TONY PALMER
Spectator,
One of the illusions engendered by living in central London is that the commercial cinema is in a tolerably healthy state. True, nearly 70 per cent of film technicians are out of work, but when you see the queues form- ing every night outside the major West End cinemas, things really can't be as bad as we are always being told. But if you venture out even as far as exciting Harrow, as I did the other night, a very different picture emerges. The Granada, Harrow, seats probably around 1,500 people. It is the key cinema of the district and you would have thought that a Friday night of all nights would have been well attended, especially when the film on show was Beyond the Valley of the Dolls which, according to the trade papers, is doing some of the best business of the moment. But not a bit of it. I estimated that there were only about 250 people in the cinema.
As it happened, the 250 were in for a special treat; a sneak preview of the film of the Monty Python TV show had been arranged to test audience reaction although even that misfired somewhat because the 250 good citizens of Harrow sat there in sullen silence wondering what had gone wrong with the .advertised programme and where were the nudes? Now it is often argued that although the general attendance figures at commercial cinemas have fallen, and con- tinue to fall, the number of informed and discriminating filmgoers (whatever that means) is markedly increasing. This is usu- ally evidenced by the growth in recent years of the Regional Film Theatres, modelled on the National Film Theatre, and the assump- tion that almost any steps to stimulate inter- est in the film, whether as art, entertainment or education, can only benefit the industry as a whole. Certainly, the success of the National Film Theatre and its progeny can hardly be denied. The idea for such theatres goes back to the Radcliffe Committee re- port of 1948 which recommended that 'the British Film Institute should present in Lon- don, and sometimes elsewhere [dote the "sometimes"] planned programmes of films'. Why, and for whom, were questions left un- answered. Consequently, an experimental season of film classics was presented at the French Institute Cinema in South Kensing-
ton between 1948 and 1950 and in 1952 the old Telekinema, built for 3-D films for the 1951 Festival of Britain, became the home of the London National Film Theatre. It was later rebuilt, but there it stayed and with it the 'classic films'.
Later,- Stanley Reed, the new director of the Institute, commissioned a report on the prospects for regional development which was adopted by the Governors, among them Lindsay Anderson and Karel Reisz and pub- lished in 1965 under the title Outside Lon- don. Two years later, the Bristol Regional Film Theatre opened up, followed shortly by cinemas in Norwich and Newcastle. Today there are thirty-six. Three are full-time, Manchester, Newcastle and Brighton. Some, like those at Basildon and Belfast, are part of the local arts centre. Some are housed in public libraries, Sheffield and Hull for ex- ample; others exist within the precincts of local universities as at York and South- ampton. Some even function in commercial cinemas like those in Norwich and Alde- burgh; others still find a home in civic halls as at St Albans and Southend. Altogether, the total membership now stands at almost 50,000, ranging from 6,000 in Manchester to 130 in Petworth. Most of them are finan- ced by a combination of local grants. money from the Department of Education and Science, local business interests, individual donors and ticket sales. Membership costs as little as 25p.
So far so good. Last week I went to one of these film theatres at Middlesbrough. Four out of live people I asked were not aware that Middlesbrough even had a Film Theatre. This is not surprising since the 450- seater cinema is in a quiet...suburban back- water with almost nothing outside the build- ing to indicate what goes on inside. For Sun-
day, Monday and Tuesday nights the aver- age audience had been thirty. The 16mm pro- jector did not work properly and on the night I was there the projectionist (a volun- tary helper) succeeded in closing the cur- tains for film No. 2 a good five minutes before the end because he thought it had come to an end, and during film No. 3 the projector blew up, or at least its fuse did. A month earlier I had visited the Bolton Film Theatre. The taxi driver, nor his mate, nor his mate's mate, did not know where it was. It was finally discovered lurking apolo- getically down a back street.
The manager was absent because he had a choir practice that night and his projec- tionist succeeded in wrecking the film by ripping up its sprocket holes. The sound re- production had a wow and the average audi- ence was twenty. The cinema had 300 seats. I quote from the official brochure: 'high projection quality is insisted on.' Now, I'm not suggesting that all the Regional Film Theatres are as bad as these two. I have also visited those at Brighton, Newcastle. York and Nottingham which are inostly well attended and well equipned. But were it not for the student population in these various towns, the theatres would have a difficult job to survive. Often, it's only the presenta- tion at least once a week of the more obvi- ously commercially successful movies that keeps the film theatre's head above the morass of public indifference. The prolifera- tion of film societies and the cult of film which such societies foster cannot hide the fact that one of the most powerful modes of communication is being abandoned by the general public. It simply is no longer true, as Shirley NlacLaine observes in an other- wise indifferent shortly-to-be-published auto-
biogranhy, that when Hollywood strikes the right chord, it resounds around the world.
The Regional Film Theatres, of course, are only a part of the work of the British Film Institute which was founded as long ago as 1933. The largest single division of the Institute is the National Film Archive which houses over 18,000 films comprising features, documentaries. newsreels and re- corded TV programmes. It also maintains a stills library of nearly one million prints. The Education Department has a lecture and an advisory service and the central booking agency offers a comprehensive film-booking service to film societies and educational authorities throughout the country. Most important of all is the Film Production Board which, in its time, claims to have encouraged among others Ken Russell and Tony Richardson. Any person or group wishing to make an original and independent film, and able to establish their technical competence and reliability, may apply to the Board for a grant.
It all begins to sound like a publicity hand- out for the BFI. But cast your mind back to exciting Harrow. The Regional Film Theatres function best as cinemas for oldies and goldies which have run their life-span in the commercial cinema and are in need of a little fresh air before their ultimate and proper oblivion, But when the commercial cinema finally collapses, what function will the Regional Film Theatres fulfil then? As reminders of a forgotten age? As museums? And when all the old prints are all scratched into incomprehensibility? What then? Surely the money and effort spent would be better used in trying to find ways of reorganising the entire industry. Tinkering about in the back streets of Bolton is the road to nowhere
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