Whose fate? CINEMA

Something like three years' work had gone into the preparation of it.

Everything was set up, crews hired, technicians, plumbers, hairdressers, the whole catalogue of skills that go into the making of a film.

Then suddenly Metro Goldwyn Mayer announced that it was pulling out of the production and there were rumours too that their studios at Boreham Wood would be shut down.

That was particular 'Man's Fate'.

It marks a new and more serious development in the crisis of the British film industry.

What was once an expected seasonal hazard has now taken on the ugly threat of unemployment.

'Out of work' is rapidly becoming the most common expression in the film world and there are little prospects that 1970 offers any improveOn the contrary it looks as though the crisis will intensify.

The centre of the problem is, of course, located in Hollywood, and since 60 of the 70 films that constitute the annual British output are financed directly by American capital, it is clear that the growing crisis of American imperialism expresses itself most directly in this particular overseas outpost.

The big major companies are being hit by the credit squeeze and high interest rates.

According to the 'Economist' the balance sheets of the majors are as follows.

MGM has forecast a loss of 25 million dollars for the year; Columbia's profits were down 40 per cent; Paramount made a loss.

Twentieth Century Fox has declared a loss of 22 million dollars for the first nine months of the year, Universal a loss of 7 million dollars, Warner Seven Arts a loss.

Most of these companies have been taken over in the past year by vast American conglomerates. Gulf and Western is the parent of Paramount, Music Corporation of America of Universal, Transamerica of United Artists, Kinney National Services of Warner Seven Arts.

The movement into the entertainment industry by these vast combines reflects the general insecurity over the value of paper money which characterizes the crisis of world capitalism.

It is the speculative urge for quick returns which moves away from investment in basic industries and into service industries.

It is the same edginess and uncertainty that has produced currency speculation for quick The conglomerates have had to find new outlets for surplus capital and they have moved into the film world because there are still possibilities of enormous returns for relatively small capital investment.

The latest sensational example is "Easy Rider' which cost merely 375,000 dollars to make and is estimated to gross 50 million dollars.

The implications of this move suggest that the giants have entered films for a flutter, a spin of the roulette wheel.

What follows then is a rapid rationalization, a cutting back in output, a pruning of all that is inessential.

Studios are closed because they have expensive overheads to run. The number of films flutter form.

Four hundred workers were laid of the other week, ano productions are terminated abruptly and capriciously.

As in other industries the threat of unemployment is the prelude to an attempt to cut production costs and cut back on wages and gains that have been fought for and won over the past years.

What must become clear to workers in the industry is that now they are very much thrown into the centre of the crisis of world capitalism and the old reformist and economist demands are totally inadequate to the new situation.

You cannot negotiate redundancies and it is clear that the conglomerates are in no mood to 'pander' to the unions.

They want blood; cheaper and fewer productions, and that means that they are trying for lower wages and less employment.

The only fight that can now be waged must be a political one, to call for a nationalization of the industry under other illusions can only lead to defeat.

This makes it even portant for workers to be on their guard against reformist and Stalinist influence in the unions.

The Workers Press has always insisted on the cravenness of their class compromise and their ultimate betrayals.

Closing the books of ACTT membership is merely a defensive action, a response to a worsening situation.

But there is no place for this. A headlong fight and campaign has now to be waged, to raise the political consciousness of the membership, to clarify the real economic and political questions.

Workers in the industry must not be isolated from the other workers' struggles throughout the country.

The problem is a common one, the problem of world capitalism entering a deep crisis which can only be understood by Marxist revolutionaries.

The only defence is revolutionary attack by mass working-class action under the banner of Marxism.

As workers internationally are engaged in struggle on an unprecedented scale it is inevitable that middle-class reformists will enter the fray to curtail and head off this movement.

These tendencies must be fought.

The Free Communications Group tries to come onto the scene with all the old craven reformist illusions.

Workers in films and television must be on their guard against these poseurs and dilettantes.

They offer nothing but the polite gossip of the drawing room.

What must be done? The old policy of wait-and-see? Wait and see whether the conglomerates will sort out the problem for us, wait for further unemployment, doff our caps to the masters whose only reason in life is the extraction of profit, leave the problem in the hands of the reformist bureaucracy?

Or do we take up the fight politically as Marxists, finish this charade once and for all.

Call for nationalization of the industry under workers' control without compensation! Whose fate is it?