B Bo SER ANT RET ’ industry FILM INDUSTRY SMOTHERED British conference launches fight against American films ELECTRICIANS and film pro- ducers, housewives and movie stars, plumbers and stage cele- brities sat side by side here in Wyndham’s theater in London to giscuss what speakers described as the dying state of the British film industry. They were attending a confe-™ rence on “the Crisis of British Films” called by the Film Indus- try Employes Council. Over 450 delegates came from five unions represented on the council and from other sections of the labor movement. An equally. representative plat-. form faced the, audience. It consisted of famous film and stage stars Vivien Leigh, Sir Laurence Olivier, John Mills, Fe- lix Aylmer and leading officials ef the unions most deeply con- cerned with the crisis in the which now has mor’ than half its workers unemploy- ed and only four out of 27 studios working full time. Opening the conference, Sir Laurence Olivier described the state of the film industry as a galloping cancer. He roundly criticized those who deprecated ‘British Films, saying: “British films pay, they pay well, but they pay the wrong people.” Although he and _ conference chairman Gordon Sandison of British Actors Equity were at pains to emphasize that the conference was manifestly not intended to be political or anti- American, it was quite impos- sible for speakers to avoid being both, at least by implication. Olivier said, for example, that the financial problem of the Bri- lish film industry was that it had been developed almost entirely for the service of a foreign pow- er. CAPSULE REVIEWS “You Con Beat A-Bomb’ --only by outlawing if MR. MUSIC ffhere is nothing but Bing Crosby to recommend this musi- eal remake of Accent On Youth. Even the songs don’t seem as sprightly as usual. LAST DAYS OF DOLWYN Edith Evans delivers a superb performance in this British film about the intentional flooding of a Welsh village in 1892. But an otherwise fine story by Emlyn Williams breaks down complete- ly to become a near-Hollywood melodrama in the final sequen- ces. PANIC IN THE. STREETS A brutal chase after a gang- ster infected with bubonic pla- gue done by Elia Kazan in the familiar “documentary” style. Along the way the film becomes highly offensive in its treatment ef its working class characters and particularly of the foreign- born characters in the back- ground of the story. Zero Mos- tel, the comic, plays the part of a gangster — straight. RIO GRANDE John Ford, once great director of The Informer and The Grapes of Wrath, touches the depths of corruption with this vicious film against the Apache Indians. Give it a wide berth. YOU CAN BEAT THE A-BOMB This fraudulent RKO two-reel- er makes the perils of an atomic blast seem no more serious than the explosion of a giant fire- cracker. It purports to demon- strate that the effects of the A-bomb can be offset by taking certain simple precautions, but nowhere is it made clear that these precautions are useful only five miles, at least, from the center of the blast. Nor is there any word about getting together to. outlaw the A-bomb before it falls. CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING A charge of 50 cents for each imsertion of five lines or less with 20 cents for each additional line is made for notices appearing in this column. No notices will be accepted later than Monday noon of the week of publication. — WHAT’S DOING DANCE — Modern and Old-time Music, at’ Clinton Hall, 2605 EB. Pen- wer St., every Saturday night, 9 to 12, Music by VIKINGS Orchestra. Halli for rent — Phone HA. 3277. DANCE — Modern and Old-time Music, at Clinton Hall, 2605 E. Pen- der St., every Saturday night, 9 to- 42. Music by CLINTON EAST Orchestra. Hall for rent — Phone HA. 3277. : BUSINESS PERSONALS 3; TRANSFER .& MOVING, Cour- teous, fast, efficient. Call Nick at Yale Hotel, PA. 0632, MA. 1527, CH. 8210. SIMONSON’S WATCH Repairs — We repair Ronson’s, Jewellery, all types of watches and clocks. Til East Hastings, Vancouver. « CRYSTAL STEAM BATHS—Open every day. New Modern Beauty Salon—l763 E. Hastings.: HAs- tings 0094, SALLY BOWES INCOME TAX PROBLEMS — Rm. 20, 9 Hast Hastings. MA. 9965. A. Rollo, Mgr. 0.K. RADIO SERVICE. Latest fac- tory precision equipment used. MARINE SERVICE, 1420 Pen- der: St. West, TA. 1012. - WORK BOOTS high or low cut. see Johnson’s Boots. 63 West Cor- dova Street. . HALLS FOR. RENT RUSSIAN Available for meetings, weddings, and hanquets at reasonable rates. 600 Campbell Ave., HA. 6900. NOTICES NEW OFFICES OF THE PACI- FIC TRIBUNE ARE: ROOM 6, 426 MAIN STREET. PEOPLE’S HOME —. PT Dixieland Trio — Available for dances and socials. “Assure a suc- cessful evening.” Quality tops, rates reasonable, Call MA. 5288 for booking, . : Of every £1,000,000 (roughly $3,000,000) taken in at the box office, £400,000 ($1,200;00) goes to entertainment tax and £400,000 ($1,200,000) owners, to the movie house leaving only £200,000 ($600,000) for the film producer. Advertising and other expenses finally bring the producer's take down to £150,000 ($450,000). Olivier pointed out that Am- erican films, which now _ con- stitute 70 percent of the films shown in British theatres, have already paid for themselves be- fore they arrive in Britain. “Ws are a nice layer of cream for them ‘the Americans),” he said. * ia x A REPRESENTATIVE from the New Education Fellowship pleaded for British children’s films to be made. When he said an American told him Brit- ish children had a queer notion that all Americans were either cowboys or crooks, there were ries of, “Well, aren’t they?” Vice Chairman Ralph Bond of the Association of Cinema Technicians said 30 million movie seats are paid for each week and there was the basis for a very sound British film industry. “We object to British films being in a state of per- manent inferiority to. Holly- wood,” he said. : ; Bert Batchelor of the Elec- triciangs union caused an _ up- roar, the audience being divid- ed on the issue, when he said: “We see the crisis as merely one part of the general policy of retreat of the government in face of Américan pressure.” He described