The Herald: Putting classics up where they belong
Bruce Calvert
Putting classics up where they belong
ALISON KERR April 03 2008
Comment
When the 1935 version of The 39 Steps, starring Robert Donat, is re-released
next week, it won't be down to big names such as Warner Bros or Fox. In
fact, the company behind the release of the Hitchcock classic couldn't be
more different. The 39 Steps is in cinemas again because of two friends, a
flat in the west end of Glasgow and a passion for movies.
The Park Circus company was born five years ago from John Letham and Nick
Varley's love affair with old movies and now holds the UK distribution
rights to thousands of films: everything from Disney classics to Carry On
comedies. If you've seen a cleaned-up print of an old favourite in the
Edinburgh Filmhouse or the Glasgow Film Theatre, chances are it came from
Park Circus.
For Letham, who operates the company with Varley from a Glasgow flat,
running a firm specialising in the distribution of classic films not only
means being able to indulge his film-buff tendencies; it allows him to
spread the word about movies that have been overlooked by modern audiences.
The starting point, however, was simply the fact that everyone said trying
to book an old film for a cinema screening was such a frustrating process.
"There are two things you have to do to book an old film: you have to get
rights clearance and you have to get an available print. Both of these were
quite difficult, often to the point that planned programmes would just be
abandoned," says Letham.
He and Varley spotted a gap in the market for a firm that could take all the
hassle out of programming, by offering high-quality - often digital - prints
of films, with secured UK distribution rights. It was a classic case of, to
quote a vintage British movie title, the mouse that roared: a tiny company
(three full-time staff, one small office) making deals with major Hollywood
studios for the distribution rights to iconic movies.
Initially keeping their day jobs - they both worked in cinema marketing and
management - in case the idea didn't pan out, they decided to test the
waters with the 1962 movie Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Robert Aldrich's
gloriously over-the-top gothic horror about a deranged former child star who
terrorises her wheelchair-bound sister. A cult classic because of the
central performances of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, and the legendary
real-life rivalry between them, it was, says Letham, a film that had gone
out of circulation and was frustrating for cinemas to get hold of.
So, it was the challenge that appealed? "We chose it because it's one we
thought people would go back to see in the cinema. We thought it wasn't
over-exposed - it's not always being on the telly, as some are - but
everyone knows it."
They secured the rights from Warner Bros and agreed a five-year deal for the
UK. Baby Jane was followed by the acquisition of the Granada library, which
includes the Rank movies and the Rohauer collection of great silent movies.
"That became the sort of model for what we have today. We've now got
numerous libraries including Walt Disney and MGM/United Artists."
You might think competition for these films would be fierce, and that bigger
companies would have secured the rights a long time ago. "But doing this
probably doesn't make a lot of money for bigger companies," explains Letham.
"If you're Disney and you've got Enchanted, would you really want to have a
couple of days' booking at an independent cinema for a 10- or 20-year-old
title? For them, it's a lot of work for not a lot of return. With us doing
it for them, they can just sit back and get money from it. We're happy
because we're handling it and we're getting the stuff back out there."
And that, for Letham, is still the main motivation - along with ensuring the
prints that are screened are of the best possible quality. "The key thing we
do is invest in the libraries. We get new prints, we get involved in
restorations. Thanks to DVD, the source material for a lot of old classics
has been restored. We've benefited from this because we've been able to take
that same source material down another route and do it for cinema - which is
much higher quality than DVD, so you can have this really good cinema
experience thanks to work done on the film for DVD. It's sort of ironic."
What is it that makes watching the same film in the cinema a different
experience to watching it at home on a DVD? "It depends on the film. If you
take something like The Sound of Music, there's the appeal of the vastness
of the sets, the scenery, the music. With films like Casablanca or All About
Eve, I think the appeal is the script. It's almost like it's magnified when
it's on the big screen, so you pick up on things you might have missed.
Plus, you have other members of the audience reacting to things. Almost
every line in Casablanca provokes a reaction from the audience."
Casablanca is always a winner when it goes into the cinemas again, says
Letham - especially in Glasgow (which has, he says, superb taste). After
five years of observation, Letham has come to the opinion that "Glasgow is
very pure in its taste. It likes things that are 100% pleasure - Casablanca,
It's a Wonderful Life, films like that. It doesn't like things with inflated
reputations. It's that Glasgow thing of calling a spade a spade."
Nevertheless, it's not always easy to predict which films will draw in the
crowds, or to decide where to show them. It's not only the independent
cinemas that screen Park Circus's films; multiplexes show them, too. "We
tailor the experience to the film," Letham explains. "A lot of what we do is
working out how we can maximise the audience's pleasure. When we did The
Sound of Music, we did it as one-day specials up and down the country on the
main screens in multiplexes. There's no point in having it in a multiplex
for two weeks on screen 18. It might make the same amount of money over
time, but it's not the same experience for the audience. They might as well
watch it at home as see it on a smaller cinema screen, as they're going to
lose the sense of the epic."
A great deal of thought clearly goes into selecting films to be re-released,
but the hard work has paid off. "Our mission statement was to be synonymous
with classic film and we've achieved that. Now, people will phone either us
or the British Film Institute to get hold of a film."
I've put in my request already, having recently bought a copy of the
brilliant 1936 screwball comedy My Man Godfrey on DVD - only to discover the
print was so bad that I couldn't enjoy it. My 20-year-old VHS recording from
the telly is infinitely preferable. Letham isn't surprised to hear this: he
explains that My Man Godfrey is out of copyright, which means anyone can
distribute copies of it, and there's no guarantee the print will be of a
high standard. In some cases, he says, they're even made from old TV
recordings.
"Leave it with me," he says, charging off to research the rights to the film
and, hopefully, mull over the possibility of a Carole Lombard season.
The 39 Steps is showing at The Filmhouse, Edinburgh, from April 11-17.
© All rights reserved.
--
Bruce Calvert
--
Visit the Silent Film Still Archive
http://www.silentfilmstillarchive.com
sirmichaelcat
wrote:
> http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/features/display.var.2167264.0.Pu...
> M1TE&.#EA$0`/`,(!`/M6#/____Q_2/[7QOVKAO[&KO[GW/_S[2P`````$0`/
> M```#0ABZW#P"R#G%6$04MXH@BJ <$26&"A!NC)>^@>K(--S4L<W@<M9\,%F@
> ;`#!,+D'&0;BS$0"@F<+%66@Z)4J%5>TF```[
> `
> end
An excellent company providing a much needed booking service for old
films
William Hooper
> experience to watching it at home on a DVD? "It depends on the film. If you
> take something like The Sound of Music, there's the appeal of the vastness
> of the sets, the scenery, the music. With films like Casablanca or All About
> Eve, I think the appeal is the script. It's almost like it's magnified when
> it's on the big screen, so you pick up on things you might have missed.
> Plus, you have other members of the audience reacting to things. Almost
> every line in Casablanca provokes a reaction from the audience."
>
> Casablanca is always a winner when it goes into the cinemas again, says
> Letham - especially in Glasgow (which has, he says, superb taste).
It's astounding to see what Casablanca does in a theatre. If you
watch the
house during a movie, there's always a sort of slight traffic of
shifting, some
folks going to the restroom or concession stand, a pattern of
independent
audience vocal reaction like murmurs here & there through the film,
etc.
But when Casablanca runs, it nails everyone down. Nobody getting up,
almost
no murmurings, chuckles, etc. independent of the reactions of the rest
of the
audience, etc. It's especially amazing to see it done to an audience
in a really
large house. It just transfixes an audience. No other movie I've
seen in a
theatre has this uniform effect.