The end of the 1960s saw the onset of yet another crisis for the British film industry. For some years, American finance had accounted for a majority of British films: this had provided an important stimulus for the domestic production sector but also gave rise to concerns that the industry had become too dependent upon American money. In 1966 the National Film Finance Corporation's annual report echoed Lord Willis of Chislehurst in highlighting the potentially disastrous consequences for the British production sector if the flow of dollars suddenly dried up: ‘It can be argued that there is no assurance that the US distributors will continue to finance British films on the present large scale, or at all, and if for any reason “runaway” production were to return to Hollywood, or to go elsewhere, British film production would be so gravely weakened that its survival might be in peril.’ In 1969 the sword of Damocles that had been hanging over the head of the British film industry fell as the major Hollywood studios significantly – and more to the point, suddenly – cut back their investment in British production. Some estimates suggest that total US investment in British films fell by two-thirds between 1968 and 1970. Two questions that need to be asked are why British film production had become so dependent upon American money and what the reasons were for the withdrawal of that investment at the end of the decade.

There were both cultural and economic contexts for the increasing level of American investment in British production. On one level British cinema became – at least for a brief period in the mid-1960s – a site of great cultural vitality and innovation. The phenomenon of ‘Swinging London’ – as much of a culturally created myth as a real social movement – was credited with drawing film-makers such as Otto Preminger (Bunny Lake is Missing, 1965), François Truffaut (Fahrenheit 451, 1966) and Michelangelo Antonioni (Blow-Up, 1966) to Britain.