British Films Are Now Coming Into Their Own

Wanganui Chronicle, 21 January 1947, Page 5

British Films Are Now Coming Into Their Own

(Special N.Z.P.A. Correspondent) Received 6.1 5 p.m. LONDON, Jan. 20 Sir Stafford Cripps, president of the Board of Trade, told members of the Rank Organisation at an annual dinner that, if given a fair field, British films of the present standard could become a major factor in adjusting the difference between the. amount earned by American films in Britain and that earned by British films in America.

Sir Stafford Cripps said the present volume of American films entering Britain was showing a i :• (urn of 1(1 to 20 times as great as that shown by British films in America. He described the British films as “a precocious child, which now had come

and of which he was the guardian.” All he had seen and heard convinced him that if the British film Industry gave the public good films the public would anpredale them. That, he thought, was the true reason why recent British film productions bed been so successful. The standards set had been decent an I high, both aesthetically and morally, and to-day British protlUc-

; ers could claim with justice that I British films were more popular ' than any others in Britain, ami I were, for the first time, making ! real headway abroad. j He made it plain that in future the British Government would definitely expect more reciprocity in the intcrIchange of films.