The failures of the British Film Industry since 1945 April 3, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Artfully Deranged, The Film Industry , trackbackAccording to the Film Council’s own statistics film ‘production in Britain fell by 30 per cent to £800 million as the number of indigenous films that started shooting in the country dropped from 45 the previous year, to 27.’ (Hopkins, 2005) Hopkins sees the problem as Labour’s move to stop tax breaks that encourage foreign investment in British films.
‘Britain’s film industry last night gave warning that it will suffer a severe fall in income this year because of confusion over lucrative tax breaks that persuaded Hollywood studios to spend almost £500 million in the UK last year.’ (ibid.)
‘Britain will become a no go area for filmmakers’ said executive producer Russ Smith (BBC Online, 2004) The issue is not the government’s initiatives to support indigenous films through Lottery Funds and the Film Council, indeed ‘contrary to popular opinion, ploughing money into the production side of British cinema is not and never has been the main problem’ (Wayne, 2002. pg 9) but largely the need for American investment, meaning such measures that discourage such investment are largely unhelpful to the industry.
British film as the British Film Institute (BFI) define it ‘deriving its cultural and financial impetus from Britain’ (Beckett, 2001) is one that simply does not guarantee success on a financial level seen in such examples as Stephen Poliakoff’s ‘Food of Love’ making only £1507 at the box office having cost £2.1 million. (imdb.com, 2005) The government’s initiatives via the Lottery fund only recouped 20% of its funding between 2001 and 2004 (BBC Online, 2004) because as Working Title’s co-chairman Tim Bevan sees it ‘The contemporary British condition is just boring for a mainstream audience’ (Beckett, 2001) However, as this suggests that Britons simply do not want to see films about their country it is interesting that such successful British films as ‘The Full Monty’ and ‘East Is East’ have exampled the possibility of breaking this trend.[1] The key to their success it seems lies in their distribution, as ‘The Full Monty’ received full backing from 20th Century Fox, and Film Four used a very expensive advertising campaign to promote ‘East Is East’. (Wayne, 2002. Pg 10) Comparatively, ‘Brassed Off’, a film similar in plot and aesthetic to ‘The Full Monty’ did not receive strong U.S backing or well-funded British promotion and was financially unsuccessful[2]. The quality of the three films is largely subjective but all are regarded as good British films (all received critical praise at the time of release[3]), so it appears their success was down to other factors - largely U.S backing and strong advertising. As the Film Council claim that part of British cinema’s problem is a lack of quality scripts, talent, and too many poor films (Beckett, 2001), it appears that their portfolio for success is rather short-sighted, in that ‘quality’ is an ambiguous area of any art form, and that based on financial figures, it is distribution and exhibition that are the vital areas for them to improve. However, American hegemony of both exhibition and distribution in Britain proves this is a difficult task.
Therefore the government is stuck in a quandary that was created by themselves in the late 1940s. British Films that have made a lot of money have as Anthony Davies says evoked ‘a world of country houses, upper-class life, social restraint and sexual hypocrisy’, adding ‘the ‘heritage cinema’ of the 1980s simply provided what was needed for international success in an American-dominated market defined by the competitive circulation of idealised images.’ (Davies, 2000. pg 113) In other words British Films have succeeded in the international market by appealing to what American audiences desire – seemingly that of national stereotypes, seen in many successful British films such as ‘A Fish Called Wanda’ (1988), ‘Four Weddings and Funeral’ (1994), and Notting Hill (1999). In a sense their ‘British-ness’ is an American concept – British films made to imitate American narrative and aesthetic. As Sorlin states, ‘We Europeans create and see the world through Hollywood’s lenses’ (Davies, 2000. pg 112).
The British government then should not be discouraging American investment but embrace it and create incentive for it to occur. Their aspirations for the Film Council and a ‘national’ cinema through localised funding seem rather overzealous since it has been proven the market for such ‘English’ films is small and hardly lucrative. It seems even more disparaging to think of such a concept when the Film Council themselves admit to pandering to America’s needs, saying their ‘public prescription for the industry is to imitate Hollywood.’ (Beckett, 2001) Since the Film Council are saying about American investment: ‘there’s no sense in fighting the inevitable. They hire our talent. The investment they bring, we hope, will have a knock on effect’ (Beckett, 2001), why then is the government defeating the object by taking away these tax breaks? Interestingly, they’ve been making these kinds of mistakes since the Second World War.
