Letter: Great films with the Hollywood touch

Sir: I was struck by the article 'A new Golden Age of cinema' (21 March), in particular its touchingly false chauvinistic claim: 'Who else besides an English production team would have dared to translate a novel as fragile as Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day to the big screen?'.

Perhaps the German-born Indian writer of the film, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, the Indian producer Ismail Merchant, the American co-producers John Calley and Mike Nichols, the American director James Ivory. Oh, and The Remains of the Day was financed by the Japanese-owned American company Sony Pictures.

Universal Pictures, another Japanese-owned American company, financed In The Name of the Father, one of the other films touted by the writer as unlikely to originate from that cultural desert, 'heartless, soulless' Hollywood.

Yours sincerely,

CHRISTOPHER GOODWIN

Hollywood, California

22 March