DOCSLIB.ORG

A Killing Joke: Ealing Comedies and Britishness

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
A Killing Joke: Ealing Comedies and Britishness A KILLING JOKE: EALING COMEDIES AND BRITISHNESS John Dougill 10 B 1949~ip I? 1955~0)IMH;: 1- 1) ';/ 7" • A?' :::/ ;:tiJ~~~l:fj l., td&k O):§jIJfF&b O)tjJt;:~;t, ~OO~OOiO))d~tl) A r1:f3Lt;:~~f3L1tlT.QfF&biJ~1t'~ <t:L'ltlo r 1 -I) ';/~. ::I ~ T -1 J cll¥~in.Q 'fnI?O)f'l=&biJ~m <O)~;t, WO)~~O)1:t;:P.X; !J :lL-:>./lS,L.\:L'I!!O)./il Itltl~-r4.) !J, ffi!~O).JiliiJ~.~~ n.Q-:n-rm.$SiJ) I? O)~ m~;tfr1-tt I? n7.,-t!tW--r4.).Q 0 l., iJ) l., ~iJ~ I?, :9{O)=f'l=&b ~;t~1tA..0)~* ~JXeIi) iJ)l.,L:lO!J, *t.:.,*~ltl;:ct;:, jjl!jfF&bc~t;::lOltlL r~i!fJ iJ~tl~~1WO) fa)t=¥J3t c l., L:IIng l., L It l.Q 0) L' 4.) .0 0 'f 0) P3 0) - -:>, Kind Hearts and Coronets (l949~, ~ >& Robert Hamer> ~;t, El7N;:Df3L ~ft*T.Q ffi!flJiJ~ 4.).0 c J~\ -:;ddg~iJ~, El7t J: !J 1: f3Lft~ffi!~~-:>.~O)_t.:-t:> ~:9{k CL~~t;: l., Lltl <~L'4.).Qo ;:0):::/1- ';/}v C l., L ~;t.fjlJ~f'l=&b L'4.) -:d.:o c Itl? 0) ~, ~A~O);g:1lfiJ~~j]I¥JL':II~ t;:1i{~, ~l:fj~O)~~~~1WiJ~mn;:[ti]~:t I? tL L Itl.Q iJ) I? -r4.).Q o ~1W~m~¥fi l.,~l.,t.:.~iltf:q;t, .:r. r '7- riW3O)ii~It)~!jo/]L'l.,iJ)~ <, mtttl~L'~;t ~ ~;t~ ./lS:IR;PJT~~ -:d.: ;: c ~, ;: O)f'l=&b ~;tjf-"Itt l., Lit) .0 0) tio ~ ? --:>O)fF&b, The Ladykillers (1955~, ~>& Alexander Mackendrick, nil i"?jfAcrJEH$.o) ~;t, #1-';/~o)-,*iJ~~i&~~fliiAt;:J:?LJ&~t~~ T.Q~L'4.).Qo~OOi~,fa~I¥J~~~~(?jfA) ~p'x;!J1:~!J~~.k -t:» I;: M1flJ T .Q~T~ j!-{tt:L':iJ~ I?, ~~O) >b ~;t~7JBt;: * hon L l., * ? td&!*O) ** ~.iJ) l., <~ !J jIg.Q O)ti 0 'f n~;t, ;: niJ) I? 7 ~ I) :fJ -r{±¥~ ToO t.: eli) t;: ffl:OO~*-?? c T .Q~>&:iJ)I?O), ~~O)m:/j\t;:%jT .QEl~~::I ~ ';/ r -r~ 4.)? t.:o ~~I;:j@;: .QA.:r.;:;(fB:II~ r~n.Q;g:1lft.:-t:>J O)tfifQ~;t~~~-~l." ~;f c Iv c-~t;: l., L r 1-1) ';/ ~ • ::I ~ T -1 J ~~tt~nO)f'l=&bt;: l., L l., * ? ;: cl;:~.Qo 'fnI?O)~OOiO)tjJL'ffbnt.: r~i!fJ ~;t, iTl.,ltl~ttA..O)iti~MFm "1§.*¥=~~ - 215 - The Ealing ethos Between 1947-57 Ealing Studios near London produced nearly one hundred films in all, but it is for their comedies that they are best remembered. Cosy and affectionate, they take a light-hearted look at the British. The guiding hand belonged to the head of the studios, Michael Bakon (1896-1977). The son of Jewish immigrants, he had a strong sense of gratitude to the country that had sheltered his parents. His patriotic instincts expressed themselves in the urge to make 'films from right (I) down in the soil, rooted in the soi1.' When the studios were sold off in 1955, he put up a plaque saying: 'Here during a quarter of a century many films were made projecting Britain and the British character.' Bakon acted as a benevolent school master over the productions. Though he was liberal in politics, he was prudish about sex and strict in moral matters. This affected the films he favoured, which portray a consensual society where neighbours greet each other, people are mild­ mannered, and authority is respected. Not all is calm and orderly, how­ ever, for there is a strong sense of individual rights. In Best of British (1999) Anthony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richards describe the ethos as (2) follows: It is a world that is essentially quaint, cosy, whimsical and backward-looking ... It is a world that enshrines what are seen as quintessentially English qualities: a stubborn individualism that is heroic to the point of eccentricity; a hatred of authoritarianism and bureaucracy coupled with a belief in tolerance and consensus; a phi­ losophy that can be summed up by the slogan 'Small is beautiful, old is good.' The conservatism suited a society fast recovering from the war. During the 1950s the austerity of the immediate postwar period was forgotten as - 216 - A KILLING JOKE(DougilI) affluence and hire purchase fuelled a rise in consumerism. The statistics speak for themselves: from 1951 to 1963 wages rose by 72% but prices by just 45%. Televisions, refrigerators and washing-machines became house­ hold items, freeing housewives from domestic drudgery. There was an increased sense of well-being. 