American influence in British cinema became apparent in the late 1940s after the then Labour government placed a 75% tax on all foreign film earnings resulting in a boycott of the British market by American film companies. This was seen as proactive to help indigenous film production but it proved disastrous because it was the catalyst to the very problems the Film Council faces today. Davies writes that the British government ‘faced public hostility following [the] prolonged boycott of the British market by American distributors’ largely because ‘American cinema provided the glamour absent from everyday-life.’ (Davies, 2000. pg 111) As such, the government changed its mind which caused many British production companies to go bankrupt when U.S films flooded the market, because they had tried to fill the gap left by the Americans. ‘By 1949 only seven of the twenty-six British studios were in operation and only seven films were actually being made.’ (Lant, 1996. pg 370) This was compounded by the government’s Eady Plan which was supposed to help British film production through tax relief but the Americans found a loophole and exploited it. As Parish says about the film ‘Cleopatra’ - ‘accountants convinced the studio that England was the best choice. By taking advantage of the country’s Eady Plan, which required using several British actors/technicians in the project, Fox would receive tax breaks and subsidies.’ (Parish, 2006. pg 25) Furthermore, ‘The Day Of The Triffids’ only kept the British editor on the production to ‘satisfy the demands of the Eady Plan’ (Gordon, 1999. pg 238) The government had therefore solidified an economic base for the industry but inadvertently allowed American companies to take advantage of what was supposed to be an incentive for British films. What was now occurring were ‘very’ American movies being produced with American money and American companies, in Britain.
However, in 2001 the Film Councils promotional pamphlet said a problem they must overcome is ‘a well-developed appetite among audiences for US films’, yet they also mention ‘a failure to draw upon and reflect the full social and cultural diversity of the UK.’[4] (Beckett, 2001) There’s two issues here – one concerning the audience and one that concerns the films on an aesthetic level. The fact is, British film prospered in the 1960s because they were very Americanised, supported by massive U.S funding which resulted in many box office ‘hits’[5]. Via the government’s Eady levy these films were able to use British studios and be filmed in England via the hiring of various British staff, but the principle aesthetic of these films was very much international and largely American. For example, it was American director Richard Lester who made ‘A Hard Days’ Night’ in 1963. It is little wonder then that the Film Council sees an ‘appetite’ for American movies in Britain since this was very much encouraged in the ‘Golden’ era of British cinema. As Dickenson and Street write, ‘after 1961 it became increasingly difficult to define any part of the industry as British rather than Anglo-American.’ (Petrie, 1996. pg 607) What the 1960s achieved was to turn Britain into ‘Hollywood, England’ (ibid. pg 608). Whilst a ‘national identity’ through cinema may have been lost it becomes increasingly difficult to understand this problem, if indeed it is a problem. Ultimately, it examples the adoptive nature Britain took to American films, almost like a second home. Cinema in the U.S and the U.K had become an entertainment medium first and foremost, and the globalisation of the texts was making national identity through cinema less easily decipherable. In a sense the question must be asked, should the Film Council support ‘art-house’ niche market cinema, or mass-market entertainment that will sell locally and abroad? As cinemas in Britain are mainly owned by American companies it seems only logical that appealing to the mass-market (American’s especially), is the only way to a viable and economically safe industry.
When the Eady Plan was supposed to work for British Films it failed because the Americans used it for their own gain and this was proven when most American finance stopped in the late 1960s because British-made films weren’t making enough money. This resulted in a lean period for the industry in the 1970s and 1980s as cinema audiences hit an all time low in 1984 with just 55 million tickets sold compared to 123 million in 1996 (Wayne, 2002. pg 9). The government ‘did little either incentive to assist revival or prevent collapse’ and ‘their actions were almost entirely negative’. (Petrie, 1996. pg 613) They stifled the independent production companies in the 1980s who were making comparatively popular films.[6] The Conservative government stopped the Eady Levy which had not been abused since the sixties and was actually assisting films such as ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ to be produced through tax incentives. Not only this but in order to provide cinema with more availability, £560 million pounds was spent on multiplex building but as Wayne states, ‘this investment was mostly American.’ (Wayne, 2002. pg 9) ‘Since the 1980s, the building of multiplex cinemas has reflected an increase in cinema-going but their principal function has been to provide an outlet for Hollywood productions in the British market.’ (Davies, 2000. pg 117) It is therefore quite obvious that in attempting to create an economically thriving industry, the British government has had to make concessions that have had an effect on British film as an art form. Unlike France for example who have maintained an industry dominated by their own indigenous films[7], British movies were categorised as ‘American-like’ from the 1960s and that is what audiences were going to see. In allowing American companies to monopolise the exhibition and distribution sector during the late 1980s, it has made it very difficult for niche market British films to prosper. If they fail to appeal to mass market audiences both in Britain and America, they’ll fail to get distributed because American companies will not take the risk.
