The Impact Of Heritage Films On The British Film Industry

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The Role of Heritage Films in Promoting British Culture and Economy

The political, cultural and economic condition of Britain has changed since the beginning of the 1920s, which plays an important role in supporting the film industry that is present in the UK. This made it possible to introduce the Cinematograph Films Act, which was in 1927 so that it supported the British film industry by giving exposure of the British films to the audience on a global scale and provided a moral and cultural alternative to the commercial cinemas of Hollywood. The heritage films of Britain had gained popularity and enjoyed an academic attention since the 1990s.

The heritage films use the crossover strategy that is used by Hollywood not only for the success of the economy but also uses it to an advantage for the culture. Thus, they play an important part in the national cinema of Britain. The use of strategies from Hollywood by combining it with national characteristics helped in gaining economic and cultural benefits for the country. The film industry of the country does not enjoy a huge financial status but has found certain strategies that will help in satisfying the demands with respect to culture and economy.

The heritage films in the 1980s were very much common and the films were in between the art-houses and the mainstream cinemas. These films were targeted for the middle-class audience and were mainly made to win various awards at the different film festivals. These cinemas were cultural in nature and were not focused on the commercial products, which was the output that was given by Hollywood cinemas. The perspective of the audience who view these cinemas needs to be taken in to account as well. it was seen that there was no entry of the heritage films in the British box-office, which was led by Titanic and was a product of Hollywood.

The audience of these films is considered to be different from the mainstream cinemas that are produced in Hollywood. The target audience that Hollywood has in the UK market is that it consists of mostly males and an adolescent audience. The heritage films of the country typically target the middle-aged and middle class people and consist primarily of female audiences. Some of the heritage films have a diverse target of audience, which are exhibited in the art-houses as well as in the cinema halls so that it can attract the younger and the mainstream audience apart from the niche audience (Finney 2014). It is seen that the heritage films not only played an important part in the British television industry but also conquered the audience who are based in America. Many film scholars were of the opinion that these films were shown in the art-houses and in the mainstream screens across the whole of United States. The students who were pursuing their graduates with respect to liberal arts studies were of the opinion that they visited the exhibition centres more than often to view the heritage films that were produced by the British film industries. One example of this would be the movie Chariots of fire (1981), which was released in Hollywood first for the audience where it won many Academy Awards; later on, it was released in Britain, where it was a huge success (Kehoe and Mateer 2015).  

Strategies Used by the Film Producers in the UK

During the first three decades, the talent of the filmmakers in Britain was concentrated on films that were realistic in nature and tried to portray the upper classes in their cinemas. This made the interests of the Americans grow for the British films and the American companies started to take control and dominate the film market of Britain from the second decade of history of cinema. The first British film that was based on moving pictures depicted the boat race, which was between Cambridge, Oxford, and the scenes from Derby where the name of the movie was Rough Sea at Dover. These films tried to portray the upper classes of the British nationality along with the picturesque landscape that they had in their countryside. This was also the first movie that was screened in the United States in the month of April 1896, which helps in understanding that the Americans were linked to the British products since that time (Steele 2015).

It was seen that during the First World War, the audience for the British cinema nearly doubled than what was there in the quieter times, which helped Hollywood in strengthening their supremacy on trade of films on an international basis. The film producers of Europe were struggling to produce films due to the financial and political reasons during the war, which gave Hollywood an opportunity to produce films that had a stronger casts, which made them popular. It was noted that in 1918 almost 80 percent of the films that were shown in Britain were supplied by the US. The industry related to production of British films declined on a larger scale while Hollywood made greater profits with the productions from the exhibition sectors (Jones 2017).

During the 1920s, the film production in Britain dropped to nearly 26 films within 1926. This made it impossible for the British films to gain success in the market of US for the first half of the decade. On the other hand, it was seen that the American companies nearly dominated the distribution sector in Britain, as the producers were struggling to get a space for the exhibition for the films and was lacking financially. The Hollywood industry established the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), which served them as the Public Relations agent. They negotiated with the representatives of states on national and international levels, which created a huge impact on the film production in the United Kingdom (Foster, Manning and Terkla 2015).

Target Audience for Heritage Films

Hollywood was interested in the production base that was located in the UK, which had helped them in earning more foreign revenues that were vital for the survival of the Hollywood studios. Hollywood had to represent the culture of the British people in a neat manner in their films so that the audiences would like it and for this reason the famous Hollywood studio known as Famous Players-Lasky, which later came to be known as Paramount had a production base in UK in 1919. The Anglo-American films that were produced until 1922 depicted the landscape of the country in a proper manner, which helped them in earning large number of audiences (Wing-Fai, Gill and Randle 2015).

According to Monk (2015), the Anglo-American relations with cinema improved between the periods within 1930 to 1950, which saw that the Hollywood studios were producing more than 150 films in between 1930 to 1945. The films were produced by Hollywood using the materials and settings that were sourced from the British. These films included sets that depicted the British staffs along with the history and rich culture of Britain, which was symbolized by buildings of grandeur sizes and the upper classes of the society. Some of the films such as Jane Eyre, Mary of Scotland and Pride and Prejudice were examples of Hollywood productions that were based on the heritage films of UK. During this period, Hollywood was in to an era of classical style, which was based on the successful studio at that time known as Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM).

