The Competitive Art
THE recipe for making a movie is usually compounded of a little talent and a lot of money. For those of us who spend our time assessing the little talents, that heap of money which supports them can be something of an embarrassment. But since the bottom fell out of the film business, and economists began to take an interest in the movies, commerce has been catching up with the critics.
No industry in decline can ever have been better geared than the cinema to publicise its plight. With all the vested interests publicly relating their angles on the crisis, it has been difficult to gain any objective picture of the industry; which has even managed to involve the politicians, though they have done little so far except confuse the situation even further. The plethora of official reports have tended to be pious rather than useful in their recommenda- tions, and the occasional pieces of legislation which have resulted to date have served only to develop the agility of the industry's giants in side-stepping any inconvenient laws: for example, the statutory requirement that no film can be booked before it is shown to the trade has led to the practice of pencilling in 'provisional' dates for circuit releases often long before films are completed.
A welcome synthesis of the available evidence has now been produced in a research report of the Institute of Economic Affairs, The Com- petitive Cinema by Terence Kelly with Graham Norton and George Perry. For 'the product of over two years' extensive research' it comes up with very little that is new, a reflection, perhaps, of the notorious difficulty of persuading film people to divulge any facts about their business. As a survey of the available material, though, it can be recommended to anyone sufficiently interested to plough through an exposition which is so ill-constructed and repetitive that it will probably alienate all but the most determined readers.
The book could hardly have appeared at a worse time than during the present lull in the battle between the giant studio/distribution/ circuit combines of Rank and ABC, and the smaller but highly vocal forces of British Lion, the Federation of British Film Makers (repre- senting the independent producers), and the technicians' union, the ACTT. The industry is in a state of truce while the Monopolies Com- mission completes its report on Rank and ABC. Meanwhile, even the FBRM has 'not thought it necessary or helpful to keep the flames of con- troversy alive.' With any luck, the commission will have had access to so much previously un- published material that the work of Mr Kelly and his colleagues will be outdated, and the battle will rage again on an unprecedented scale.
For the moment, though, one can be grateful to the authors for the scepticism which they have brought to bear on the claims and accusations made by the various sections of the industry:
In assessing criticisms of Rank and ABC, a number of points should be kept in mind. First, in most cases of complaint it is one set of vested interests attacking another. Secondly, this is an industry peculiarly rich in conspiracy theories, persecution manias and self-publicists. . . . A fourth point is that once an organisation is in a monopolistic position, any of its actions, selfish or altruistic, is liable to be' interpreted and condemned as a monopolistic iniquity. As a result, the usual type-casting of Rank and ABC as the dragons and British Lion as St George has become blurred—which is all to the good. The book does manage to explain the current situation (which has changed very little since I last dealt with it in the SPECTATOR two years ago) in terms of the industry's history and the normal commercial urges of the major companies. The picture which can be disentangled from the book seems to be reasonably objective, although it is much too kind to the British Film Institute, over which its characteristic wariness of the self-evaluations expressed in PR handouts has evaporated completely; and not quite hard enough on British Lion for inability to produce enough films to justify billing as a third force. In their public pronouncements, the British Lion directors have sought to defend their production of modest, commercial little films. Unfortunately, these are not the grounds on which they are open to attack. It is more relevant to wonder why the sections of British Lion which make films like Rotten to the Core and The Great St Trinians Train Robbery, which have no difficulty in obtaining a circuit release, make so few of them so expensively. It is remarkable that a very routine job like Rotten to the Core cost considerably more than Nothing But the Best, a film of great elegance made by Clive Donner and David Deutsch for Anglo-Amalgamated, shot entirely on location and in colour. One gets the impression that far from being tireless warriors in the cause of competitive film-making, the gentlemen film-makers who run the affairs of British Lion are quietly playing at old soldiers. But perhaps they are just awaiting the report of the Monopolies Commission which will release their bounding, competitive energies.
The most illuminating comment which the book produces on the positions adopted by the independent groups in the industry concerns the proposals for the creation of a third, state circuit by compulsory purchase of around 200 Rank and ABC cinemas as a method of breaking the circuit monopoly, or rather duopoly:
A hazardous political obstacle course would face any proposal for a state take-over of 200 cinemas. The unfeasibility of the scheme politically may be an unconscious psychological attraction to its proponents, since by advocacy of a third outlet they can salve their consciences and convince themselves that they are doing something to help the industry without ever actually being faced with the necessity for action.
Apart from the writing and a tendency to play back some of the good old numbers, like the one about the need for a National Film School, the book's main weakness lies in its origins as a Bow Group report. Its recommendations centre around the authors' complete faith in the idea of fair competition.
Public intervention to reform the practices and structure of the industry is not interference with the rights of private enterprise: it is the restoration of those rights . . . It is the com- petition which has vanished through cowardice, greed, or inertia that must be revived. There should be no prejudice against big units as such . . . What must be insisted on is that the lesser units should be allowed to compete on equal terms film against film, cinema against cinema. To allow major distortions of com- petition to continue would be damaging both to the public interest and to that of the industry.
In their recommendations, the authors are startlingly naive. A tribunal to ensure fair play in competition as they suggest assumes a remark- able willingness of the commercial giants to play cricket. A much more natural course for any giant is to use its strength to ensure that com- petition is as unfair as is legal: that is one of the virtues of size. The Monopolies Commission will decide how far the sizes need to be cut down. And if the industry is subjected to a dose of trust-busting, one can be sure that afterwards the competition will be as healthily unfair as ever.
IAN CAMERON
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