'The first half of the 1950s was an era of peace, prosperity and order,' write Anthony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richar­ ds: The crime rate was faIling. There was full employment and rising productivity. The greater availability of consumer durables blunted class antagonisms. The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 was seen as ushering in a 'new Elizabethan age', as the Empire was trans- (3) muted into the Commonwealth, a worldwide brotherhood of nations... In this way continuity was established with the prewar era, the values of which had been seemingly validated by the victory over Germany. Tradi­ tion, moderation and social harmony were said to characterise the nation, and the virtues of the British were linked to the Victorian heri­ tage and the code of the gentleman. For writers like George Orwell little had changed, for 'The essential structure of England is still almost (4) what it was in the nineteenth century.' The sense of the past was reflected in the smash Hollywood hit, Around the World in 80 Days (1956). Based on the 1873 novel by Jules Verne, it is set at the height of the British Empire and portrays Phileas Fogg as he travels round the world dispensing justice, fairness and com­ mon sense in foreign parts. There is gentle satire at the expense of the overdressed and overly correct Fogg, but the humour is sympathetic and he is rewarded with a beautiful woman and by winning his bet. The film thus underwrites the connection with the age of the Victorian gentleman while looking back fondly on the imperial era. Here, as in other films, social criticism is conspicuous by its absence. The complacency was summed up by Edward Shils in a 1955 edition of the Encounter when he wondered, 'Who criticises Britain now in any fundamental sense... There are complaints here and there and on many specific issues, but in the main scarcely anyone in Great Britain seems any longer to feel there is anything fundamentally wrong... Never has an intellectual class found its society and its culture so much to its (5) satisfaction.' The mood was encapsulated in a celebrated phrase used by prime minister Harold Macmillan in 1957 when he announced that 'most of our people have never had it so good'. Murder most foul The British have long had a fondness for murder mysteries. One thinks of Jack the Ripper and Sweeney Todd, for example. One thinks too of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marples. For an ear­ lier generation the murder puzzle was such a delicious entertainment that fictional assassination came to rival fox-hunting as the nation's favourite blood sport. It's no wonder that Hitchcock turned so readily to murder; Chaplin also in Monsieur Verdoux (1947). It's notable too that one of the few great British films of the 1970s, Sleuth (1972) starring Laurence (6) Olivier and Michael Caine, revolved around murder as a type of game. It comes as no surprise then that two of Ealing's most famous com­ edies also centre around murder. The first, Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), came on the cusp of the fifties and was directed by Robert Hamer (1911-63). A homosexual in an age when this was regarded as abnormal, he married to mask his inclinations and turned to alcohol for compensa­ tion, which eventually killed him. He held a cynical view of society, and when he came across a minor Edwardian novel called Israel Rank (1907) he related to its attack on family values. In adapting it for the screen he aimed at 'using this English language, which I love, in a more varied and (7) interesting way'. The result was a script with wit and sparkle. The story concerns Louis Mancini (Dennis Price), whose aristocratic - 218 - A KILLING JOKE(Dougill) mother was cut off by her family after she married an Italian singer. Louis is resentful of the impoverishment this brings, and when his mother dies and is refused burial in the family vault, he