Essay comparing and contrasting the difference between British and American film from 1930's to 2000's

Essay comparing and contrasting the difference between British and American film from 1930's to 2000's.

The difference between British and American films now is absolutely enormous with America blowing Britain completely out of the water; but was this always the case? Has America always made more money from films than Britain has or is it only in more recent years that they've started to take the lead? The answer to that question will be concluded by the end of this essay. Technical advancements will definitely be a factor that I will be comparing but I will also take into account the film budgets as well. Every possible crook and cranny will be analysed to find out whether America has always been the film superpower or whether it had to win that title.

The first thing I will cover will be the years where Britain were almost on level-pegging with America, this era was the 1930's to 1940's. 1936 is often referred to as the 'golden age' of cinema but it was actually the 1940's that are generally thought of as Britain's greatest years. This is because it was during these years that a lot of the old great war films were made. Although it was also during these years that America released the film that gave them a jumpstart in the film industry. In 1941 Citizen Kane was released and even today that film is remembered as on of the greats.

The next few decades after this were poor for the British film industry in comparison to the American one. This is due to the fact that America released some more all-time greats that even went on to have more great sequels. Films like Jaws and Star Wars. Star Wars was in fact a massive risk for America at this point because until Lucas Film released their biggest title Science-Fiction films were not at all popular; in fact most of them up until this point were a total flop, that is until the tide was changed and now Science-Fiction is probably the most notable of all the film genres! The only prominent film that Britain managed to release during this time was Trainspotters - which coincidentally is releasing its long-awaited sequel this year.

Due to the fact that America had sky-rocketed ahead of Britain in the film industry, Britain had to use American companies to make films like Harry Potter and James Bond because otherwise Britain just would not have the funds needed to produce, advertise and distribute them. Even though the Harry Potter franchise alone made over one billion pounds for the British Film Industry there is still no way they can compete with America. Although they had a bit of a boost when James Cameron released Avatar because despite the fact that America just produced the highest-grossing film in history, they had to sacrifice the use of digitally exporting films - this meant that Britain could now get films at just as good quality as America could, as opposed to getting the used tapes that had a clear difference in quality.

So Britain could now have high-quality films in their cinema's. This would have been an absolute dream for the British Film Industry, more people going to see films at the cinema and therefore bringing money into it. The only problem with this was that America soon rectified the problem they had and subsequently opened a range of multiplex cinema's such as Vue, Cineworld and Odeon. This meant that America could now take advantage of the increase in cinema-goers and also determine what films were played when in their cinemas. This meant that there was a rise in American films and a decrease in British films, resulting in yet another loss for the British Film Industry.