The cinematograph Films Act of 1927 encouraged the film industry in Britain to take up Hollywood projects, which was also encouraged by the British government. This helped Hollywood as the British investors withdrew their money from the local productions and put it in the American films. This helped Hollywood, as they were the major shareholders in the market and was investing their money in few of the British films. Hollywood thus financed the heritage film culture and controlled most of the prestigious projects that were undertaken in Britain (DeFillippi and Wikstrom 2014). Since Hollywood was dependent on the box office of Britain, so they tried to make films on the war that was raging at that time. This Act had a positive and negative influence on the film industry that was present in the UK. The studios of Hollywood were involved wholly in to the production scenario of the British films and they went on to buy most of the production houses that was in existence in the country and turned it in to their own production base (Stacey 2013). The Hollywood studios trained and employed the British staffs so that they can produce films that will be selected by the audience, which will help them to earn revenue. This involvement with the American studios helped the country in producing more than 200 films in the year 1936. The rise of Hollywood in a country like UK was due to the unity with MPPC at the beginning and later on with MPPDA, where the British producers were struggling to fend their films on their own. The Americans also controlled the rate of distribution of the films for the British audiences, which had an impact on the British producers (Balio 2013).

Reception of Heritage Films by American Audiences

 According to Randle, Forson and Calveley (2015), the period of 1950s saw a decline in the attendance of the audience for the British films, as the number of audiences was halved during the 1950s. This was the problem that was faced by Hollywood as well and they had to adopt new techniques so that the audiences could be attracted once again to the cinema theatres. It was seen that Hollywood was producing less but expensive films, which had created an impact on the British screens thus affecting the number of audiences.

The American studios invested in the British production houses heavily during the 1960s, which helped the production being cheaper, as the labor market in the country was available at a cheaper rate. The films that were produced during that period were not successful and this was the reason why Hollywood retreated itself from the various production houses that it acquired in Britain (Landy 2014). The British government provided subsidies to Hollywood and revamped the financial plans with respect to television and the markets that were associated with it. this helped Hollywood as they were large conglomerates and their products were franchised so that it could succeed in the market. The success of Jaws helped Hollywood with the new strategies that were related to business. Due to these reasons, the film industry of the British had to look for alternate sources of funds (Schlesinger 2015).

In the recent period it can be seen that the heritage films of Britain continues to play an important part on the productions based on the Anglo-American films. The films such as Gosford Park (2001), Becoming Jane (2007), The Duchess (2008) and Jane Eyre (2011) are classic examples of the merger between the heritage films of Britain and the romantic comedies that are present in Hollywood. These films commercialized the market and the British government got an advantage on a cultural outlook based on these British films. The power structure of Hollywood has not been much of a different in the present century from the classic era, as most of the studios are still functional such as United Artists, MGM and others (De Pater, Judge and Scott 2014). 

Reference List

Balio, T. and British Film Institute, 2013. Hollywood in the New Millennium. Palgrave Macmillan.

De Pater, I.E., Judge, T.A. and Scott, B.A., 2014. Age, gender, and compensation: a study of Hollywood movie stars. Journal of Management Inquiry, 23(4), pp.407-420.

DeFillippi, R. and Wikström, P. eds., 2014. International perspectives on business innovation and disruption in the creative industries: Film, video and photography. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Finney, A., 2014. The international film business: A market guide beyond Hollywood. Routledge.

Foster, P., Manning, S. and Terkla, D., 2015. The rise of Hollywood East: Regional film offices as intermediaries in film and television production clusters. Regional Studies, 49(3), pp.433-450.

Jones, H.D., 2017. The box office performance of European films in the UK market. Studies in European Cinema, 14(2), pp.153-171.

Kehoe, K. and Mateer, J., 2015. The impact of digital technology on the distribution value chain model of independent feature films in the UK. International Journal on Media Management, 17(2), pp.93-108.

Landy, M., 2014. British genres: cinema and society, 1930-1960. Princeton University Press.

Monk, C., 2015. f2 The British heritage-film debate revisited. British historical cinema, p.176.

Randle, K., Forson, C. and Calveley, M., 2015. Towards a Bourdieusian analysis of the social composition of the UK film and television workforce. Work, employment and society, 29(4), pp.590-606.

Schlesinger, P., 2015. Transnational framings of British film policy: the case of the UK Film Council.

Stacey, J., 2013. Star gazing: Hollywood cinema and female spectatorship. Routledge.

Steele, D., 2015. Rethinking the focus of UK film support: Is subsidising US studios a safe strategy for UK film production in the coming decade?. Cultural Trends, 24(1), pp.74-79.

Wing-Fai, L., Gill, R. and Randle, K., 2015. Getting in, getting on, getting out? Women as career scramblers in the UK film and television industries. The Sociological Review, 63(1_suppl), pp.50-65.