BRITISH FILMS

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 19, 23 January 1926, Page 10

BRITISH FILMS

BASIC PL*OTS WANTED TO HELP

INDUSTRY.

Britain is awake at last to the importance of the cinematograph. Not only the British industry but the nation itself is determined that it shall bring all its energies to the making of really representative films. For there is more in moving pictures than mere entertainment. They are the subtlest bagmen of their country of origin. They exalt its fame in every corner of the globe. We cannot, lacking America's long experience, lacking her vast producing organisations, hope to compete with her yet in numbers. The English merit in tho cinematograph, as in trade, must be quality (writes Iris Barry in the "Daily Mail").

Of course, the British industry has been under a cloud; it has been poor, ill-equipped. It has found it hard to get its pictures on to even English screens, choked as they are by a Hood of some superb and many atrocious American pictures. But this very difficulty puts us on our mettle. Sweden is a poorer country than England, but its films are world famous. Germany had no good place in the cinema sun, but has won new respect by her best pictures. We must do the same, and yet avoid imitating either America, Sweden, or Germany. Our new films must be really English and evolve a British film tradition. The way should not be hard. Looking back, I think tho best English films have been the most English ones. -I mean, of course, the Betty Balfour serieo, which— given a shade more realism—could easily re-establish a Dickensian tradition of mingled melodrama and low comedy in our cinema.

If the Americans can glorify their own industrial activity in films of sentiment, .as they do, why should we not make a picture of our sea-folk, for which one of tho great fish-selling combines could grant facilities, and ono of our literary men, Mr. Masefield, write an impressive theme! Why not love romances or character studies set in big industrial towns! Why not delicately satirical social satire in the Jane Austen spirit of our bazaar-opening dowagers and farmer-like squires! Why not village idylls! And a film from Wales, followed by a picture of our Highland peasants and their dramatic lives?

The basic plots for these films must naturally be constructed by such writers as can hit the popular imagination by giving it a little more than it asks. With the present good-will of everyone in and out of the industry, a desire to create both exceptionally beautiful and emotionally truthful pictures cannot fail to lift our British films to a level really worthy of this country, for which they will be such powerful ambassadors.