The identity of the British film industry, particularly as it relates to Hollywood, has often been the subject of debate. Its history has often been affected by attempts to compete with the American industry. The career of the producer Alexander Korda was marked by this objective, the Rank Organisation attempted to do so in the 1940s, and Goldcrest in the 1980s. Numerous British-born directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, Christopher Nolan and Ridley Scott,[14] and performers, such as Charlie Chaplin[15] and Cary Grant, have achieved success primarily through their work in the United States.
In 2009, British films grossed around $2billion worldwide and achieved a market share of around 7% globally and 17% in the United Kingdom.[16] UK box-office takings totalled £1.1billion in 2012,[17] with 172.5million admissions.[18]
Although the earliest British films were of everyday events, the early 20th century saw the appearance of narrative shorts, mainly comedies and melodramas. The early films were often melodramatic in tone, and there was a distinct preference for story lines already known to the audience, in particular, adaptations of Shakespeare plays and Dickens novels.
In 1902, Ealing Studios was founded by Will Barker. It has become the oldest continuously operating film studio in the world.
In 1902, the earliest colour film in the world was made; capturing everyday events. In 2012, it was found by the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford after lying forgotten in an old tin for 110 years. The previous title for earliest colour film, using Urban's inferior Kinemacolor process, was thought to date from 1909. The re-discovered films were made by pioneer Edward Raymond Turner from London who patented his process on 22 March 1899.[27]
In 1909, Urban formed the Natural Color Kinematograph Company, which produced early colour films using his patented Kinemacolor process. This was later challenged in court by Greene, causing the company to go out of business in 1914.[28]
In 1913, stage director Maurice Elvey began directing British films, becoming Britain's most prolific film director, with almost 200 by 1957.
In 1914, Elstree Studios was founded, and acquired in 1928 by German-born Ludwig Blattner, who invented a magnetic steel tape recording system that was adopted by the BBC in 1930.
In 1915, the Kinematograph Renters’ Society of Great Britain and Ireland was formed to represent the film distribution companies. It is the oldest film trade body in the world. It was known as the Society of Film Distributors until it changed its name again to the Film Distributors’ Association (FDA).[30]
By the mid-1920s the British film industry was losing out to heavy competition from the United States, which was helped by its much larger home market – in 1914 25% of films shown in the UK were British, but by 1926 this had fallen to 5%.[32] A slump in 1924 caused many British film studios to close,[citation needed] resulting in the passage of the Cinematograph Films Act 1927 to boost local production, requiring that cinemas show a certain percentage of British films. The act was technically a success, with audiences for British films becoming larger than the quota required, but it had the effect of creating a market for poor quality, low cost films, made to satisfy the quota. The "quota quickies", as they became known, are often blamed by historians for holding back the development of the industry. However, some British film makers, such as Michael Powell, learnt their craft making such films. The act was modified with the Cinematograph Films Act 1938 assisted the British film industry by specifying only films made by and shot in Great Britain would be included in the quota, an act that severely reduced Canadian and Australian film production.
Scottish solicitor John Maxwell founded British International Pictures (BIP) in 1927. Based at the former British National Pictures Studios in Elstree, the facilities original owners, including producer-director Herbert Wilcox, had run into financial difficulties.[34] One of the company's early films, Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929), is often regarded as the first British sound feature.[35][36] It was a part-talkie with a synchronised score and sound effects. Earlier in 1929, the first all-talking British feature, The Clue of the New Pin was released. It was based on a novel by Edgar Wallace, starring Donald Calthrop, Benita Home and Fred Raines, which was made by British Lion at their Beaconsfield Studios. John Maxwell's BIP became the Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC) in 1933.[37] ABPC's studios in Elstree came to be known as the "porridge factory", according to Lou Alexander, "for reasons more likely to do with the quantity of films that the company turned out, than their quality".[38]Elstree (strictly speaking almost all the studios were in neighbouring Borehamwood) became the centre of the British film industry, with six film complexes over the years all in close proximity to each other.[39]
By 1927, the largest cinema chains in the United Kingdom consisted of around 20 cinemas but the following year Gaumont-British expanded significantly to become the largest, controlling 180 cinemas by 1928 and up to 300 by 1929. Maxwell formed ABC Cinemas in 1927 which became a subsidiary of BIP and went on to become one of the largest in the country, together with Odeon Cinemas, founded by Oscar Deutsch, who opened his first cinema in 1928. By 1937, these three chains controlled almost a quarter of all cinemas in the country. A booking by one of these chains was indispensable for the success of any British film.[32]
With the advent of sound films, many foreign actors were in less demand, with English received pronunciation commonly used; for example, the voice of Czech actress Anny Ondra in Blackmail was substituted by an off-camera Joan Barry during Ondra's scenes.
