Crisis in Britain

U.S. cinemoguls have recently pooh-poohed talk of Hollywood's depression (TIME, Dec. 27), and are pointing out instead how well dividends and box-office returns have been holding up. British film bigwigs like J. Arthur Rank and Sir Alexander Korda are also trying to make light of their economic ills, but it has become uncomfortably plain that a major crisis is gripping the industry that turned out such thriving exports as Hamlet and The Red Shoes.

Of England's 26 studios, only nine were shooting films last week. Private financing had tightened up, even for Korda and Rank. At least 1,000 employees had been laid off in recent months, and another 500 had warning notices that they might be sacked soon. Last week heads of three big movie unions urged the government to help stem the firings and to grant the producers' demand for a rebate on its 40% admissions tax.

Hopefully, the government pushed its )ill to set up a Film Finance Corporation with $20 million to help the ailing industry back on its feet over the next five years. But nobody in the industry thought hat the government fund could work a cure by itself; they hoped it would lure private capital back into the films. And he most enlightened knew that in any event the bankers would first want the moviemakers to mend their extravagant ways.

There were a few encouraging signs. A small independent producer had just turned out a promising feature for $500,000. Called Obsession, it had been brought in under its budget by Director Edward Dmytryk, one of Hollywood's "unfriendly ten." The bigger producers, including Rank, had been making economies too, but insiders still thought that production costs were much too high. The titans were studying the lesson already learned (if not always practiced) by Hollywood: the only way out of the slump was to make better pictures for less money.

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