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The Ultimate Film: Researching the Chart

The aim of The Ultimate Film project is to discover and rank the most successful feature films of the sound period based on their performance at British cinemas. Documentaries, short films, and silent films are excluded. Films released in Britain up until the start of 2004 have been considered for inclusion in the rankings.

The chart rankings reflect estimated numbers of admissions to cinemas rather than the amount of money taken at the box office. This method was felt to be a more consistent indicator of popularity across the large time period covered than box office takings, taking into account the complications of inflation and changing populations.

Compiling the list has been by no means an easy task. Prior to the 1970s, neither admissions nor box office takings were systematically recorded or published in Britain so we have had to weigh up a range of other evidence to estimate the performance of earlier films. We have delved into the collections of the bfi National Library to look at the available information and have listed below some of the key sources used. These include annual ranking lists in the industry trade papers of the time, notably Kinematograph Weekly, Films and Filming and The Motion Picture Herald list (as published in Today's Cinema/Daily Cinema). We have also referred to contemporary press reports, publicity information produced by film distributors to hail their successes and other existing research.

Further factors considered when estimating a film's performance include the type(s) of release and industry practices and audience behaviour at the time. At various times the British government has imposed minimum quotas on the number of British films to be shown at cinemas, with required quotas as high as 40% in the late 1940s. Such measures have had an impact on the type of films the public can see. The difficulties in shipping film prints across the Atlantic during World War II mean that some popular US films of that era do not chart as highly as may have been expected.

In the 1950s and 1960s the practice developed of showing some larger budget titles, usually epics and musicals, as 'Roadshow' releases. Roadshow releases would spend some considerable time playing on a small number of very large city centre screens before doing the tour of smaller venues. This led to a much longer release run, for example South Pacific played at the vast Dominion Theatre in London for four and a half years before hitting the general circuit.

The annual admissions total in the year of a film's release is also a vital piece of information in assessing it's relative performance. Films that did well in the 1940s - when at their peak annual cinema admissions hit 1,636 million - are much more likely to be higher placed than hit films of the 1980s when there were 95% less cinemagoers.

These factors all play a part in evaluating the performance of films in the absence of hard financial data. Ticket price is also a factor - not just the annual average ticket price used in estimating admissions - but also recognising that a children's film, for example, will have more admissions for the same box office takings than an 18-certificate title due to its lower average ticket price.

The stories behind the success of the Top Five films

1. Gone With The Wind

The number one film by some considerable distance, and a favourite with the public for over six decades. Prints of the film arrived in Britain in 1940 from the USA just before wartime hostilities made shipments a problem. Hugely popular with audiences for its romance, colour and spectacle, fans went to see it again and again. Remember also that in the 1940s the public could not see a favourite film on television or video at home. The only way to see it again was to go to the cinema once more. The film has been reissued in Britain at least seven times since its original release.

2. The Sound of Music

This perennial family favourite also benefited greatly at the box office from repeat viewings from its legions of fans (in the case of pensioner Alice James, a reported 121 times). It had a run at the Dominion even longer than that of South Pacific, and its initial release lasted for several years. Even now people flock to 'Sing-A-Long-A Sound of Music' screenings in London and other cities.

3. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Since its release in 1937, Disney's first feature has entertained generations of children and is sophisticated enough to enchant the adults that accompany them to the cinema. Disney's canny policy of tapping into new audiences and encouraging them to experience their classics in the cinema through it's re-release strategy has also played a part in the film's success.

4. Star Wars

A film that has managed to make the top five despite being released in an era when relatively few people went to the cinema. Star Wars tapped into the young, male demographic that constituted the core cinema audience of the time and transformed the film business with its new emphasis on marketing. The film fostered a community of fans with its sequels and later prequels, ensuring box office success for a second time when it was reissued in the late 1990s.

5. Spring in Park Lane

The big surprise of the chart and the top ranking British film. The four Anna Neagle titles in the chart testify to her enormous star status in the 1940s and early 1950s, when she was a byword for British virtues, and her films entertained millions looking for escapism from war and austerity. Over 20 million people saw Spring in Park Lane, the fourth title in her and director husband Herbert Wilcox's 'London' series of films characterised by a winning mixture of glamour, romance, music and light comedy.

Piecing together this information has built up a fascinating picture of audience preferences in Britain. As well as informing The Ultimate Film we hope the chart will form a basis for future research into popular film in Britain.

Selected Bibliography/Sources

All of these sources can be accessed at the bfi National Library

Journals

Kinematograph Weekly, 1907-1971 (known as Kine Weekly 1959-1971)
Today's Cinema (also The Cinema), 1913-1971 (known as The Daily Cinema, 1957-1968). Continued as CinemaTV Today, 1971-1975, then as Screen International, 1975 - to date
Films & Filming, 1954-1990

Articles

John Howard Reid, 'Top-Grossing Pictures at the British Box-Office', Film Index [Australia], no.32, 1997

Books

Margaret DICKINSON and Sarah STREET, Cinema and State: the film industry and the government 1927-84
Eddie DYJA (ed.), BFI Film & Television Handbook [annual, 1983 - 2004]
Rachael LOW, The History of the British Film, 1918-1929
Rachael LOW, The History of the British Film 1929-1939: film-making in 1930's Britain
Jeffrey RICHARDS (ed.), The Unknown 1930s: an alternative history of the British cinema 1929-39
S. ROWSON, A Statistical Survey of the Cinema Industry in Great Britain in 1934
Sarah STREET, British National Cinema
Phil SWERN and Mike CHILDS, The Guinness Book of Box Office Hits

Other

Nielsen EDI - providers of box office data to the industry - www.entdata.com

The bfi National Library: an invaluable resource

The Top 100 Movies list that forms the basis of The Ultimate Film chart was researched by Matt Ker and Phil Wickham of bfi Information Services, part of the bfi National Library. The library was founded in 1934 and is the largest collection of information on film and television in the world. We have over 44,000 books, 5000 periodicals, over two million newspaper cuttings, as well as special materials including scripts, publicity material and correspondence. Search our book catalogue online

bfi Information Services exist to answer enquiries on all aspects of film and television from all kinds of people - companies, scholars, students and members of the public. We also undertake large research projects to make more information from our collections accessible to a wide audience and interpret data to create a better understanding of moving image culture. More about bfi Information Services

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