The Financing and Production of British Films: Historical Background
Chapter
Abstract
Despite the generally positive evaluation in this book of the vibrancy and commercial astuteness of production companies, sales agents and distributors currently active in British cinema, one overriding fact must not be overlooked. The financial structure of British filmmaking is inherently unstable and the amount of production finance made available to film-makers in this country in any one year is pitifully meagre given the popularity of film as a medium. Compared to the American film industry, Britain has no industry as such. As Steve Woolley puts it:
it’s like comparing the space programme with people in the Hebrides knitting scarves …. We are crofters over here. We have the technology and we have the brain but we don’t have the money.1
Keywords
Historical Background Film Industry Distribution Company Sunday Morning Rank Organisation
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Notes
- 2.Michael Chanan, ‘The Emergence of an Industry’ in Curran and Porter (eds), British Cinema History (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1983), p. 50.Google Scholar
- 3.This issue is discussed by Annette Kuhn in Cinema, Censorship and Sexuality 1909–25 (London: Routledge, 1988).Google Scholar
- 4.A comprehensive breakdown of these categories is provided by James C. Robertson in the appendix to The British Board of Film Censors: Film Censorship in Britain 1896–1950 (Beckenham: Croom Helm, 1985).Google Scholar
- 5.The case of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is examined in Jeffrey Richards and Anthony Aldgate, Best of British: Cinema and Society 1930–1970 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983).Google Scholar
- 6.Percentages calculated from figures given in Margaret Dickinson and Sarah Street, Cinema and State (London: BFI, 1985), p. 11.Google Scholar
- 9.George Perry in The Great British Picture Show (London: Pavilion, 1985), points out that the exhibition duopoly also constrained filmmakers in relation to changing censorship. The introduction of the ‘X’ category in 1951 was designed to allow more adult treatments of subjects to be shown. However, the ABC circuit decided to show only outstanding ‘X’-rated films — usually European art films — while Rank banned all ‘X’ films on the grounds that they broke up family cinemagoing. This had an obvious effect on British production by promoting self-censorship.Google Scholar
- 11.Julian Petley, ‘Cinema and State’ in Charles Barr (ed.), All Our Yesterdays (London: BFI/RKP, 1986), pp. 37–8.Google Scholar
- 13.See Matthew Silverstone, ‘Finding the Money’ in Auty and Roddick (eds), British Cinema Now (London: BFI, 1985).Google Scholar
Copyright information
© Duncan J. Petrie 1991