decides to kill off his relatives and inherit the title of which he has been deprived. In one of cinema's great tours de jorce, all eight of his victims are played by Alec Guinness. Audiences had already seen the versatility of the actor as Herbert Pockett in Great Expectations and the Jewish Fagin in Oliver Twist. Here he covers the whole range of upper-class types in Edwar­ dian England, from dotty vicar to campaigning suffragette. This was the film which made a star of Guinness, and his chameleon­ like ability is uncanny. Film critic David Thomson writes of a 'remote (S) reflective personality' that allowed him to inhabit different types. The actor himself described how an unhappy childhood drew him into imagi­ nary worlds, and how he gained inspiration for his characters from zoo animals as if literally getting inside their skin.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Darrol Blake Transcript
    Interview with Darrol Blake by Dave Welsh on Tuesday the 21st of September 2010 Dave Welsh: Okay, this is an interview with Darrol Blake on Tuesday the 21st of September 2010, for the Britain at Work Project, West London, West Middlesex. Darrol, I wonder if you'd mind starting by saying how you got into this whole business. Darrol Blake: Well, I'd always wanted to be the man who made the shows, be it for theatre or film or whatever, and this I decided about the age of eleven or twelve I suppose, and at that time I happened to win a scholarship to grammar school, in West London, in Hanwell, and formed my own company within the school, I was in school plays and all that sort of thing, so my life revolved around putting on shows. Nobody in my family had ever been to university, so I assumed that when I got to sixteen I was going out to work. I didn't even assume I would go into the sixth form or anything. So when I did get to sixteen I wrote around to all the various places that I thought might employ me. Ealing Studios were going strong at that time, Harrow Coliseum had a rep. The theatre at home in Hayes closed on me. I applied for a job at Windsor Rep, and quite by the way applied to the BBC, and the only people who replied were the BBC, and they said we have vacancies for postroom boys, office messengers, and Radio Times clerks.
    [Show full text]
  • The Finance and Production of Independent Film and Television in the UK: a Critical Introduction
    The Finance and Production of Independent Film and Television in the UK: A Critical Introduction Vital Statistics General Population: 64.1m Size: 241.9 km sq GDP: £1.9tr (€2.1tr) Film1 Market share of UK independent films in 2015: 10.5% Number of feature films produced: 201 Average visits to cinema per person per year: 2.7 Production spend per year: £1.4m (€1.6) TV2 Audience share of the main publicly-funded PSB (BBC): 72% Production spend by PSBs: £2.5bn (€3.2bn) Production spend by commercial channels (excluding sport): £350m (€387m) Time spent watching television per day: 193 minutes (3hrs 13 minutes) Introduction This chapter provides an overview of independent film and television production in the UK. Despite the unprecedented levels of convergence that characterise the digital era, the UK film and television industries remain distinct for several reasons. The film industry is small and fragmented, divided across the two opposing sources of support on which it depends: large but uncontrollable levels of ‘inward-investment’ – money invested in the UK from overseas – mainly from the US, and low levels of public subsidy. By comparison, the television industry is large and diverse, its relative stability underpinned by a long-standing infrastructure of 1 Sources: BFI 2016: 10; ‘The Box Office 2015’ [market share of UK indie films] ; BFI 2016: 6; ‘Exhibition’ [cinema visits per per person]; BFI 2016: 6; ‘Exhibition’ [average visits per person]; BFI 2016: 3; ‘Screen Sector Production’ [production spend per year]. 2 Sources: Oliver & Ohlbaum 2016: 68 [PSB audience share]; Ofcom 2015a: 3 [PSB production spend]; Ofcom 2015a: 8.
