Overview of British Film Industry

British Film has been dominated by Hollywood since WW1. Any essay that discusses UK Film has to reference the cultural and ideological dominance of the Hollywood Film Industry to such as point that many cinema goers often will never see a film in any other environment than a multiplex cinema. They may also fail to recognise that many other countries have very successful film industries - this reflects a concept called the Hollywood Hegemony. Many Hollywood films are able to synergise two compatible products e.g. Star Trek / Angels and Demons are both a computer game and a feature film.

British Film can be defined on a number or levels (Culturally and Institutionally) e.g. commercially successful British Films like Slumdog Millionaire are only so because they are distributed by 20th Century Fox. Films like The Boat That Rocked are only commercially successful because they are distributed by Universal Studios. Independent films like Shifty and Looking for Eric can be categorised as British using Institutional and Cultural definitions. The UK Film Council often claim that films like Harry Potter are British and proudly incorporate them into their statistics but the key problem is that these films are distributed by Hollywood Studios like Warners / Parmount / Sony / 20th Century Fox which means much of the profit for these films is not ploughed back into the British Film Industry. For example, the most commercially successful ‘British’ film of the last 20 years is The Full Monty but this film was distributed by Fox Searchlight (the independent arm of 20th Century Fox.

American audiences often buy into the cultural stereotypes (exaggerated, hyper real representations) offered by many British films typified by the key collaboration between Working Title and Universal Studios. This successful collaboration has raised the profile and reputation of the British Film Industry with films like The Boat That Rocked and Atonement. Many of the settings and actors are familiar to American audiences and some British films like Notting Hill and Bridget Jones often have the additional familiarity of an American actor to ensure American audiences relate to the film e.g. as in Love Actually which was commercially successful in the states. Some ‘British’ recently have also been set in the U.S. e.g. How to Make Friends and Alienate People with Simon Pegg, an actor who is now well known to American audiences through Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz (both Working Title and Universal Studios). Ricky Jervais has had similar success in the States.

Commercially successful British Films tend to have higher production values than smaller independent films often directed by an auteur like Mike Leigh (Happy Go Lucky) and Ken Loach (Looking For Eric) whose main aim is not necessarily to receive commercial success but to gain critical success. Many commercially successful Hollywood films of recent years have been sequels or prequels or part of a large franchise which has ensured audience familiarity through audience cultural capital i.e. they are again familiar with the texts. Blumler and Katz’s 1974 Uses and Gratifications Theory can also apply to major Hollywood Films (audience appeals) and also Propp and Todorov’s Theory of Narrative Structure. The major Hollywood Studios form an oligopoly of ownership dominating global markets and ensuring commercial success by saturated advertising campaigns which many British Films cannot compete with. Many films become Event Movies as audiences are hooked by key dates that films will be released on e.g. Star Trek and the latest Harry Potter. Hollywood has often re-invented itself over the years to maintain this dominance e.g. it developed the idea of the High Concept Film like Avatar (3D) distributed by 20th Century Fox which could be easily marketed to Hollywood studio executives in one sentence. Hurt Locker achieved the Best Picture Oscar in 2010.

Star marketing is another way in which Hollywood Studios attract mass audiences but also through the type of films being offered – this is called genre marketing. British Film tends to focus on commercially successful genres like the Period Drama and the RomCom while British Film’s critically successful genre is Social Realism. Non realist Hollywood escapist films like Avatar, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter belong to the successful fantasy genre while another key success in terms of genre in Hollywood would be Science Fiction (2012). Many Hollywood Studios/Distributors are now owned by Multi National Conglomerates like the News Corporation who own 20th Century Fox, Sony who own Columbia Tri Star (Angels and Demons) and MGM and Viacom who own Paramount (Star Trek).

There are a number of successful production companies in the UK who are responsible for making (producing) a number of commercially successful films e.g. Working Title, Granada (The Queen) and Eon (Bond Films) but the UK remains an industry that is production led with emphasis on the narrative as opposed to Hollywood films which benefit from wide or saturated distribution with emphasis on ‘the look’, glossy mise-en-scene combined with star marketing and significant narrative action codes. Independent British Films like This is England tend to offer more realist representations which explore complex narrative themes while UK Films that collaborate with H-wood studios often have positive outcomes to appeal to mass audiences. British Film have benefited (only critically) from a range of independent distributors e.g. Optimum (This is England), Icon (Looking for Eric) and Vertigo (Football Factory) although Vertigo in 2009 collaborated with Hollywood with their first UK/US film – The Firm which was a remake of the 1989 Alan Clarke film with a young Gary Oldman playing a football hooligan, a culturally British storyline used many times before in Green Street, ID and Football Factory.

Another key collaboration for British Film has been between Film4 and the UK Film Council (now a disbanded Quango) on several films including This is England and Looking for Eric. This ensures another site of exhibition (Film4) who along with the historical UK Film Council’s Funds (Premiere Fund, New Cinema Fund, Development Fund and Prints and Advertising Fund) are looking to sustain success within the British Film Industry. The UK Film Council’s role has now been subsumed by the BFI. European collaborations with Pathe (French Distributor) & Canal+ in recent years e.g. The Duchess have also helped to extend the reputation of the industry. Film festivals like Cannes (France) are also an opportunity for films like Ken Loach’s Looking for Eric and in 2006 The Queen with Helen Mirren to represent the prestige of British Film and to enhance the reputation of the industry.

In 2010 Four Lions (Film4 funding, independent distribution, written by ‘Brass Eye’ Chris Morris) premiered at film festivals to guarded critical acclaim due to its controversial content and narrative themes of terrorism and suicide bombings. In October the London Film Festival showcased a number of new British Films and World Cinema. The Last King of Scotland opened the 2008 LFF which was then picked up and distributed by Fox Searchlight. British Film has been through a form of renaissance (re-birth) since the 1980s and offers, as Jill Nelmes suggests in ‘An Introduction to Film Studies’ a number of “disparate films, genres and movements”.