Starting with John Grierson's Drifters (also 1929), the period saw the emergence of the school of realist Documentary Film Movement, from 1933 associated with the GPO Film Unit. It was Grierson who coined the term "documentary" to describe a non-fiction film, and he produced the movement's most celebrated early films, Night Mail (1936), written and directed by Basil Wright and Harry Watt, and incorporating the poem by W. H. Auden towards the end of the short.
Rising expenditure and over-optimistic expectations of expansion into the American market caused a financial crisis in 1937,[45] after an all-time high of 192 films were released in 1936. Of the 640 British production companies registered between 1925 and 1936, only 20 were still active in 1937. Moreover, the 1927 Films Act was up for renewal. The replacement Cinematograph Films Act 1938 provided incentives, via a "quality test", for UK companies to make fewer films, but of higher quality, and to eliminate the "quota quickies". Influenced by world politics, it encouraged American investment and imports. One result was the creation of MGM-British, an English subsidiary of the largest American studio, which produced four films before the war, including Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939).
The new venture was initially based at Denham Studios. Korda himself lost control of the facility in 1939 to the Rank Organisation.[46] Circumstances forced Korda's The Thief of Bagdad (1940), a spectacular fantasy film, to be completed in California, where Korda continued his film career during the war.
By now contracted to Gaumont British, Alfred Hitchcock had settled on the thriller genre by the mid-1930s with The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938). Lauded in Britain where he was dubbed "Alfred the Great" by Picturegoer magazine, Hitchcock's reputation was beginning to develop overseas, with a New York Times feature writer asserting; "Three unique and valuable institutions the British have that we in America have not. Magna Carta, the Tower Bridge and Alfred Hitchcock, the greatest director of screen melodramas in the world."[47] Hitchcock was then signed up to a seven-year contract by Selznick and moved to Hollywood.
Second World War
"The idea of a nation of devoted cinema-goers is inextricably linked with the number of classic films released during the war years. This was British cinema’s ‘golden age’, a period in which filmmakers such as Humphrey Jennings, David Lean, Powell and Pressburger, and Carol Reed came to the fore."[48]
Published in The Times on 5 September 1939, two days after Britain declared war on Germany, George Bernard Shaw’s letter protested against a government order to close all places of entertainment, including cinemas. ‘What agent of Chancellor Hitler is it who has suggested that we should all cower in darkness and terror “for the duration”?’. Within two weeks of the order cinemas in the provinces were reopened, followed by central London within a month.[48] In 1940, cinema admissions figures rose, to just over 1 billion for the year, and they continued rising to over 1.5 billion in 1943, 1944 and 1945.[48]
Towards the end of the 1940s, the Rank Organisation became the dominant force behind British film-making, having acquired a number of British studios and the Gaumont chain (in 1941) to add to its Odeon Cinemas. Rank's serious financial crisis in 1949, a substantial loss and debt, resulted in the contraction of its film production.[50] In practice, Rank maintained an industry duopoly with ABPC (later absorbed by EMI) for many years.
Under the Import Duties Act 1932, HM Treasury levied a 75% tariff on all film imports on 6 August 1947 which became known as Dalton Duty (after Hugh Dalton then the Chancellor of the Exchequer). The tax came into effect on 8 August, applying to all imported films, of which the overwhelming majority came from the United States; American film studio revenues from the UK had been in excess of US$68 million in 1946. The following day, 9 August, the Motion Picture Association of America announced that no further films would be supplied to British cinemas until further notice. The Dalton Duty was ended on 3 May 1948 with the American studios again exported films to the UK though the Marshall Plan prohibited US film companies from taking foreign exchange out of the nations their films played in.[51]
Following the Cinematograph Film Production (Special Loans) Act 1949, the National Film Finance Corporation (NFFC) was established as a British film funding agency.
The Eady Levy, named after Sir Wilfred Eady was a tax on box office receipts in the United Kingdom in order to support the British Film industry. It was established in 1950 coming into effect in 1957. A direct governmental payment to British-based producers would have qualified as a subsidy under the terms of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and would have led to objections from American film producers. An indirect levy did not qualify as a subsidy, and so was a suitable way of providing additional funding for the UK film industry whilst avoiding criticism from abroad.
Terry-Thomas starred with Peter Sellers in four films between 1957 and 1959. Their last film, I'm All Right Jack, was the highest-grossing film at the British box office in 1960
During the 1950s, the British industry began to concentrate on popular comedies and World War II dramas aimed more squarely at the domestic audience. The war films were often based on true stories and made in a similar low-key style to their wartime predecessors. They helped to make stars of actors like John Mills, Jack Hawkins and Kenneth More. Some of the most successful included The Cruel Sea (1953), The Dam Busters (1954), The Colditz Story (1955) and Reach for the Sky (1956).
