I am no Ingmar Bergman afficionado; I think I’ve only seen one of his movies in its entirety, Fanny & Alexander, and that was at least a decade ago. News today of his death, though, made me think, “I must catch part of the season of his films that will inevitably follow.” But then I realised TV no longer indulges in such frippery as film retrospectives.
As recently as a decade ago, when a director of Bergman’s stature or a revered actor died, a season of his films would appear on the BBC within a couple of months.
Now, no dice.
I’m aware that some of the retrospectives were tenuous in the extreme but, given the proliferation of digital BBC channels, I’m astonished and deeply disappointed that no time can be found amid the repeats of Two Pints Of Lager… and Fuck Off, I’m Fat on BBC3 or the repeats of Fantabulosa! and documentaries about gay politicians on BBC Four for occasional retrospectives on the likes of Bergman.
I fully appreciate that a series of Bergman’s Greatest Hits is not suitable for ITV or Sky Movies – but isn’t that precisely why public service broadcasting was invented?
Sadly you are unlikely to see such retrospectives, and it is a result of commercialism, but from perhaps an unexpected angle.
Previously there was a simple delineation between studios who made films, distributors who sold films and exhibitors who showed them. The BBC could ask someone to show a film, and they would give permission.
So far so very 1950′s. However people realised that the real money (unless you are A-list) is in distribution rather than production. Consequently distributors built libraries of film rights, selling on the rights to exhibit them theatrically and on TV. Generally they would hold these distribution rights for 10 years or more.
Exhibition has never been profitable. I recall one friend saying that a manager of a cinema they knew was taught that they were a sweet shop that showed films, not a cinema that sold sweets.
Realising where the money was, production people started to move in to distribution. This also had the benefit that they preserve their interest in the equity of the film whilst it is in exhibition. Plus when the rights revert to the producer of the film after the end of the distribution deal it basically goes back to themselves, or rather their allied company. This is a great way to screw independent filmmakers, but that’s for another rant.
So anyway, people like Film 4 and BBC Films started blurring the lines by producing, distributing to cinema chains and exhibiting through TV. So far so very 1990′s.
Then Warner Brothers decided for a while to cut out the middle man by producing and exhibiting in their own chain of cinemas.
Where the difficulty comes in is when the major studios (who have bought up rights to films as part of libraries) get bought and sold by big companies or private equity. There is a very good summary of who owns what here on wikipedia.
As you can see, when a company like General Electric own Universal, you wonder just how broadly GE’s original articles of association were drafted. The inadvertant side effect of this is that for all we know (and I couldn’t find who owns the British TV rights) the distribution rights could be owned by the UK Home Cooking Gold channel, who probably don’t realise it themselves. After all, owning Ingmar Bergman rights won’t have been the financial carrot dangling in front of them.
And much as the channel editor may want to show the retrospective, it just ain’t going to happen. So sadly the BBC (nor indeed UK Home Cooking) can no longer just decide to show a retrospective as a cultural tribute to the latest corpse, as in all reality the rights are owned by someone who bought it as part of the library that contained lots of profitable Cynthia Rothrock moovies.
This is the part of the film business that people who read Sight and Sound find hard to stomach(note – I do not describe these people as “film fans”; again, that’s for another rant). But it’s a sad truth that much of the art of cinema owes a tremendous debt to people like her, Seagal and the “12 year-old boys” who pay to watch those films. In doing this they keep the mortgages of the crew on those films paid while they work for peanuts on other more weighty projects. And I don’t want to sound high and mighty (nor rub the Minister’s nose in it) but I know this to be true as I’ve been to the Cannes Film Festival and seen the marketplace. All I can say after that experience is, “The horror, the horror…”
But where it all starts to get a bit wierd is when Sky TV go in with Odeon in a joint venture to fund film production, as has just been recently announced. Lord knows what happens there. But one things for sure, the money will still be made in the distribution, not in actually making the fecking films.
In the mean time, click here for the chance to stage your own Bergman retrospective chez Minister: http://www.the-seventh-seal.co.uk/ . (At the bottom right, click “win dvd”). Yes you’re right. I really am too generous.
To be fair to BBC4, they did do a perfectly good documentary including interviews, on Bergman a week ago, before he died. But the point on retrospectives is well met. Being a student at the Sorbonne in the early 90s, I used to hang around the latin quarter in cinemas such as the Action Ecoles, the Champo, le Studio des Ursulines and the Action Gitanes. When Fellini died in 1993, the Champo showed EVERY SINGLE ONE OF HIS FILMS BAR NONE in a three week run. This was in a cinema. Now even I would stop short of that (though Channel 4′s Hitch retrospective in 89 (which, oddly, ommitted only The Trouble With Harry because they didn’t have the right to show it) educated a nation) but why not, say: Wild Strawberries, Persona, Cries and Whispers and (in the light of the imminent Branagh treatment) The Magic Flute and Fanny and Alexander, the last two of which would undoubtedly have audience appeal. We could all stand to watch a bit more Bergman, just like we could all stand to read a bit more Thomas Hardy.