Cinema - British Cinema

In spite of its initial contributions to the birth of the cinematography, the British industry was soon displaced by the one of Hollywood and the German, which explains that many English directors, like Herbert Wilcox or he himself Alfred Hitchcock, directed his first films in Munich or Berlin, where the average technicians were superior. While these and other directors as Maurice Elvey had in a moment begun to direct, the British producers did not see the incentive to invest in technologies outposts and new studies until the promulgation of the Cinematograph Act Film (1928), well-known like the law of quotas, that forced the exhibidores to project a minimum percentage of national films (near 20% in 1935). In few years the British production dinamizó (of 26 to 128 films in 1929).

Although the law had its bad side, like the production of films of very small quality to cover the quotas (the Quota Quickies), and the establishment of American producers through English companies satellites to operate the market, two net British companies, BIP (British International Pictures) and the Gaumont-British, consolidated their positions with more ambitious productions. The BIP, for example, produced three films directed by E.A. Dupont in their studies Elstree (Moulin Rouge, 1928; Piccadilly, 1929; and It castrates Forlorn, 1931), that few years before had been made in Germany. Castrate Forlorn, rolled sonorous film in three different languages and with three different distributions, it was an example of multilingual film, in an attempt to arrive at the international markets. When in 1932 the proprietors of the Gaumont-British, the Ostrer brothers, acquired and reformed the studies Lime Grove, Michael Balcony, like executive producer, made the express of Rome, his greater film until that moment and prototype of train thrillers. Written by Sidney Gilliat, who would get to be one of the most important British directors, directed by Walter Forde, with prestigious German photographer Günther Krampf as director of photography and carried out by Conrad Veidt in a memorable interpretation, he demonstrated that success in the United States with produced films of quality in England could be had.

The German cinematographic industry entered declivity with the invention of the sonorous one and many technicians German went towards England in search of work. In addition to Krampf, the directors of photography Mutz Greenbaum (that soon would adopt the name of Max Greene) and Otto Heller, or the decorators Oscar Werndorff and Alfred Junge, among others, settled definitively in Great Britain. Almost simultaneously, the producing director/Hungarian Alexander Korda, who had worked in Berlin, Hollywood and Paris, arrived at England sent by the Paramount to produce films destined to cover the quota with screen. After him an endless number would arrive from producers, scriptwriters and other technicians, forced to leave Germany after the triumph of nazism.