Less restrictive censorship towards the end of the 1950s encouraged film producer Hammer Films to embark on their series of commercially successful horror films. Beginning with adaptations of Nigel Kneale's BBCscience fiction serialsThe Quatermass Experiment (1955) and Quatermass II (1957), Hammer quickly graduated to The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958), both deceptively lavish and the first gothic horror films in colour. The studio turned out numerous sequels and variants, with English actors Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee being the most regular leads. Peeping Tom (1960), a now highly regarded thriller, with horror elements, set in the contemporary period, was badly received by the critics at the time, and effectively finished the career of Michael Powell, its director.
The British New Wave film makers attempted to produce social realist films (see also 'kitchen sink realism') attempted in commercial feature films released between around 1959 and 1963 to convey narratives about a wider spectrum of people in Britain than the country's earlier films had done. These individuals, principally Karel Reisz, Lindsay Anderson and Tony Richardson, were also involved in the short lived Oxford film journal Sequence and the "Free Cinema" documentary film movement. The 1956 statement of Free Cinema, the name was coined by Anderson, asserted: "No film can be too personal. The image speaks. Sounds amplifies and comments. Size is irrelevant. Perfection is not an aim. An attitude means a style. A style means an attitude." Anderson, in particular, was dismissive of the commercial film industry. Their documentary films included Anderson's Every Day Except Christmas, among several sponsored by Ford of Britain, and Richardson's Momma Don't Allow. Another member of this group, John Schlesinger, made documentaries for the BBC's Monitor arts series.
The team of Basil Dearden and Michael Relph, from an earlier generation, "probe[d] into the social issues that now confronted social stability and the establishment of the promised peacetime consensus".[54]Pool of London (1950).[55] and Sapphire (1959) were early attempts to create narratives about racial tensions and an emerging multi-cultural Britain.[56] Dearden and Relph's Victim (1961), was about the blackmail of homosexuals. Influenced by the Wolfenden report of four years earlier, which advocated the decriminalising of homosexual sexual activity, this was "the first British film to deal explicitly with homosexuality".[57] Unlike the New Wave film makers though, critical responses to Dearden's and Relph's work have not generally been positive.[54][58]
As the 1960s progressed, American studios returned to financially supporting British films, especially those that capitalised on the "swinging London" image propagated by Time magazine in 1966. Films like Darling, The Knack ...and How to Get It (both 1965), Alfie and Georgy Girl (both 1966), all explored this phenomenon. Blowup (also 1966), and later Women in Love (1969), showed female and then male full-frontal nudity on screen in mainstream British films for the first time.
At the same time, film producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli combined sex with exotic locations, casual violence and self-referential humour in the phenomenally successful James Bond series with Sean Connery in the leading role. The first film Dr. No (1962) was a sleeper hit in the UK and the second, From Russia with Love (1963), a hit worldwide. By the time of the third film, Goldfinger (1964), the series had become a global phenomenon, reaching its commercial peak with Thunderball the following year. The series' success led to a spy film boom with many Bond imitations. Bond co-producer Saltzman also instigated a rival series of more realistic spy films based on the novels of Len Deighton. Michael Caine starred as bespectacled spy Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (1965), and two sequels in the next few years. Other more downbeat espionage films were adapted from John le Carré novels, such as The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1965) and The Deadly Affair (1966).
American directors were regularly working in London throughout the decade, but several became permanent residents in the UK. Blacklisted in America, Joseph Losey had a significant influence on British cinema in the 1960s, particularly with his collaborations with playwright Harold Pinter and leading man Dirk Bogarde, including The Servant (1963) and Accident (1967). Voluntary exiles Richard Lester and Stanley Kubrick were also active in the UK. Lester had major hits with The Beatles film A Hard Day's Night (1964) and The Knack ...and How to Get It (1965) and Kubrick with Dr. Strangelove (1963) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). While Kubrick settled in Hertfordshire in the early 1960s and would remain in England for the rest of his career, these two films retained a strong American influence. Other films of this era involved prominent filmmakers from elsewhere in Europe, Repulsion (1965) and Blowup (1966) were the first English language films of the Polish director Roman Polanski and the Italian Michelangelo Antonioni respectively.
After directing several contributions to the BBC's Wednesday Play anthology series, Ken Loach began his feature film career with the social realist Poor Cow (1967) and Kes (1969). Meanwhile, the controversy around Peter WatkinsThe War Game (1965), which won the Best Documentary Film Oscar in 1967, but had been suppressed by the BBC who had commissioned it, would ultimately lead Watkins to work exclusively outside Britain.