In conclusion, it is obvious that American production companies and studios have a power and influence over the British Film industry that is largely impossible to overcome. Therefore, the government should embrace American investment rather than discourage it by taking away tax incentives. Also, instead of putting large amounts of money into production, use more of it for advertising, distribution and exhibition rights with the stellar example being set by Film Four with the success of ‘East Is East’.
Bibliography
BBC Online (2004) UK movie industry ‘in jeopardy’ [online] available from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/3481331.stm (accessed Nov 25 2005)
Beaumont, N (2004) Four At The Movies [online] available from http://www.transdiffusion.org/emc/studioone/filmfour.php (accessed Nov 25 2005)
Davies, A (2000) British Culture and the Postwar London: Routledge
Dickinson, M and Street, S (1985) Cinema and State London: BFI
Ebert, R (1997) The Full Monty critical review [online] available from http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19970827/REVIEWS/708270301/1023 (accessed Nov 28 2005)
Guttmann, E (2000) East Is East critical review {online] available from http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2000/04/21/DD47115.DTL (accessed 28 Nov)
Gordon, B (1999) Hollywood Exile, or How I Learned to Love the Blacklist Texas: University of Texas Press
Hopkins, N (2005) Tax break blow to UK film industry [online] available from http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9071-1480691,00.html (accessed Nov 25 2005)
Imdb (2005) International Movie Datebase [online] available from www.imdb.com (accessed 27th Nov)
Lant, A (1996) Britain at the end of Empire: The Oxford History Of World Cinema London: Oxford
McNeill, T (1999) Introduction To Postwar French Cinema [online] available from http://www.sunderland.ac.uk/~os0tmc/contem/film.htm (accessed Nov 28 2005)
Parish, J.R (2006) Fiasco: A History of Hollywood’s Iconic Flops New York: John Wiley & Sons Inc (not yet published (publish date January 2006), extracts available online from http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471691593.html (accessed 26th November))
Petrie, D (1996) British Cinema: The Search For Identity – The Oxford History Of World Cinema London: Oxford
Sorlin, P (1991) European Cinemas: European Societies 1939 – 1990 London: Routledge
Stack, P (1997) Brassed Off critical review [online] available from http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1997/05/30/DD37142.DTL (accessed Nov 28 2005)
Wayne, M. (2002) Politics Of Contemporary European Cinema Bristol: Intellect Books
[1] ‘The Full Monty’ was produced for $3.5 million and made £51 million in the U.K and $48.8 million in USA. ‘East Is East’ was made for $1.9 million and grossed £10 million in the U.K. (source Imdb.com, financial data)
[2] ‘Brassed Off’ made only £2.8 million in the U.K and only $2.5 million in the USA. (ibid.)
[3] ‘Brassed Off hits high notes amid grim mine closures’ (Stack, San Francisco Chronicle); ‘The Full Monty is a lovable comedy’ (Ebert, Chicago-Sun Times); ‘East Is East is a very funny movie’ (Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle)
[4] Channel Four in the 1980s tried to assist British Film by focusing on this area, namely, British culture, history and identity and produced around 150 films in its first year of existence, however, one of its most notable films – ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ did not recoup its tiny budget of £400, 000 at the box office, and many of Channel 4’s films succumbed to the same fate. If it’s a question of quality, Petrie argues this hindered British cinema ‘by encouraging a hybrid tele-movie which owes more to the traditions and aesthetics of small-screen drama than to the cinema.’ (Petrie, 1996. pg 612) Whilst Beaumont talks of distribution: ‘Whilst films like ET were breaking box office records, others like ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ and ‘Letter to Brezhnev’ were almost invisible to the popcorn-chewing public.’ (Beaumont, 2004) (source: Petrie, 1996)
[5] United Artists ‘A Hard Days’ Night’ (1963) and the James Bond movies starting with Dr. No (1962), and Columbia’s epics ‘Lawrence Of Arabia’ (1962) and ‘Doctor Zhivago’ (1965).
[6] Ex-Beatle George Harrison’s company Handmade Films produced the Monty Python movies and ‘Time Bandits’, whilst Goldcrest, Virgin Vision, and Palace Productions were also making British films.
[7] The French film industry has been able to sustain its own indigenous productions and exhibition of such films through many factors such as the loi d’aide of 1948 which introduced a tax of film profits that would go directly to French film production, as well as interest free loans in 1959. (McNeill, 1999)
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