Kenneth Rive

Britain's biggest foreign-film distributor

Kenneth Rive, film distributor, exhibitor and producer: born London 26 July 1918; married (two sons, two daughters); died Radlett, Hertfordshire 30 December 2002

Kenneth Rive was the showman among the small group of specialised film distributors and exhibitors who brought the best of world cinema to Britain in the heady period from the 1950s to the 1970s when (in London particularly) there was a considerable audience for subtitled pictures.

The films that Rive handled were trumpeted in advertising and on the opening credits as "Kenneth Rive presents a Gala release", and he could take pride in releasing important works by Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini and François Truffaut.

Born in Canonbury, London, in 1918, the son of a film cameraman, Rive was a child actor in German and British silent pictures, performing with such stars as Ivan Mosjoukine and Conrad Veidt. He later became a compere for a Hughie Green stage show and a theatrical agent booking bands before serving in the Army during the Second World War and being posted to Burma. In peacetime he initially managed live theatres but then took charge of two run-down cinemas in Tottenham Court Road, London, renamed them the Berkeley and La Continentale, and ran them successfully as semi-art houses until they were closed in 1976 for redevelopment.

Rive set up offices at the Berkeley to launch Gala Film Distributors in 1952 – the company name inspired by a Bolshoi Ballet picture, Gala Festival, one of a batch of Russian productions that he secured by visiting Moscow. One of his proudest achievements was buying Alain Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour (1959), which became the opening attraction at his new art house in Bayswater, named the International Film Theatre – much to the irritation of the National Film Theatre, which also suffered the defection of its general manager, Frank Hazell, to oversee Rive's new venture.

Earlier, when the National Film Theatre drew huge crowds to see the banned Marlon Brando biker film The Wild One (1954), Rive started late-night Gala film clubs to show this and other banned or cut films, recruiting the censor, John Trevelyan, to support his efforts. Later, he called for the removal of Trevelyan's successor, Stephen Murphy, for being too liberal. When it was pointed out that Gala were distributors of such Danish sex comedies as Seventeen (1965) and Bedroom Mazurka (1970), he replied that he was opposed to excessive screen brutality but "sex with a smile is permissible". "I would have bought Emmanuelle had I had the chance: that is the type of sex film that deserves the success it is having," he said.

Gala was by far the biggest British distributor of foreign films. Its line-up featured such Bergman films as The Silence (1963) and Cries and Whispers (1972), and most of Truffaut's output, including Jules and Jim (1961). Rive's skill in extracting the maximum box-office potential from foreign-language films persuaded American distributors to entrust him with the British release of Vittorio De Sica's Two Women (1960) and Federico Fellini's 8½ (1963).

As cinemas closed and attendances fell, it became increasingly hard to obtain a good return from foreign films in Britain. Rive went into partnership with BBC television for some acquisitions and, with the newly arrived Cannon Films, obtained Jean de Florette (1986), among many others. As Gala Films his more recent releases included the newcomer Eric Zonka's notable The Dream Life of Angels (1998).

Allen Eyles