For the past three years I have been living 50 years behind, devoting every moment of my spare time to a book (The Finest Years) about British cinema of the 1940s. As I immersed myself in the great film renaissance of that decade, I was dimly aware that we were in the middle of another one. Friends would ask me out to see the latest hit, but I was too busy thinking about Humphrey Jennings or Robert Hamer. Nevertheless, the new triumphs lingered at the back of my mind like the names in a military campaign-Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Madness of King George, Trainspotting, The English Patient, The Full Monty-and I resolved to catch up when I could.
I am doing so now, at last making use of my Blockbuster membership card. I suppose it is wonderful to see a new government eagerly taking up the cause of British film after years of neglect; gratifying that the Arts Council should pour so much Lottery money into production. But if you are at all familiar with the history of the industry, you can't help but feel jittery. Just as Britain has long been known for its boom-bust economy, so it has always had a boom-bust film industry. That is why we are always having renaissances.
Look at the statistics. To date, 17 Lottery-funded films have been released. The total sum of their budgets was ?30m, to which the Arts Council contributed ?13.6m. So far these films have taken only ?6.7m-of which ?4m was earned by one film, Shooting Fish.
Not an impressive record. But, as we are always being reminded, it remains an uphill struggle for British films, given the limited publicity and cursory distribution they receive. While a formulaic Hollywood movie can bask for weeks on several of the best screens in the West End, a small British film pops up on one tiny screen in Piccadilly. You must go as soon as you read about it, because next week it will be gone-to make way for the next small British film. There might be some gems, but most of us will never know.
It is true that more films are being made now than for a long time (100 last year), but what is the point if so few people see them? During the war film production declined-but those which were made received proper exhibition. The big circuits were British and had associated distribution and production companies. In the case of a film like The Red Shoes, the Rank Organisation made it, distributed it and exhibited it. This route to the box office no longer exists for British films. Today Hollywood owns not only all the main distributors, but also several large cinema chains. They might declare that they will distribute any film if it is good enough, but "good enough" means "Hollywood enough" in practice. This is the reality of the latest revival. Three of the five British triumphs I listed earlier were funded by American companies.
The most memorable film I have seen in recent months is Gary Oldman's Nil by Mouth. It is as good as anything Mike Leigh or Ken Loach have done, but it evokes memories of those realist dramas the BBC used to make (long ago abandoned for cop shows and hospital dramas). It was seen by a few thoughtful types but passed over by the mass audience. Were it not for Oldman's profile as a Hollywood star, I would not have heard of it at all.
At this year's Cannes Film Festival, Pierre Henri Deleau, the jury leader, commented that the British cinema had "many new film-makers thanks to the Lottery, but not an artistic movement like the French nouvelle vague." This is certainly true, but you wonder whether artistic movements in the cinema are possible any longer in this age of independent, fragmented production. The institutions which could foster them have ceased to exist or sacrificed their identity to the market.
I suppose the GPO Film Unit or Ealing Studios were the nearest we had to a "school" of film-makers in this country. Run by two strong-minded individuals with a sense of public service-fostered by two world wars and a Great Depression-they provided a sympathetic framework within which a realist traditon of cinema could develop. John Grierson and Michael Balcon were both inspired by the great Brazilian producer and director Alberto Cavalcanti. The young film-makers he guided stayed together long enough to develop a sense of continuity and shared values. They cut their teeth on a lot of undistinguished films, but they produced one or two masterpieces.
In the 1940s, film-goers were proud of the British cinema because of its difference. Newspapers wrote articles praising the triumph of British realism over Hollywood schmaltz. In the middle of a war people welcomed films that provided some insight into their precarious lives. If we had an unusually thoughtful cinema then, this was partly because we had an unusually thoughtful audience.
Things have changed. A recent government report on the British film industry found that the mainstream audience does not want "gritty realism" and "does not want to see films which have too heavy a message." Citing Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Full Monty and James Bond, it concluded: "Films like these, which are both enjoyable and quintessentially British, have universal appeal across all ages and social groups and represent, for many, the way ahead for the British film industry."
So the commercial imperative is to be the same as Hollywood, albeit in a "British" way. Four Weddings and a Funeral offers a tourist brochure version of England, more concerned to pander to an American audience's fantasies about Britain than to offer any accurate insights. With its reaffirmation of a cinema of escapism and make-believe, it reminded me of the romantic comedies that Herbert Wilcox used to make after the war-Spring in Park Lane, Maytime in Mayfair, The Courtneys of Curzon Street -which, in their day, caught the Hollywood idiom of polished but inconsequential entertainment. Hugh Grant is this generation's Michael Wilding.
This summer, while the sequel to Four Weddings and a Funeral was being shot in Notting Hill, two of the most popular films were Sliding Doors and Martha-Meet Frank, Daniel & Laurence. With their American stars finding romance in a picture postcard London, they were a conscious evocation of the Four Weddings formula. Hollywood was, after all, built on the principle that audiences are happy to see the same film over and over again. And, as the government report noted: "Most cinema-goers are fairly risk-averse in their choice of films." Maybe this explains how the unadventurous Full Monty can become the most successful film in the history of the British cinema, grossing $225m. In another age it might have popped up on television as an amusing Play for Today, and been quickly forgotten; but in these conservative times, with its echoes of all those cosy little Ealing comedies, it has the reassuring ring of the familar.
Hollywood studios are now eager to acquire more Ealing comedies. At this year's Cannes Festival, Fox Searchlight paid $5m to distribute a comedy called Waking Ned, about an Irish villager who dies of shock when he wins the lottery: two of his friends decide to impersonate him so that they can claim the jackpot. The participants in the bidding for the film compared it to Whisky Galore, Local Hero and-inevitably-The Full Monty.
Whatever the sense of d?j? vu, you have to admire the way Hollywood recognises material of universal appeal. The basic theme of the Ealing comedies and their later reincarnations has been a cornerstone of Hollywood since Charlie Chaplin fought the bully in Easy Street-the triumph of the little guy against the odds. But in the continuing struggle between Hollywood and indigenous film industries, the little guy never wins.
Never in the history of the British cinema have there been quite so many committees or initiatives. This year at Cannes, Chris Smith, the culture secretary, announced a Booker-style prize for film: Orange, the mobile telephone network, and Path? are launching a scriptwriting and production prize supported by no fewer than four other organisations: the Sunday Times, Odeon Cinemas, the First Film Foundation and the Script Factory.
Odeon Cinemas expressed satisfaction in helping to create new films that its customers would enjoy; the Sunday Times declared that the competition would "make it that bit easier to be the next Orson Welles or Hal Hartley"-two directors who made precisely the kind of films Odeon would not want to show to its customers.
Perhaps it is understandable if the platitudes of the various committees and boards should fill us with a nostalgia for the past. In the 1940s there were charismatic figures who could talk to the businessmen, yet inspire and guide the artists too. There are still many film-makers who do not regard The Full Monty as a model. But as I begin to research a biography of Alexander Korda, I cannot help wondering what he would have made of this latest British film renaissance. Korda, who once famously remarked that he didn't grow on trees, would certainly have worried about the absence of someone like himself.
