The Man Who Ruined the British Film Industry

I sought out this half-hour documentary after reading Alec Guinness's diary "My Name Escapes Me". Guinness describes watching the film when Channel 4 showed it in 1996, and being disappointed that it wasn't hard enough on its subject, Rank executive John Davis. Which is savage, because hardly anyone in the film has a good word to say about him. Plenty of former Rank employees talk about his personal egotism and ruthlessness, and unimaginative grinding out of repetitive low-budget fare professionally, a far cry from Korda, Powell, Pressburger and Olivier's ambitious epics of the '30s and '40s; Betty Box's description of Davis habitually checking out her legs and her pointed comments about him attending premieres with "his consort, whoever it was" makes him sound like a 1950s Harvey Weinstein.

Aside from personal odium, there's a lot of interesting detail about post-WW2 British film production. As well as the Rank Organisation's decision under Davis to "diversify" into lucrative photocopiers (and other less lucky ventures), it's touched on that the Attlee government's kindly attempts to protect the domestic film industry spawned a huge number of terrible films; if Davis ruined British movies, he clearly had one or two helpers. Production company Large Door have uploaded this film onto their website, and made it available via YouTube.