Film On Four

The International Market

Britain is undeniably a great source of talent on the world market but the British cinema going public has always had a very cynical opinion of its homegrown product. 85-90% of box-office takings over the last twenty years have been for Hollywood productions.

Jonathan Hacker and David Price, in the introduction to their book Take 10, describe the attitude thus; ‘A British audience, which might naturally be reluctant to watch foreign films, has always openly welcomed American cinema. This unconscious disposition has been so long standing that the taste of the British audience for film – their cinematic education – has been effectively formed by Hollywood’s finely crafted, glamorous entertainment. The result is that, today, a British film, despite its greater relevance for a British audience, has little appeal’.

Often a British film wouldn’t make an impact until it had been proved acceptable to American audiences, whether commercially as in Four Weddings And A Funeral or critically as with The Crying Game.