Word: quota
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...heavyweight. From Lands End to the Shetlands, British cinemas were showing 16 Hollywood films to England's one. To get the slumped industry back on its feet. Parliament enacted a ten-year plan that involved 1) making Hollywood invest in a number of British-made pictures according to quotas (determined by the number of Hollywood pictures distributed in the British Isles); and 2) making British cinema theatres show a similarly determined quota of British-made pictures. To effect this, Parliament set up a sliding scale of quota quantity required during the act's ten-year tenure. But what...
...last year the 1927 Films Act had proved a more colossal flop than anyone could have predicted. British producers had made an increasing number of sleazy, two-bit pictures-known as "quota quickies"-had pandered them at bargain prices ($10,000 to $25,000) to Hollywood, to be used as quota films. British audiences hissed and jeered them, and exhibitors, forced by law to show them, tried to palm them off at hours when their theatres were practically empty. Crawling with quota quickies, the British industry got a bad name at home and abroad. The mushroom growth of British films...
Under the new act. Parliament hopes to invigorate the home industry by 1) upping the quota and 2) exterminating the quota quickie. Under the new sliding scale, Hollywood must this year produce 15 films in England for every 100 of its own it shows here. In hte next ten years the requirement will rise to 30 films per 100. But to qualify as a quota film under the new law, a production must represent at least $37,500 in British studio labor costs. Since labor is reckoned at about half the total cost of production, quota films in future will...
...United Kingdom for the world market. That $75,000 pictures could not be expected to compete in the world market with Hollywood's glossy, million-dollar exports Parliament knew quite well. But canny Britishers knew equally well that if Hollywood had to make between 75 and 150 quota pictures annually in the British Isles at a minimum cost of $75,000 each, it would undoubtedly find it good business to spend enough extra to insure a world-wide return on its investment...
...British cinema industry is not entirely dormant, had two films apiece ready to join the U. S. Easter cinema parade. Of the four, the two less pretentious cost $450,000 each, represented the good homespun handiwork of which the British industry is capable when it is not making quota quickies or trying to imitate Hollywood's grand manner. The others were, important because they 1) cost about $1,000,000 each, and 2) showed it in varying ways. The best two were laid in Scotland, and both involved...