American films’ as be- ing “obsessed with sex, brutal- ity and fear of the unAmerican activities committee.” When some delegates dissented; the chairman intervened to ask the audience to let each speaker present his point of view. ‘The conference unanimously approved a 10-point program backed up by the five unions. | It includes proposals that the government prevent the sale o: idle studios for purposes other than film production; that the present exhibitors’ quota of 30 percent for British films be in- creased; and that a greater pro- portion of box office receipts be returned to. the producers. Film stars, including Olivier and his wife Vivien Leigh, will make personal appearances throughout the country to put directly to their fans the 10- point cure for Britain’s film crisis—-PHYLLIS ,ROSNER. -UNION HOUSE ZENITH CAFE 105 E. Hastings Street -VANCOUVER, B.C. J EAST END | TAXI |. UNION DRIVERS HAstings 0334 = FULLY 24-HOUR =UNSURED . SERVICE ~ 811 E. HASTINGS ST. Mt ~ RUBEN E NEESER J TE GG TVET IUR! COUNCIL POLICY INDICTED tisan city council. theaters with adequate space cannot be obtained. completion. No theater for .ballet - VANCOUVER CITIZENS, hundreds of whom were unable recently to see Katherine Hepburn in the Shake- spearean comedy, As You Like It, because the Interna- tional Theater, with its limited accomodation, was the . only theater available, have further cause to be incens- ed against the short-sighted policies of their Non-Par The famed Sadler’s Wells Theater Ballet will not appear here next fall because there is no suitable theater available. The Strand and the Orpheum, both controlled by Famous Players Corporation, which are the only stage ' facilities, are now limited to film showings and the In- ternational Theater is too small. The Sadler’s Wells Theater Ballet is only one of several such cultural at- tractions which will pass up Vancouver because theater The council’s action in diverting to other projects the $1,250,000 earmarked in the city’s 10-year plan for the much-debated and long-promised civic auditorium contrasts with the readiness with which all three govern- ments. civic, provincial and federal, allocate the tax- payers’ money for war projects — and rush them to It is a logical corollary of such an attitude that — apart from the efforts of amateur_groups — the princi- pal cultural outlet for the majority of Vancouver citi- zens remains the-extravagant American war propaganda which is now the principal output of Hollywood. Even the symphony, which promised to give Vancouver a new civic pride in cultural achievement, has been truncated by the same influences that control policy at the city hall and continue to obstruct a civic auditorium. and dressing room 4 GUIDE TO GOOD READING Jackson writes study of British classics A REVISION and = enlarge- ment of a series of articles writ- ten for the London Daily Work- er, T. A. Jackson’s Old Friends to Keep: Studies of English No- vels and Novelists (Lawrence and Wishart, London) is well worth the one-dollar purchase price at the People’s Co-opera- tive Bookstore, 337 West Pender here. Jackson begins with Defoe, and finishes with Arthur Conan Doyle. Swift, Bunyan, Fielding, Dickens, the Brontes, Thomas Hardy — these are a few of the writers he wants us to read. ‘And what he says about them, treating each in a few pithy pages, is well calculated to start you reading. The studies are introduced by’ a longer essay on “the Approach to Literature” in. which Jackson sets out polemically yet concise- ly the Marxist approach to cul- ture and to literature in particu- lar. Why should we spend time reading Defoe and Swift, Dickens and Thackeray, when there is so much else to read and to do? ‘ ‘Certainly because they are ex- citing and entertaining. But that arises from their vigorous attitude to life, from their un- derstanding of the society in which they lived, from their humanity, They help’ to awaken in us a sense of power of people and of their possibilities. (‘Their works help us to develop our hatred of capitalism and to un- derstand the fuller creative life socialism makes possible. In his opening essay, Jackson’ contrasts the achievements of bourgeois society in its revolu- tionary phase with the. position of bourgeois society today: “Apart from a few wealthy id- lers who patronise the arts as part of the ‘ostentatious con- sumption’ their standing dem- ands, bourgeois society cares nothing for art and science un- ] Tess" it “is a means of making money or of maintaining their system of exploitation. The prostitution of the arts to the ends of advertising, the output of Hollywood and ‘Tin-Pan Al- ley’, the ‘pulp magazines, the strip-cartoon journal, the tab- loid press* — these show the real ‘concern’ of the bourgeoisie. forcculture¢ © (p18) The quotations he gives from Gulliver’s Travels, for example, which satirise war, help to ex- plain why the great writers of the past are now the heritage and property of the working class. The big bourgeoisie today as the salesman of our national : independence is therefore the enemy of all the great achieve- ments of the past. The work- ing class, as Jackson writes, by abolishing exploitation will clear the way for the greatest advance that culture, the arts and scien- ces have ever known. We see this being fulfilled before our eyes in the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies, Jackson’s book helps us there- fore to learn from and appre- ciate the great English writers of the past, and to recognise in the working class the defenders and inheritors of that tradition, above all today. No doubt there is much to argue about in Jackson’s esti- mates of writers and novels. But I should like to make one point of criticism: that his enthusiasm! for the “thought-stream” method of writing adopted by James Joyce is mistaken and could only lead writers into a “dead end”, as much of Joyce’s own! work illustrates. Since the turn of the century, many progressive novels have been written in English. T. A. Jackson would do us all a fur- ther service in helping us to know and to popularise them. PACIFIC TRIBUNE — FEBRUARY 9, 1951 — PAGE 10 «