ABSTRACT
At the end of the war there was still a large number of renters, most of them independent private companies operating in comparatively small provincial territories, making their own choice of the many films offered by film publishers in London. During the next decade this situation changed completely. The open market, with its many small films of varying age, disappeared entirely. The situation which had emerged by the end of the period was one in which a comparatively small number of large renting firms, national in scale and with large capital resources, handled a much smaller number of films which were, however, longer and more individual in character. The renters were linked in several ways to the producers. Some, especially the American ones, were agencies or subsidiaries of production companies. A few of them became sponsors of British or joint British-foreign production, partially financing films which would be handled by them on completion. This trend greatly increased with the coming of quota legislation in 1927, when American renters began to sponsor production in British studios to make sure of the British quota they were now obliged to handle. The outstanding features of development in renting during the twenties was its growing concentration in the hands of a small number of prosperous and powerful firms, and the predominance among these of the subsidiaries of big American companies.