    [Show full text]
  • University of Huddersfield Repository
    University of Huddersfield Repository Billam, Alistair It Always Rains on Sunday: Early Social Realism in Post-War British Cinema Original Citation Billam, Alistair (2018) It Always Rains on Sunday: Early Social Realism in Post-War British Cinema. Masters thesis, University of Huddersfield. This version is available at http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/34583/ The University Repository is a digital collection of the research output of the University, available on Open Access. Copyright and Moral Rights for the items on this site are retained by the individual author and/or other copyright owners. Users may access full items free of charge; copies of full text items generally can be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided: • The authors, title and full bibliographic details is credited in any copy; • A hyperlink and/or URL is included for the original metadata page; and • The content is not changed in any way. For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at: [email protected]. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/ Submission in fulfilment of Masters by Research University of Huddersfield 2016 It Always Rains on Sunday: Early Social Realism in Post-War British Cinema Alistair Billam Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 3 Chapter 1: Ealing and post-war British cinema. ................................................................................... 12 Chapter 2: The community and social realism in It Always Rains on Sunday ...................................... 25 Chapter 3: Robert Hamer and It Always Rains on Sunday – the wider context.
    [Show full text]
  • Shail, Robert, British Film Directors
    BRITISH FILM DIRECTORS INTERNATIONAL FILM DIRECTOrs Series Editor: Robert Shail This series of reference guides covers the key film directors of a particular nation or continent. Each volume introduces the work of 100 contemporary and historically important figures, with entries arranged in alphabetical order as an A–Z. The Introduction to each volume sets out the existing context in relation to the study of the national cinema in question, and the place of the film director within the given production/cultural context. Each entry includes both a select bibliography and a complete filmography, and an index of film titles is provided for easy cross-referencing. BRITISH FILM DIRECTORS A CRITI Robert Shail British national cinema has produced an exceptional track record of innovative, ca creative and internationally recognised filmmakers, amongst them Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Powell and David Lean. This tradition continues today with L GUIDE the work of directors as diverse as Neil Jordan, Stephen Frears, Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. This concise, authoritative volume analyses critically the work of 100 British directors, from the innovators of the silent period to contemporary auteurs. An introduction places the individual entries in context and examines the role and status of the director within British film production. Balancing academic rigour ROBE with accessibility, British Film Directors provides an indispensable reference source for film students at all levels, as well as for the general cinema enthusiast. R Key Features T SHAIL • A complete list of each director’s British feature films • Suggested further reading on each filmmaker • A comprehensive career overview, including biographical information and an assessment of the director’s current critical standing Robert Shail is a Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Wales Lampeter.