American studios cut back on British productions, and in many cases withdrew from financing them altogether. Films financed by American interests were still being made, including Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), but for a time funds became hard to come by.
Other films during the early 1970s included the Edwardian drama The Go-Between (1971), which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Nicolas Roeg's Venice-set supernatural thriller Don't Look Now (1973) and Mike Hodges' gangster drama Get Carter (1971) starring Michael Caine. Alfred Hitchcock returned to Britain to shoot Frenzy (1972), Other productions such as Richard Attenborough's Young Winston (1972) and A Bridge Too Far (1977) met with mixed commercial success. The British horror film cycle associated with Hammer Film Productions, Amicus and Tigon drew to a close, despite attempts by Hammer to spice up the formula with added nudity and gore. Although some attempts were made to broaden the range of British horror films, such as with The Wicker Man (1973), these films made little impact at the box office, In 1976, British Lion, who produced The Wicker Man, were finally absorbed into the film division of EMI, who had taken over ABPC in 1969. The duopoly in British cinema exhibition, via Rank and now EMI, continued.
In the early 1970s, the government reduced its funding of the National Film Finance Corporation so the NFFC started to operate as a consortium, including with banks, which led to them using more commercial criteria for funding British films rather than focusing on quality or new talent, moving to fund films based on TV shows such as Up Pompeii (1971).[60]
Some other British producers, including Hammer, turned to television for inspiration, and big screen versions of popular sitcoms like On the Buses (1971) and Steptoe and Son (1972) proved successful with domestic audiences, the former had greater domestic box office returns in its year than the Bond film, Diamonds Are Forever and in 1973, an established British actor Roger Moore was cast as Bond in, Live and Let Die, it was a commercial success and Moore would continue the role for the next 12 years. Low-budget British sex comedies included the Confessions of... series starring Robin Askwith, beginning with Confessions of a Window Cleaner (1974). More elevated comedy films came from the Monty Python team, also from television. Their two most successful films were Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) and Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979), the latter a major commercial success, probably at least in part due to the controversy at the time surrounding its subject.
Some American productions did return to the major British studios in 1977–79, including the original Star Wars (1977) at Elstree Studios, Superman (1978) at Pinewood, and Alien (1979) at Shepperton. Successful adaptations were made in the decade of the Agatha Christie novels Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Death on the Nile (1978). The entry of Lew Grade's company ITC into film production in the latter half of the decade brought only a few box office successes and an unsustainable number of failures
In 1980, only 31 British films were made,[6] a 50% decline from the previous year and the lowest number since 1914, and production fell again in 1981 to 24 films.[6] The industry suffered further blows from falling cinema attendances, which reached a record low of 54 million in 1984, and the elimination of the 1957 Eady Levy, a tax concession, in the same year. The concession had made it possible for an overseas based film company to write off a large amount of its production costs by filming in the UK – this was what attracted a succession of big-budget American productions to British studios in the 1970s.[citation needed] These factors led to significant changes in the industry, with the profitability of British films now "increasingly reliant on secondary markets such as video and television, and Channel 4... [became] a crucial part of the funding equation."[61]
With the removal of the levy, multiplex cinemas were introduced to the United Kingdom with the opening of a ten-screen cinema by AMC Cinemas at The Point in Milton Keynes in 1985 and the number of screens in the UK increased by around 500 over the decade leading to increased attendances of almost 100 million by the end of the decade.[62][63]
Goldcrest producer David Puttnam has been described as "the nearest thing to a mogul that British cinema has had in the last quarter of the 20th century."[65] Under Puttnam, a generation of British directors emerged making popular films with international distribution. Some of the talent backed by Puttnam —Hugh Hudson, Ridley Scott, Alan Parker, and Adrian Lyne— had shot commercials; Puttnam himself had begun his career in the advertising industry. When Hudson's Chariots of Fire (1981) won 4 Academy Awards in 1982, including Best Picture, its writer Colin Welland declared "the British are coming!".[66] When Gandhi (1982), another Goldcrest film, picked up a Best Picture Oscar, it looked as if he was right.
It prompted a cycle of period films – some with a large budget for a British film, such as David Lean's final film A Passage to India (1984), alongside the lower-budget Merchant Ivory adaptations of the works of E. M. Forster, such as A Room with a View (1986). But further attempts to make 'big' productions for the US market ended in failure, with Goldcrest losing its independence after Revolution (1985) and Absolute Beginners (1986) were commercial and critical flops. Another Goldcrest film, Roland Joffé's The Mission (also 1986), won the 1986 Palme d'Or, but did not go into profit either. Joffé's earlier The Killing Fields (1984) had been both a critical and financial success. These were Joffé's first two feature films and were amongst those produced by Puttnam.
