Mild Revolution’: the Politics of Ealing Studios
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THE UNIVERSITY OF HULL ‘The Mild Revolution’: The Politics of Ealing Studios Being a Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD in the University of Hull by Lee Paul Freeman (Ba) (Ma) October 2014 Introduction Filmmaking has taken place at Ealing from 1902 - originally under the ownership of the film pioneer Will G. Barker - until the present day. Film production at Ealing can be broken down into five separate operational phases: a) Films made at Will Barker’s studio at Ealing Green from 1902 through 1929; b) Films made at the refurbished Ealing studios (expanding out from Barker’s site), between 1930 and 1938, under the ownership of Associated Talking Pictures; c) Films made between 1938 and 1959 by a production company headed up by Michael Balcon (eventually titled ‘Ealing Studios Limited’) while at location (b); d) Films and television programmes made at location (b) from 1955 on, by the BBC and other production companies; e) Films produced by a modern company called Ealing Studios, many produced at a modernised location (b) since 2002.1 This thesis, like most critical examinations of Ealing, will concentrate on the studio’s output between 1938 and 1959 when, under the management of Michael Balcon, Ealing gained its reputation as one of the leading studios in British cinema history, reflecting in its operating structure and formal and thematic 1 Mark Duguid, Lee Freeman, Keith M. Johnston and Melanie Williams (eds), Ealing Revisited (London: BFI Palgrave, 2012), p. 3. 1 output, characteristics which have come to be associated with British social and cultural values. 2 For Stephanie Muir: Many of the 96 films made at Ealing […] appear as examples in studies of British national cinema. It has become a brand name representing a certain kind of practice, a community of film- makers working together in a defined location, producing a particular kind of film. Within the context of a nation having to adjust to a devastating conflict, the consequences of its aftermath and the social upheavals that followed, Ealing films can be considered as reflecting some common characteristics which can be identified as ‘national’, conjuring up images of Britain and Britishness for a home as well as an international audience. In many ways the values of Ealing in the 1940s and the early 1950s have become identified with the values of Britain. Seen from its own particular perspective […] it can be studied as constructing an image of an entire nation at a particular moment in its history.3 It is for the reasons that Muir suggests that Ealing remains one of the most affectionately remembered and iconic of all British film institutions. The films produced by the studio have so emphatically entered the national consciousness that any mention of the word Ealing brings to mind recognizable images of genial eccentricity, mild rebellion and an intimate community spirit which have come to be regarded as quintessentially British. The fact that Ealing has become a byword for a certain trope of British national identity is primarily accountable to the role played by 2 For an assessment of Basil Dean’s Associated Talking Pictures era, see Steve Chibnall ‘ A Lad, a Lass and the Loch Ness Monster: The Prehistory of Ealing’, Ealing Revisited, pp. 15-25. 3 Stephanie Muir, Studying Ealing Studios (Leighton Buzzard: Auteur, 2010), p. 7. 2 Ealing comedy, although this association fails to do justice to the wide variety of genres made at the studio. Anthony Algate and Jeffrey Richard’s description of Ealing as being ‘essentially quaint, cosy, whimsical and backward-looking’4 remains the critical orthodoxy, especially in relation to the studio’s comedic output. However, Mark Duguid counters this argument, suggesting that Ealing offered a more progressive outlook, as ‘Ealing and its films stood for decency, democracy, community, pluck and fair play: the best of British values’5 a claim which remains a typical assessment of the social values of the studio and how these were explicitly connected to British national characteristics. A critical consensus has emerged in relation to any analysis of Ealing’s politics which acknowledges the progressive aspects of Ealing’s political ideology, typified by its promotion of democracy and its community values, whilst simultaneously arguing that there were limits to the studio’s social democratic impulse. John Ellis described Ealing’s politics as being ‘liberal rather than radical, progressive rather than revolutionary’6 and, similarly, Adrienne Mancia noted how the films produced at the 4 Anthony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richards, Best of British: Cinema and Society from 1930 to the Present (London: I.B. Tauris, 1999), p. 150. 5 Mark Duguid, ‘Ealing Studios’, Screenonline, URL:http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/456030 (accessed 21 July 2015) 6 John Ellis, ‘Made in Ealing’, Screen, Volume 16, Number 1, Spring 1975, p. 105. 