    [Show full text]
  • Unseen Horrors: the Unmade Films of Hammer
    Unseen Horrors: The Unmade Films of Hammer Thesis submitted by Kieran Foster In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy De Montfort University, March 2019 Abstract This doctoral thesis is an industrial study of Hammer Film Productions, focusing specifically on the period of 1955-2000, and foregrounding the company’s unmade projects as primary case studies throughout. It represents a significant academic intervention by being the first sustained industry study to primarily utilise unmade projects. The study uses these projects to examine the evolving production strategies of Hammer throughout this period, and to demonstrate the methodological benefits of utilising unmade case studies in production histories. Chapter 1 introduces the study, and sets out the scope, context and structure of the work. Chapter 2 reviews the relevant literature, considering unmade films relation to studies in adaptation, screenwriting, directing and producing, as well as existing works on Hammer Films. Chapter 3 begins the chronological study of Hammer, with the company attempting to capitalise on recent successes in the mid-1950s with three ambitious projects that ultimately failed to make it into production – Milton Subotsky’s Frankenstein, the would-be television series Tales of Frankenstein and Richard Matheson’s The Night Creatures. Chapter 4 examines Hammer’s attempt to revitalise one of its most reliable franchises – Dracula, in response to declining American interest in the company. Notably, with a project entitled Kali Devil Bride of Dracula. Chapter 5 examines the unmade project Nessie, and how it demonstrates Hammer’s shift in production strategy in the late 1970s, as it moved away from a reliance on American finance and towards a more internationalised, piece-meal approach to funding.
    [Show full text]
  • The British Film Industry
    House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee The British Film Industry Sixth Report of Session 2002–03 Volume I HC 667-I House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee The British Film Industry Sixth Report of Session 2002–03 Volume I Report, together with formal minutes Ordered by The House of Commons to be printed 9 September 2003 HC 667-I Published on 18 September 2003 by authority of the House of Commons London: The Stationery Office Limited £0.00 The Culture Media and Sport Committee The Culture, Media and Sport Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure, administration, and policy of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and its associated public bodies. Current membership Mr Gerald Kaufman MP (Labour, Manchester Gorton) (Chairman) Mr Chris Bryant MP (Labour, Rhondda) Mr Frank Doran MP (Labour, Aberdeen) Michael Fabricant MP (Conservative, Lichfield) Mr Adrian Flook MP (Conservative, Taunton) Alan Keen MP (Labour, Feltham and Heston) Miss Julie Kirkbride MP (Conservative, Bromsgrove) Rosemary McKenna MP (Labour, Cumbernauld and Kilsyth) Ms Debra Shipley (Labour, Stourbridge) John Thurso MP (Liberal Democrat, Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) Derek Wyatt MP (Labour, Sittingbourne and Sheppey) Powers The Committee is one of the departmental select committees, the powers of which are set out in House of Commons Standing Orders, principally in SO No 152. These are available on the Internet via www.parliament.uk. Publications The Reports and evidence of the Committee are published by The Stationery Office by Order of the House. All publications of the Committee (including press notices) are on the Internet at http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/culture__media_and_sport.
    [Show full text]
  • Managing Creativity in a Successful Company – Aardman Animations
    <CN>Chapter 14:</CN> <CT>‘It’s Our Property and Our Passion’: Managing Creativity in a Successful Company – Aardman Animations <AU>Andrew Spicer <NP>It has become a cultural and commercial necessity for media firms to promote themselves as dynamic and innovative ‘creative companies’ and therefore attractive to potential employees, associated companies or funders. Although the concept of creativity has been extensively discussed, as Philip Schlesinger argued a decade ago in his critique of the ‘doctrine’ of creativity, the central question for critical empirical research is ‘in what form ideas about creativity and innovation become organizationally embedded and to what extent they shape the actual management of creative practice […] how ideas about creativity are actually interpreted in the practice of production’ (2007: 387, original emphasis). A central problem, which Mark Banks argues ‘is the distinctive feature of cultural production’, is the tension between the rational, accumulative and standardising logic of capitalist production and the irrational, unruly, unpredictable and potentially disruptive demands of the creative worker who values her autonomy (2007: 30, original emphasis). Although creativity and commerce are often polarized, in modern media firms they are always ‘intermingled and interfused’ in an unstable and shifting interplay that evolves over time (Negus and Pickering 2004: 46–67). <TEXT>This chapter develops an extended analysis of the management of creative practice in one of the most successful UK film and television companies, Aardman Animations, which has evolved from a hand-to-mouth two-person operation in 1976 to a medium-sized firm with a £22.3 million turnover in 2014 and over 150 employees, a number that rises to more than 600 when two films are being produced simultaneously (Baker 2014).