Compared to the 1980s, investment in film production rose dramatically. In 1989, annual investment was a meagre £104 million. By 1996, this figure had soared to £741 million.[68] Nevertheless, the dependence on finance from television broadcasters such as the BBC and Channel 4 meant that budgets were often low and indigenous production was very fragmented: the film industry mostly relied on Hollywood inward investment. According to critic Neil Watson, it was hoped that the £90 million apportioned by the new National Lottery into three franchises (The Film Consortium, Pathé Pictures, and DNA) would fill the gap, but "corporate and equity finance for the UK film production industry continues to be thin on the ground and most production companies operating in the sector remain hopelessly under-capitalised."[69]
These problems were mostly compensated by PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, a film studio whose British subsidiary Working Title Films released a Richard Curtis-scripted comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994). It grossed $244 million worldwide and introduced Hugh Grant to global fame, led to renewed interest and investment in British films, and set a pattern for British-set romantic comedies, including Sliding Doors (1998) and Notting Hill (1999). Other Working Titles films included Bean (1997), Elizabeth (1998) and Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001). PFE was eventually sold and merged with Universal Pictures in 1999, the hopes and expectations of "building a British-based company which could compete with Hollywood in its home market [had] eventually collapsed."[70]
After a six-year hiatus for legal reasons the James Bond films returned to production with the 17th Bond film, GoldenEye. With their traditional home Pinewood Studios fully booked, a new studio was created for the film in a former Rolls-Royce aero-engine factory at Leavesden in Hertfordshire.[71]
Mike Leigh emerged as a significant figure in British cinema in the 1990s, with a series of films financed by Channel 4 about working and middle class life in modern England, including Life Is Sweet (1991), Naked (1993) and his biggest hit Secrets & Lies (1996), which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
The first decade of the 21st century was a relatively successful one for the British film industry. Many British films found a wide international audience due to funding from BBC Films, Film 4 and the UK Film Council, and some independent production companies, such as Working Title, secured financing and distribution deals with major American studios. Working Title scored three major international successes, all starring Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, with the romantic comedies Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), which grossed $254 million worldwide; the sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, which earned $228 million; and Richard Curtis's directorial debut Love Actually (2003), which grossed $239 million. The most successful of all, Phyllida Lloyd's Mamma Mia! (2008), grossed $601 million.
Aardman Animations' Nick Park, the creator of Wallace and Gromit and the Creature Comforts series, produced his first feature-length film, Chicken Run in 2000. Co-directed with Peter Lord, the film was a major success worldwide and one of the most successful British films of its year. Park's follow up, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit was another worldwide hit: it grossed $56 million at the US box office and £32 million in the UK. It also won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
However it was usually through domestically funded features throughout the decade that British directors and films won awards at the top international film festivals. In 2003, Michael Winterbottom won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for In This World. In 2004, Mike Leigh directed Vera Drake, an account of a housewife who leads a double life as an abortion provider in 1950s London. The film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. In 2006 Stephen Frears directed The Queen based on the events surrounding the death of Princess Diana, which won the Best Actress prize at the Venice Film Festival and Academy Awards and the BAFTA for Best Film. In 2006, Ken Loach won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival with his account of the struggle for Irish Independence in The Wind That Shakes the Barley. Joe Wright's adaptation of the Ian McEwan novel Atonement was nominated for 7 Academy Awards, including Best Film and won the Golden Globe and BAFTA for Best Film. Slumdog Millionaire was filmed entirely in Mumbai with a mostly Indian cast, though with a British director (Danny Boyle), producer (Christian Colson), screenwriter (Simon Beaufoy) and star (Dev Patel)—the film was all-British financed via Film4 and Celador. It has received worldwide critical acclaim. It has won four Golden Globes, seven BAFTA Awards and eight Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Film. The King's Speech, which tells the story of King George VI's attempts to overcome his speech impediment, was directed by Tom Hooper and filmed almost entirely in London. It received four Academy Awards (including Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Screenplay) in 2011.
2005 saw the emergence of The British Urban Film Festival, a timely addition to the film festival calendar, which recognised the influence of urban and black films on UK audiences and consequently began to showcase a growing profile of films in a genre previously not otherwise regularly seen in the capital's cinemas. Then, in 2006, Kidulthood, a film depicting a group of teenagers growing up on the streets of West London, had a limited release. This was successfully followed up with a sequel Adulthood (2008) that was written and directed by actor Noel Clarke. The success of Kidulthood and Adulthood led to the release of several other films in the 2000s and 2010s such as Bullet Boy (2004), Life and Lyrics (2006), The Intent (2016), its sequel The Intent 2: The Come Up (2018), Blue Story and Rocks (both 2019), all of starred Black-British actors.
