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After more than two years of earnest fact-finding and many months of laborious lawmaking, the British Government last week breathed a sigh of accomplishment. They had just passed what they believed to be holeproof legislation to replace the punctured, lately-expired Cinematograph Films Act of 1927.

In 1927 aggressive Hollywood had knocked the cinema industry of the United Kingdom flatter than any British heavyweight. From Lands End to the Shetlands, British cinemas were showing 16 Hollywood films to England's one. To get the slumped industry back on its feet. Parliament enacted a ten-year plan that involved 1) making Hollywood invest in a number of British-made pictures according to quotas (determined by the number of Hollywood pictures distributed in the British Isles); and 2) making British cinema theatres show a similarly determined quota of British-made pictures. To effect this, Parliament set up a sliding scale of quota quantity required during the act's ten-year tenure. But what it neglected to establish was a standard of quality for quota films.

By last year the 1927 Films Act had proved a more colossal flop than anyone could have predicted. British producers had made an increasing number of sleazy, two-bit pictures--known as "quota quickies"--had pandered them at bargain prices ($10,000 to $25,000) to Hollywood, to be used as quota films. British audiences hissed and jeered them, and exhibitors, forced by law to show them, tried to palm them off at hours when their theatres were practically empty. Crawling with quota quickies, the British industry got a bad name at home and abroad. The mushroom growth of British films which had followed the promising early years of the ten-year plan began to wither. When the 1927 quota act expired on March 31, only three percent of the 640 British producers registered in the last ten years were still doing business. Of England's 10,000 cinema artisans, 8,000 were jobless.

Under the new act. Parliament hopes to invigorate the home industry by 1) upping the quota and 2) exterminating the quota quickie. Under the new sliding scale, Hollywood must this year produce 15 films in England for every 100 of its own it shows here. In hte next ten years the requirement will rise to 30 films per 100. But to qualify as a quota film under the new law, a production must represent at least $37,500 in British studio labor costs. Since labor is reckoned at about half the total cost of production, quota films in future will cost about $75,000. For films representing labor costs of $112,500, two quota credits will be allowed, and for labor costs of $187,500, three quota credits. For distribution of such films outside Britain additional credits accrue.

The multiple credit allowances were set up in the hope that Hollywood might thus be induced to produce in the United Kingdom for the world market. That $75,000 pictures could not be expected to compete in the world market with Hollywood's glossy, million-dollar exports Parliament knew quite well. But canny Britishers knew equally well that if Hollywood had to make between 75 and 150 quota pictures annually in the British Isles at a minimum cost of $75,000 each, it would undoubtedly find it good business to spend enough extra to insure a world-wide return on its investment.

To U. S. cinemaudiences, Gaumont British and Alexander Korda's London Film have been Britain's sprucest salesmen. Last week Gaumont British and Alexander Korda, proving that the British cinema industry is not entirely dormant, had two films apiece ready to join the U. S. Easter cinema parade. Of the four, the two less pretentious cost $450,000 each, represented the good homespun handiwork of which the British industry is capable when it is not making quota quickies or trying to imitate Hollywood's grand manner. The others were, important because they 1) cost about $1,000,000 each, and 2) showed it in varying ways. The best two were laid in Scotland, and both involved a dog:

Storm in a Teacup (Alexander Korda) is the tidiest, canniest, best-played bit of heather comedy to come from across the sea since Rene Clair made The Ghost Goes West. Provost Gow of Baikie (Cecil Parker), treading pompously toward Parliament, stumbled over Mrs. Honoria Hegarty's (Sara Allgood's) dog. Patsy, and her without the money to buy him a license at all. With the twists given this incident by a bright young journalist (Rex Harrison), Patsy's grief is heard all the way to London, and the resulting sympathy nearly forces Provost Gow into the political doghouse. But his daughter Victoria (Vivien Leigh) brings everybody to heel.

Before she does. Storm in a Teacup manages to stick a few thistles on the shiny seat of British statesmanship, has its fun at the expense of bench & bar, gives a friendly, honest picture of Scottish life. That the story is as purely Scottish as haggis or brose is the doing of Playwright Tames Bridie, who a year ago took a Highland fling at Bruno Frank's German Sturm im Wasserglas, turned it into a Barrie-like play.

To the Victor (Gaumont British) is a braw and bracing cinema story directed by versatile young Robert Stevenson (Nine Days a Queen, Non-Stop New York), based on Alfred Ollivant's Bob Son of Battle. As the dour old sheepherder, whose heart is as black as his dog, Black Wull, cinemaudiences may find squat Actor Will Fyffe's burring phrases difficult to understand, his meaning never. Veteran Actor Fyffe's renown as a folksy character is one of the brightest in Britain. His career as an entertainer started in his teens, when in one night he played a gravedigger, the ghost and a strolling player in Hamlet, did a blackface curtain piece and closed the evening with a clog dance, all for four shillings, eleven pence. But his greatest acclaim has been from the music halls where his variety turns have topped bills all over the English-speaking world. Already a notable success in cinema, he will later this year make Rob Roy for Gaumont British.

Sailing Along (Gaumont British) stars England's top singer and dancer, Jessie Matthews, in a jarring $900,000 blend of inexpensive, landscapy charm and budget-eating, Hollywood-inspired bandbox decor. In the ginghamy raiment of a river barge waif, Actress Matthews' sturdy, bike-legged nimbleness seems to belie her Cockney wispyness. But squired to proper-dance frocks and slippers and a fancy stage career by Soup Magnate Roland Young. she dances dainty duos with the U. S.'s Jack Whiting, sings her way to a typical cinemusical fadeout.

The Divorce of Lady X (Alexander Korda). A neat pick-me-up for jaded grownups. Producer Korda's first try in Technicolor is a saucy farce with three attractive attributes: 1) provocative Eurasian-looking Merle Oberon cutting the comic corners with all her curves and fast ones; 2) a top-flight British cast; 3) Technicolor. Aside from that used in animated cartoons, most Technicolor is a prettifying process that sets great store on being called "unobtrusive." Lady X's Technicolor is consciously as obtrusive as possible, jumped on production cost to $1,2000,000. When the scene opens on a nasty London night, Technicolor sets the mood with blinking Bovril and Schweppe signs through a dank yellow fog. When Actor Laurence Olivier discovers a sprightly message daubed on his hotel-room mirror, the audience can see at a glance that it was written with Actress Oberon's lipstick. In the country, horses, dogs and gentry chasing across light-bathed landscapes are hunting prints in motion. As scientifically suspect as the theory that the waters of the Liffey make the best stout is the notion that British water develops the best in Technicolor. But whatever the natural aids, Producer Korda's Technicolor is the best yet.

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