Production

British film pioneering reached a summit of achievement at such an early age that its subsequent decline must form the embarrassing theme of this second period, although it is still the story of a very young industry. The infant prodigy's promise had led not to a glorious maturity but to a state of arrested development, and the years 1906 to 1914 show two phases, first a humiliating period of stagnation, and after 1911 a noticeable but only partly successful effort, broken by the coming of war, to re-establish the former status of British production. During the first phase the pioneer producing companies generally failed to meet the increasing needs of the new art with either breadth of vision or commercial and artistic elasticity, and new activity in the industry tended more towards middleman functions than to production. The absolute number of films on the market increased, but the proportion of these which were of British make fell. New British firms sprang up, but their large weekly releases were of Italian and American origin. Countless dealers were putting out under their own names large releases which were at least 90 per cent of foreign make, the 10 per cent contributed by themselves being usually nothing more ambitious than simple actuality, interest or topical films. The great British pioneer, R. W. Paul, was turning back to his original business of instrument manufacture and abandoning his film interests. ¹ The brilliant Brighton inventor, G. A. Smith, was concentrating entirely on his experimental work in colour cinematography. The other producers—Williamson, the Sheffield Photo Company, even the Hepworth Manufacturing Company itself—sank into the doldrums of an unambitious obscurity, and dully followed the old routines. Film producers in America, Italy and France, chasing the future with all the zest the British had previously shown, put this country to shame, and by 1911 British production was oppressed by a feeling of inferiority which subsequent efforts had not succeeded in removing when they were interrupted by the war.