In February 2007, the UK became home to Europe's first DCI-compliant fully digital multiplex cinemas with the launch of Odeon Hatfield and Odeon Surrey Quays (in London), with a total of 18 digital screens.
In November 2010, Warner Bros. completed the acquisition of Leavesden Film Studios, becoming the first Hollywood studio since the 1940s to have a permanent base in the UK, and announced plans to invest £100 million in the site.[75][76]
A study by the British Film Institute published in December 2013 found that of the 613 tracked British films released between 2003 and 2010 only 7% made a profit. Films with low budgets, those that cost below £500,000 to produce, were even less likely to gain a return on outlay. Of these films, only 3.1% went into the black. At the top end of budgets for the British industry, under a fifth of films that cost £10million went into profit.[77]
2010s
Idris Elba in 2007. He is one of the top 20 highest-grossing actors in North America, as of 2019.
On 26 July 2010 it was announced that the UK Film Council, which was the main body responsible for the development of promotion of British cinema during the 2000s, would be abolished, with many of the abolished body's functions being taken over by the British Film Institute. Actors and professionals, including James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Pete Postlethwaite, Damian Lewis, Timothy Spall, Daniel Barber and Ian Holm, campaigned against the council's abolition.[79][80] The move also led American actor and director Clint Eastwood (who had filmed Hereafter in London) to write to the British Chancellor of the ExchequerGeorge Osborne in August 2010 to protest the decision to close the council. Eastwood warned Osborne that the closure could result in fewer foreign production companies choosing to work in the UK.[81][82] A grass-roots online campaign was launched[83] and a petition established by supporters of the council.
Countering this, a few professionals, including Michael Winner and Julian Fellowes, supported the Government's decision.[84][85][86] A number of other organisations responded positively.
At the closure of the UK Film Council on 31 March 2011, The Guardian reported that "The UKFC's entire annual budget was a reported £3m, while the cost of closing it down and restructuring is estimated to have been almost four times that amount."[87] One of the UKFC's last films, The King's Speech, is estimated to have cost $15m to make and grossed $235m, besides winning several Academy Awards. UKFC invested $1.6m for a 34% share of net profits, a valuable stake that will pass to the British Film Institute.[88]
Christopher Nolan directed several of the early 21st century's most critically and commercially successful films.
In January 2012, at Pinewood Studios to visit film-related businesses, UK Prime Minister David Cameron said that his government had bold ambitions for the film industry: "Our role, and that of the BFI, should be to support the sector in becoming even more dynamic and entrepreneurial, helping UK producers to make commercially successful pictures that rival the quality and impact of the best international productions. Just as the British Film Commission has played a crucial role in attracting the biggest and best international studios to produce their films here, so we must incentivise UK producers to chase new markets both here and overseas."[92]
The film industry remains an important earner for the British economy. According to a UK Film Council press release of 20 January 2011, £1.115 billion was spent on UK film production during 2010. A 2014 survey suggested that British-made films were generally more highly rated than Hollywood productions, especially when considering low-budget UK productions.
2020s
In November 2022, director Danny Boyle expressed a negative sentiment of the British film industry in recent years, stating that "I am not sure we are great filmmakers, to be absolutely honest. As a nation, our two artforms are theatre, in a middle-class sense, and pop music, because we are extraordinary at it."[93]
The BFI's published figures reported £6.27 billion spent on film and high-end television production in 2022, with domestic UK film spend at £173.6 million. While the total spend was at a record high for the UK, the independent UK filmmaking spend decreased by 31% since 2021.[94]
The UK film industry was affected by the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike with 80% of behind-the-scenes workers surveyed stating that their jobs had been affected.[95]
Although it had been funding British experimental films as early as 1952, the British Film Institute's foundation of a production board in 1964—and a substantial increase in public funding from 1971 onwards—enabled it to become a dominant force in developing British art cinema in the 1970s and 80s: from the first of Bill Douglas's Trilogy My Childhood (1972), and of Terence Davies' Trilogy Childhood (1978), via Peter Greenaway's earliest films (including the surprising commercial success of The Draughtsman's Contract (1982)) and Derek Jarman's championing of the New Queer Cinema. The first full-length feature produced under the BFI's new scheme was Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo's Winstanley (1975), while others included Moon Over the Alley (1975), Requiem for a Village (1975), the openly avant-garde Central Bazaar (1973), Pressure (1975) and A Private Enterprise (1974) – the last two being, respectively, the first British Black and Asian features.
