Alexander Korda in America

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 260, 30 July 1937, Page 16

Alexander Korda in America

English Film Industry Healthier After Its Troubles

While in New York on his return from Hollywood, where lie completed the deal that gave him and Samuel Goldwyn control ot United Artists, Mr. Alexander Korda, the English producer, gave an interview to the “New York Times,” in which be expressed the opinion that the recent financial troubles of the British film industry would finally be for its good, and that the existence of a source of pictures alternative io Hollywood was for the good of everybody.

' “I think it is obvious that the same thing that happened to the British industry has happened to every film industry in the world when people without knowledge of the business start to dabble in it,” said Mr. Korda. "I don’t blame them; the fault is with the financiers. Although any slump will eventually affect even those who are not doing badly themselves, I think the collapse of the wildcatter in British films presages a healthy future for our picture business. The people who didn't belong in it bad to disappear before it could get a serious start, and the only way they could be made to disappear was to let them lose their money.

“The British public and Press were partly at fault, because they were expecting the impossible. They somehow believed that Hollywood with a 25-year start and untold millions lost in the same way as Britain’s comparatively few pounds were, could be caught in three or four years. Hollywood spends 150,000,000 dollars yearly. Its first generation has passed control on to a second, and a third generation is now being trained to carry on. The British industry' started, four years ago with pennies for every pound in Hollywood. It bad to biuld studios, train or mobilise technicians. develop players and establish financial structures. Generally, the job of building a British motionpicture industry has been magnificently’ done, although a public that expected Hollywood to be caught in three or four years will think I am praising too much.

“I cannot dispute Hollywood's domination of the motion-picture world in the future, but I do feel that it cannot continue to have the whole loaf. In the long run, no one country can satisfy another country’s appetite for entertainment or for anything else. Just as the press, the literature,, the theatre, and even the food of a nation must have a national aspect, so must its cinema. Things funny here fall flat abroad, and vice versa. Vital topics in England make comedies here. The mission of the British picture industry is not solely to make films for a world 1 market but to entertain the iteople at home as well. The men making pictures with Gracie Fields. Jack Hulbert, Jack Biichanan, Sidney Howard and other home favourites have suffered no collapse. In England the people who can turn out films-well will go on irs before. They may have bad breaks—series of unpopular pictures—‘but they will go on. It was the get-rich-quieks, the -inefficient, who suffered. It was an age of promoters, men who promised three to four times what they were able to pay for stars and technicians, in the hope of matching Hollywood overnight. Thank God it’s over.” “The cinema of the future will de-.

the industry in other points than in Hollywood. We must ask ourselves this: if every idea came from Hollywood alone, however magnificent it may be (and it is the greatest conglomeration of talent ever assembled anywhere), would we not soon reach a saturation point in technical excellence? Hollywood’s corner on talent is at once its greatest advantage and disadvantage. It permits it to control the world market now, and it miry mean a decadence of the cinema if that control continues. It will be for the benefit of the whole cinema world if people elsewhere than in Hollywood .begin to think and live pictures in film centres of their own. Competition in ideas ag well as in the sales field is essential to give the cinema continued new vitality.

“As it is, tile American film itself does not reflect the new social vitality of this country. It continues to accent the sweet, sugary stuff—everything is so beautiful—and somehow I feel that this cannot be sufficient if the film industry' wants to live. Mind you, I’m not advocating unhappy endings. I don’t like to see people die before dinner. I simply wonder if the cinema, after 30 years or more, has not passed out of its infancy, and whether it is not ready to take its place among the great arts. The generation that gave a language and a style to the cinema is slowly going out of existence; it is in the hands of a new generation, ami I wonder what they will do witli it.”

Regarding the United Artists purchases, by which he • and Goldwyn bought oiil the member interests of Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, he said it would not change ills production plans for Hie coming season. The advantage to him of the Hew setup lies in the distribution. He and Goldwyn were the only active producing members remaining, and it was his belief that the “profits-of distribution must come back to the active producer in full entity, if the producer L to be kept: alive.” His 1937-38 London films programme will include a colour picture based on lhe Russian Bullet, with Merle Oberon; a colour musical. “Gaiety Girls”; “Four Feathers.” with Robert Domrt; "The Divorce of Lady X,” with Miss Oberon and Donat; and a film of tile Himalayas, with Sabu, Hie Indian lad.

Mr. Korda lias ideas for a couple of other pictures, the chief scheme being for a film of this advancing epoch, starting back in the mail-coach days and carrying through this aeronauticirl age. He is through, for a time, with films of (lie future, like “Things to Come,” although he has a soft touch for such things. That was an 11. G. Wells conception, as was the subsequent Korda film, “The Man Who Could Work Miracles.” The trouble with 11. G. Wells and films, says Mr. Korda, is that Wells insists on overworking the cinema form as a talking medium.