cheaper substitutes for which would look just as well on the screen.
This wastefulness is materially aggravated by the exigent conditions imposed on the industry from within by organised labour. These reach in some cases a pitch of fantasy. For a tech- nician of one category to perform or even lend a hand in the most trivial task which should properly be performed by a technician in another category is unthinkable ; and the camera, in conse- quence, has always an entourage far larger than it needs, swollen by employees waiting- in case they should be required to do something which could as easily be done by someone else. To eliminate, or even substantially to reduce this wide margin of waste it will first be necessary to alter radically the tradition or atmosphere which pervades the Rank Organisation, and which indeed seems to be in some degree endemic in the film industry as such. But the position is too serious to be retrieved by econo- mics alone. By warning the Board of Trade that he may shortly be unable to fulfill their quota requirements Mr. Rank has made it clear that one, at least, of the next steps must come from the Government. The Government's record of intervention on behalf of the film industry is not a distinguished one. In August, 1947, Mr. Dalton virtually closed British cinemas to American films by imposing a 75 per cent. duty on them. This direct encourage- ment to Mr. Rank to step up his production plans underlay and accentuated their over-optimism. Less than a year later Mr. Harold . Wilson, without consulting Mr. Rank or anyone else in the industry, abolished this duty as suddenly as it had been imposed, and British films once more faced upon the home market a com- petition which too few of them were qualified to meet. The im- position of a 45% quota of British films on the theatres (later reduced to 40%) laid on the industry a task it was incapable of discharging. A final touch of well-intentioned amateurishness was provided by the setting up of the National Film Finance Corpora- tion with L5,000,000 to lend to " independent producers."
Neither shrewdness nor consistency have, in short, characterised official policy towards the MTh world, and the Government's attempts to control an art, a market and an industry, none of which they have shown any signs of understanding, must bear part of the responsibility for the present crisis. It is not, of course. the first or necessarily the most serious that British films have faced ; but it must be confessed that no very obvious solution presents itself at this stage. The picture should, however, be a little clearer when the results of two Government-sponsored enquiries are available, as they will be shortly. A report based on an examination of the high costs of film production (which are understood to have trebled since before the war) is believed to be already in the hands of the President of the Board of Trade ; and a second report — on the structure of the industry—is being prepared by a com- mittee under the chairmanship of Sir Arnold Plant and is almost finished. The findings of both reports are likely to be made public next month. The Anglo-American film agreement expires in June — the month in which Mr. Rank has intimated that he may have to stop production altogether. A good deal of hard thinking will have to be done before then, and it is sincerely to be hoped that Mr. Wilson and his colleagues in ConitelialLwill master, for once, their penchant for trying to shape the destinies of the film industry without consulting any of its leader.
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