The release of Derek Jarman's Jubilee (1978) marked the beginning of a successful period of UK art cinema, continuing into the 1980s with filmmakers like Sally Potter and Ken McMullen, and producers like Stewart Richards, with success at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Awards. Unlike the previous generation of British film makers who had broken into directing and production after careers in the theatre or on television, the Art Cinema Directors were mostly the products of Art Schools. Many of these filmmakers were championed in their early career by the London Film Makers Cooperative and their work was the subject of detailed theoretical analysis in the journal Screen Education. Peter Greenaway was an early pioneer of the use of computer generated imagery blended with filmed footage and was also one of the first directors to film entirely on high definition video for a cinema release.
With the launch of Channel 4 and its Film on Four commissioning strand, Art Cinema was promoted to a wider audience. However, the Channel had a sharp change in its commissioning policy in the early 1990s and Greenaway and others were forced to seek European co-production financing.
In the 1970s and 1980s, British studios established a reputation for great special effects in films such as Superman (1978), Alien (1979), and Batman (1989). Some of this reputation was founded on the core of talent brought together for the filming of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) who subsequently worked together on series and feature films for Gerry Anderson. Thanks to the Bristol-based Aardman Animations, the UK is still recognised as a world leader in the use of stop-motion animation.
British special effects technicians and production designers are known for creating visual effects at a far lower cost than their counterparts in the US, as seen in Time Bandits (1981) and Brazil (1985). This reputation has continued through the 1990s and into the 21st century with films such as the James Bond series, Gladiator (2000) and the Harry Potter franchise.
From the 1990s to the present day, there has been a progressive movement from traditional film opticals to an integrated digital film environment, with special effects, cutting, colour grading, and other post-production tasks all sharing the same all-digital infrastructure. The London-based visual effects company Framestore, with Tim Webber the visual effects supervisor, have worked on some of the most technically and artistically challenging projects, including, The Dark Knight (2008) and Gravity (2013), with new techniques involved in Gravity realized by Webber and the Framestore team taking three years to complete.[96]
The availability of high-speed internet has made the British film industry capable of working closely with U.S. studios as part of globally distributed productions. As of 2005, this trend is expected to continue with moves towards (currently experimental) digital distribution and projection as mainstream technologies. The British film This Is Not a Love Song (2003) was the first to be streamed live on the Internet at the same time as its cinema premiere.
Sir Carol Reed was an English film director and producer, best known for Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), The Third Man (1949), and Oliver! (1968), for which he was awarded the Academy Award for Best Director.
Michael Latham Powell was an English filmmaker, celebrated for his partnership with Emeric Pressburger. Through their production company The Archers, they together wrote, produced and directed a series of classic British films, notably The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Canterbury Tale (1944), I Know Where I'm Going! (1945), A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951).
Sir Alexander Korda was a Hungarian–born British film director, producer, and screenwriter, who founded his own film production studios and film distribution company.
Verity Ann Lambert was an English television and film producer.
The Rank Organisation is a British entertainment conglomerate founded by industrialist J. Arthur Rank in April 1937, Rank also served as the company chairman. It quickly became the largest and most vertically integrated film company in the United Kingdom, owning production, distribution, and exhibition facilities as well as manufacturing projection equipment and chairs. It also diversified into the manufacture of radios, TVs and photocopiers. The company name lasted until February 1996, when the name and some of the remaining assets were absorbed into the newly structured Rank Group plc. The company itself became a wholly owned subsidiary of Xerox and was renamed XRO Limited in 1997.
Amicus Productions was a British film production company, based at Shepperton Studios, England, active between 1962 and 1977. It was founded by American producers and screenwriters Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg.
Sir Michael Elias Balcon was an English film producer known for his leadership of Ealing Studios in west London from 1938 to 1956. Under his direction, the studio became one of the most important British film studios of the day. In an industry short of Hollywood-style moguls, Balcon emerged as a key figure, and an obdurately British one too, in his benevolent, somewhat headmasterly approach to the running of a creative organization. He is known for his leadership, and his guidance of young Alfred Hitchcock.
Rudolph Cartier was an Austrian television director, filmmaker, screenwriter and producer who worked predominantly in British television, exclusively for the BBC. He is best known for his 1950s collaborations with screenwriter Nigel Kneale, most notably the Quatermass serials and their 1954 adaptation of George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Alexander Mackendrick was an American-born Scottish film director and screenwriter. He directed nine feature films between 1949 and 1967, before retiring from filmmaking to become an influential professor at the California Institute of the Arts.
Frank Launder was a British writer, film director and producer, who made more than 40 films, many of them in collaboration with Sidney Gilliat.
Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC), originally British International Pictures (BIP), was a British film production, distribution and exhibition company active from 1927 until 1970 when it was absorbed into EMI. ABPC also owned approximately 500 cinemas in Britain by 1943, and in the 1950s and 60s owned a station on the ITV television network. The studio was partly owned by Warner Bros. from about 1940 until 1969; the American company also owned a stake in ABPC's distribution arm, Warner-Pathé, from 1958. It formed one half of a vertically integrated film industry duopoly in Britain with the Rank Organisation.