3 studio would consistently reflect ‘working/middle class, liberal, traditional, comfy, and parochial’7 values. These are both reasonable assessments of the politics of Ealing, however, there are a number of films made by the studio which contradict this viewpoint and are far more radical in content than this critical orthodoxy suggests. Summarising Ealing’s outlook, Duguid encapsulates the dichotomy which is central to any analysis of the studio’s politics, hinting at a slight divergence from the critical orthodoxy, and arguing for a slightly more dynamic reading of the studio’s output: ‘Ealing’ as an adjective [….] embraces both modestly progressive values and a respect for tradition; both a decent, cheery public-spiritedness and a resistance to stern authority and bureaucracy; both an embodiment of community and an endearing eccentricity; and, above all a profoundly British sensibility.8 By examining a number of films which acknowledge Ealing’s rhetoric of consensus, community and democracy and those which diverge from this discourse, this thesis shall explore the tension between the liberal, consensual values of the studio, to 7 Adrienne Mancia, ‘Introduction’, Geoff Brown and Laurence Kardish, Michael Balcon, The Pursuit of British Cinema (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1984), p. 14. 8 Mark Duguid, ‘The Dark Side of Ealing’, Sight and Sound, Volume 22, Issue 11 November 2012, p. 54. 4 suggest that Ealing presented a much more radical agenda than the critical orthodoxy has acknowledged. Ealing’s progressive outlook was melded during wartime and the studio has tended to be associated with the postwar transformation of British society that contributed to the Labour Party’s historic electoral victory in 1945, where the shared experience of war helped to shape a new social and political consensus, increasingly democratic and egalitarian in nature. The wartime shift in social attitudes led the historian A.J.P. Taylor to describe the war years as ‘the brief period when the English people felt they were a truly democratic country’9 and Ealing’s politics were shaped initially by the official construction of the people’s war which led to the new postwar democratic consensus. It was this period where Ealing came to be associated, as Charles Barr’s explains, with ‘notions of social responsibility and community which the British cinema, in the war years and after, so assiduously reflects and promotes’.10 Michael Balcon described the studio’s political outlook and class background during the 1940s as follows: If you think about Ealing […] we were middle-class people brought up with middle-class backgrounds and rather conventional educations. Though we were radical in our points 9 A.J.P. Taylor, English History 1914-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 550. 10 Charles Barr, Ealing Studios (London: Cameron and Hollis, 1998), p. 17. 5 of view, we did not want to tear down institutions [….]. We were people of the immediate post-war generation, and we voted Labour for the first time after the war; this was our mild revolution.11 Balcon’s characterisation of Ealing’s personnel and their politics as constituting a ‘mild revolution’ is instructive as it appears to reinforce the critical orthodoxy which highlighted the studio’s progressive credentials while simultaneously admitting that there were limits to the studio’s radicalism. Balcon’s Ealing epitomised those sections of the middle class that were radicalised during the war and declared their support for Labour’s New Jerusalem. He described his own political upbringing as belonging to the ‘Gladstonian school of Liberalism’, but admitted that he ‘began to feel, in the years that immediately preceded’ World War II ‘that there was no longer a place in this world for us old-fashioned Liberals, and that something more progressive must replace it’, and that all individuals ‘should contribute in our own capacity towards solving the problems which were menacing the world with another war’.12 For Aldgate and Richards, Ealing presented ‘a limited radicalism, constrained by Balcon’s strict moral attitude and national pride’13 and Balcon summarized his progressive 11 Quoted in Ellis, ‘Made in Ealing’, p. 119. 12 Michael Balcon, Realism or Tinsel (London: BFI Pamphlet, 1943) 13 Aldgate and Richards, Best of British, p. 155. 6 patriotism in an article entitled ‘Let British Films be Ambassadors for the World’ for Kine Weekly in 1945: [T]he need is great for a projection of the true Briton to the rest of the world [….] The world, in short, must be presented with a complete picture of Britain […] Britain as a leader in social reform in the defeat of social injustices and a champion of civil liberties; Britain as a patron and parent of great writing, painting and music, Britain as a questing explorer, adventurer and trader; Britain as the home of great industry and craftsmanship; Britain as a mighty military power standing alone and undaunted against terrifying aggression.14 Balcon’s political journey from liberalism to a more radical social reformism was allied to his belief in a progressive patriotism and this instinctively led him to support the Labour government’s reforms.