FINANCE AND THE FILMS
The report is brief but far from simple, for the inter- relations between the various film companies, renters, producers and exhibitors are as complicated as a Chinese puzzle. The same names reappear upon the boards of different and apparently rival companies, and associ-, ated with them are names famous in very different forms of industry. The most striking impression, however, is the degree to which the American companies not merely supply the British market with American films but directly participate in the production and exhibition of British films Thus every one of the six great American renters has- affiliations with British renters, producers, and exhibitors ; the largest group in the British industry, the Gaumont-British Corporation, is controlled by the Metropolis and Bradford Trust, whose four directors in- clude the president of the Anglo-American company, Twentieth Century-Fox, and the vice-presidentof the Lon- don branch ofthe Chase National Bank of New York. This is the more interesting because the Chase National Bank, a Rockefeller institution, divides with the house of Morgan control of the American film industry. It will be remembered that the Moyne Commission emphasised the endeavours of American interests to secure control of the British industry, and recommended that steps should be taken to counteract it.
The financial methods of the industry are as interesting as its complicated structure. A distinction must be drawn between the more important producers, who are subsidiaries of or affiliated to British or Anglo-American companies, and small independent producers who have taken advantage of the speculative boom ; very often they exist merely to produce nne film, for which they receive short-term loans secured on the eventual profits the film will realise ; frequently those " profits " prove to be losses. It is difficult not to believe that, with the passing of the boom, these ephemeral companies will be eliminated, leaving a few large corporations with a semi- monopoly, These companies are, characterised by the
••Lawrence and Wishart, 5s.
diversity of their interests, as renters, producers and exhibitors, and their affiliations with American interests ; at the present time, with a few exceptions, their financial position is revealed by balance-sheets which show large amounts of capital frozen in real estate, heavy bank overdrafts, assets that are largely unrealised profits on films, and losses incurred in production. They are dominated by a few names, behind which stand powerful industrial and financial interests ; it is impossible not to be struck by the advances made by such enterprises as the Prudential Assurance Company and the National Provincial Bank. For them such investment is quite legitimate ; for the films, as a form of art or propaganda; the domination of the industry by finance is disastrous. Mr. John Grierson, himself a distinguished producer, has well described the results. " This finance story is the most vital of stories to us. With, say, £50,000 to spend on a picture it is important to know that only £20,000 will be left, after the extravagance and the rake-offs, to go on the screen. It is not unusual for producers and distributors to be kicking their heels because financiers are too busy manipulating their shares. The creative worker, lives in such uncertainty from clay to day or from picture to picture that in final cynicism he, as often as not, joins the throng and with his financial masters maintains the principle of getting his while the getting's good. This perhaps will explain the uncreative presence of so many creative men in the wilderness of films."
This story, of production sacrificed to finance, is not uncommon in modern industry. In the film industry it has a special significance, for it means that one of the most powerful of modern instruments of propaganda, amusement and culture is dominated by purely external interests.. The _purely speculative element which, at the present moment, is so powerful, is pert- a2s only transitory ; but the history of the American industry shows that when it is eliminated and the few most power- ful groups have been consolidated, financial domination is strengthened and not relaxed. A typical example of this later stage of financial control was the elimination of one of the genuine showmen of the industry, William Fox, by the bankers. The report merely says that the future of the American industry largely depends on the interests of Rockefeller and Morgan.
These conditions, or very similar ones, may reproduce themselves here, with the added evil that the financial interests may be largely or partly American. It may seem futile to oppose these tendencies ; yet the Moyne Commission, in one recommendation at least, indicated a way of preserving the British industry. Producers and distributors live at present on short-term loans at high rates of interest ; the Commission recommended that, while steps are taken to guard against American control, an organisation should be set up to finance the British industry, on a commercial basis, but at cheap rates. " If it were known that any reputable and serious proposal for the production of films could, after examination and approval of its details by such an organisation, expect financial assistance . . . on reasonable terms, promoters of undesirable schemes would have little chance of raising money from the public or any other source." Such a body might well rescue the industry from its present position ; the Government would be wise to assist in its promotion. That the Press or the wireless should be sacrificed to uncontrolled speculation is unthinkable in this country ; there is every reason why the film indus- try also should be protected from it.
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