Michael Leighton George Relph was an English film producer, art director, screenwriter and film director. He was the son of actor George Relph.
Stephen Woolley is an English filmmaker and actor. His career has spanned over three and a half decades, for which he was awarded the BAFTA award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema in February 2019. As a producer, he has been Oscar-nominated for The Crying Game (1992), and has produced multi-Academy Award nominated films including Mona Lisa (1986), Little Voice (1998), Michael Collins (1996), The End of the Affair (1999), Interview with the Vampire (1994), and Carol (2016). He runs the production company Number 9 Films with his partner Elizabeth Karlsen.
The Lion Has Wings is a 1939 British, black-and-white, documentary-style, propaganda war film that was directed by Adrian Brunel, Brian Desmond Hurst, Alexander Korda and Michael Powell. The film was produced by London Film Productions and Alexander Korda Film Productions and 'was preparing the nation [for war] and shining a light on the power of the RAF'.
Charles Herbert Frend was an English film director and editor, best known for his films produced at Ealing Studios. He began directing in the early 1940s and is known for such films as Scott of the Antarctic (1948) and The Cruel Sea (1953).
Victor Saville was an English film director, producer, and screenwriter. He directed 39 films between 1927 and 1954. He also produced 36 films between 1923 and 1962.
Stuart Legg was a pioneering English documentary filmmaker. At the 14th Academy Awards in 1941, Legg's National Film Board of Canada film Churchill's Island became the first-ever documentary to win an Oscar.
David Edward Rose was a British television producer and commissioning editor.
Hollywood and the United Kingdom are connected via the American industry's use of British source material, an exchange of talent, and Hollywood's financial investment in British facilities and productions. The American studios have had their own bases in the UK in the past, such as MGM-British, and Warner Bros. owned shares in the now long disestablished British distributor Warner-Pathé, once part of the Associated British Pictures Corporation. The U.K. has had major production studios in the United States such as Trilith Studios.
The BFI Production Board (1964-2000) was a state-funded film production fund managed by the British Film Institute (BFI) and "explicitly charged with backing work by new and uncommercial filmmakers." Emerging from the Experimental Film Fund, the BFI Production Board was a major source of funding for experimental, art house, animation, short and documentary cinema, with a continuing commitment to funding under-represented voices in filmmaking.
↑ McKernan, Luke (2018). Charles Urban: Pioneering the Non-Fiction Film in Britain and America, 1897–1925. University of Exeter Press. ISBN978-0859892964.
↑ Leff, Leonard J., The Rich and Strange Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick in Hollywood. University of California Press, 1999, p. 16.
↑ See also David ThomsonA New Biographical Dictionary of Film, London: Little, Brown, 2002, p. 213, and (for a defence) Brian McFarlane (ed.), The Encyclopedia of British Film, 2003, London: Methuen/BFI, p. 168.
Low, Rachael. 1985. Film Making in 1930s Britain. London: George, Allen and Unwin
Rotha, Paul. 1973. Documentary diary; an informal history of the British documentary film, 1928–1939, New York: Hill and Wang
Swann, Paul. 2003. The British Documentary Film Movement, 1926–1946. Cambridge University Press
World War II
Aldgate, Anthony and Richards, Jeffrey 2nd Edition. 1994. Britain Can Take it: British Cinema in the Second World War. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press
Barr, Charles; Ed. 1986. All Our Yesterdays: 90 Years of British Cinema. London: British Film Institute
Murphy, Robert. 2000. British Cinema and the Second World War. London: Continuum
[fr] Rousselet, Francis Et le Cinéma Britannique entra en guerre..., Cerf-Corlet, 2009, 240pp.
Post-War
Friedman, Lester; Ed. 1992. British Cinema and Thatcherism. London: UCL Press
Geraghty, Christine. 2000. British Cinema in the Fifties: Gender Genre and the New Look. London Routledge
Gillett, Philip. 2003. The British Working Class in Postwar Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press
Murphy, Robert; Ed. 1996. Sixties British Cinema. London: BFI
Shaw, Tony. 2001. British Cinema and the Cold War. London: I.B. Tauris
1990s
Brown, Geoff. 2000. Something for Everyone: British film Culture in the 1990s.
Brunsdon, Charlotte. 2000. Not Having It All: Women and Film in the 1990s.
Murphy, Robert; Ed. 2000. British Cinema of the 90s. London: BFI
Cinema and government
Dickinson, Margaret and Street, Sarah. 1985. Cinema and the State: The Film industry and the British Government, 1927–84. London: BFI
Miller, Toby. 2000. The Film Industry and the Government: Endless Mr Beans and Mr Bonds?
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