    [Show full text]
  • Bibliography
    BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams, T. (2009, May 30). My Sporting Life: Ken Loach. Guardian. Altman, R. (1999). Film/Genre. London: BFI. Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities: Refections of the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Armstrong, G. (1998). Football Hooligans: Knowing the Score. Oxford: Berg. Ashby, J. (2005, Winter). Postfeminism in the British Frame. Cinema Journal, 44(2), 127–32. Ashby, J. (2010). It’s Been Emotional: Reassessing the Contemporary British Woman’s Film. In M. Bell & M. Williams (Eds.), British Women’s Cinema. London: Routledge. Babington, B. (2014). The Sports Film: Games People Play. London: Wallfower. Badder, D., & Baker, B. (1977, January). Interview with Thorold Dickinson. Film Dope, 11. Baker, A. (2003). Contested Identities: Sports in American Film. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Baker, A. (2008). Goal! and the Global Sports Film. In E. Poulton & M. Roderick (Eds.), Sport in Films. London: Routledge. Bakhtin, M. (1984 [1965]). Rabelais and His World (H. Iswolsky, Trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Barr, C. (2005). Sports Films. In B. McFarlane (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of British Film (2nd ed.). London: BFI. Bazin, A. (1971). What Is Cinema? (Vol. 2, H. Gray, Trans.). Berkeley: University of California Press. Bergan, R. (1982). Sports in the Movies. London: Proteus. Billig, M. (1995). Banal Nationalism. London: Sage. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 235 S. Glynn, The British Football Film, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77727-6 236 BIBLIOGRAPHY Braudy, L. (1992). From the World in a Frame. In G. Mast, M. Cohen, & L. Braudy (Eds.), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (4th ed.).
    [Show full text]
  • Is There a Distinctive British Cinema?
    Is There a Distinctive British Cinema? Yrd. Doç. Dr. Sibel ÇELİK NORMAN anadolu üniversitesi, iletişim bilimleri fakültesi [email protected] Abstract The essay reviews certain critical junctures of the history of the British cinema in order to determine the reason for its apparent lack of distinct characteristics in terms of narrative theme, cinematic style or mise-en-scène. These critical junctures include: ‘social consensus’ films of the 1930s; war films of the Second World War and after; the mini-cycle of British epics; the British ‘new wave’ of the early 1960s; and the ‘heritage’ film of the 1980s. It is argued that the emergence of a ‘national cinema’ requires a degree of social and political cohesiveness which has not been present in Britain since the early 1950s. The box-office successes of the 1990s are examined against a background of intensifying regional friction which makes the ultimate emergence of a distinctive British cinema unlikely. The findings of the essay have implications for the relationship between the concepts of national cinema and national identity, seen through the prism of an unusually varied and often intelligent cinematic history. keywords: British cinema, national cinema, national identity 86 Résumé Existe-t-il un cinéma Britannique distinctif? L’essai examine certains points de jonction critiques de l’histoire du cinéma britannique afin de déterminer quelle est la raison de son manque apparent de caractéristiques tels que thème narratif, style cinématographique ou mise en scène. Ces points de jonction critiques incluent: des films de “consensus social” des années 1930; des films de guerre datant de la deuxième guerre mondiale et après; le mini cycle de l’épopée britannique, la “new wave” (nouvelle vague) du début des années 1960, et le film “héritage” des années 1980.
    [Show full text]
  • Ealing Studios and the Ealing Comedies: the Tip of the Iceberg
    Ealing Studios and the Ealing Comedies: the Tip of the Iceberg ROBERT WINTER* In lecture form this paper was illustrated with video clips from Ealing films. These are noted below in boxes in the text. My subject is the legendary Ealing Studios comedies. But the comedies were only the tip of the iceberg. To show this I will give a sketch of the film industry leading to Ealing' s success, and of the part played by Sir Michael Balcon over 25 years.! Today, by touching a button or flicking a switch, we can see our values, styles, misdemeanours, the romance of the past and present-and, with imagination, a vision of the" future. Now, there are new technologies, of morphing, foreground overlays, computerised sets, electronic models. These technologies affect enormously our ability to give currency to our creative impulses and credibility to what we do. They change the way films can be produced and, importantly, they change the level of costs for production. During the early 'talkie' period there many artistic and technical difficulties. For example, artists had to use deep pan make-up to' compensate for the high levels of carbon arc lighting required by lower film speeds. The camera had to be put into a soundproof booth when shooting back projection for car travelling sequences. * Robert Winter has been associated with the film and television industries since he appeared in three Gracie Fields films in the mid-1930s. He joined Ealing Studios as an associate editor in 1942 and worked there on more than twenty features. After working with other studios he became a founding member of Yorkshire Television in 1967.
    [Show full text]
  • 'A British Empire of Their Own? Jewish Entrepreneurs in the British Film
    ‘A British Empire of Their Own? Jewish Entrepreneurs in the British Film Industry’ Andrew Spicer (University of the West of England) Introduction The importance of Jewish entrepreneurs in the development of Hollywood has long been recognized, notably in Neil Gabler’s classic study, An Empire of Their Own (1988). No comparable investigation and analysis of the Jewish presence in the British film industry has been conducted.1 This article provides a preliminary overview of the most significant Jewish entrepreneurs involved in British film culture from the early pioneers through to David Puttnam. I use the term ‘entrepreneur’ rather than ‘film-maker’ because I am analyzing film as an industry, thus excluding technical personnel, including directors.2 Space restrictions have meant the reluctant omission of Sidney Bernstein and Oscar Deutsch because the latter was engaged solely in cinema building and the former more significant in the development of commercial television.3 I have also confined myself to Jews born in the UK, thus excluding the Danziger brothers, Filippo del Giudice, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, Alexander Korda, Harry Saltzman and Max Schach.4 I should emphasize that my aim is to characterize the nature of the contribution of my chosen figures to the development of British cinema, not provide detailed career profiles.5 The idea that Jews controlled the British film industry surfaced most noticeably in the late 1930s when the undercurrent of anti-Semitic prejudice in British society took public forms; Isidore Ostrer, head of the giant Gaumont-British Picture Corporation (GBPC) was referred to in the House of Commons as an ‘unnaturalised alien’ (Low 1985: 243).
    [Show full text]
  • Title: Get the London Look: Anna Neagle As the Emblem of British Fashion and Femininity in Maytime in Mayfair (1949). Between 19
    Title: Get the London Look: Anna Neagle as the Emblem of British Fashion and Femininity in Maytime in Mayfair (1949). Between 1947 and 1952, the top British female star at the domestic box office was Anna Neagle. She had displaced Margaret Lockwood, who had achieved the top position during the war years with her turns as dangerous and subversive women in Gainsborough pictures such as The Man in Grey (Arliss, 1943) and, most famously, The Wicked Lady (Arliss, 1945). In both films Lockwood co-starred with James Mason, the brooding, somewhat sadistic idol to a legion of female fans. Mason, mirroring Lockwood’s popularity, was the top male star of 1945 and his appeal was a ‘combination of romantic allure and Sadean fascination’ (Evans 2001: 108) – an appeal that meshed with Lockwood’s ‘unity of transgression and sexual appetite’ (Babington 2001: 94). Aimed at a largely female audience, the Gainsborough melodramas provided escapism and the danger and sexual allure of the characters and stars resulted in a skewing of ‘moral logic’ (Leach 2004: 67), which Jeffrey Richards reads as revelatory of the wartime dislocation of moral values (Richards 1985: 292). With the end of the war, however, there came a reclamation of traditional values, not least in British cinema. In the years immediately following the war, there was a distinct pattern in British films that foregrounded ‘the British people’ as hero, a pattern following the wartime work of Humphrey Jennings in providing images of a united Britain; and the idea image of a Briton was a figure of restraint, good-humour and self-deprecation.
    [Show full text]