Admission for All How Cinema and the Railways Shaped British Culture, 1895-1948
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Admission for All How Cinema and the Railways Shaped British Culture, 1895-1948 Rebecca E Harrison UCL PhD in Film Studies Declaration I, Rebecca Harrison, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Abstract My thesis examines the intersections between railway and cinema spaces to demonstrate how crucial these technologies were in altering life in Britain. The project focuses on the period between 1895 (the birth of film) and 1948 (when the railways were nationalised). Access to railways and cinemas was predicated on payment rather than birthright: in carriages and auditoriums, consumerism was—in theory—inclusive. The two technologies were thus crucial in transforming public space from one of privilege to one of mass consumption. I analyse three spaces: inside carriages, the interiors of auditoriums and the space onscreen to demonstrate how trains and moving images affected in material ways people’s experiences of modernity in everyday life. I also connect the intersections between the railway and cinema to a broader narrative about Britain’s democracy and industrial and political change in the period. This interdisciplinary thesis draws on a variety of fields including film theory, history, geography and sociology to provoke a reinvestigation of the cinema and the train in British culture. Archival research is central to the thesis, as primary sources create a material history of both the railway and cinema’s impacts on life in Britain. The project’s historical narrative is also interwoven with conceptual analysis. I use moving images as archives, proposing that films help us access the past by releasing stored time and space onscreen. In exploring the connections between the two technologies and everyday life, the thesis also addresses transformations of public and private space, gender and work, domesticity, tourism, and British industry. My research is articulated through a series of case studies incorporating royal rail travel, ambulance carriages, passenger trains, and railway movie theatres. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF IMAGES INTRODUCTION 1 A HISTORY OF BRITAIN’S RAILWAYS 6 A HISTORY OF BRITAIN’S CINEMA 9 METHODOLOGY 11 LITERATURE REVIEW 14 CHAPTERS 37 AN INSIDE STORY: EXPOSING THE ROYALS IN BRITISH CULTURE 49 VICTORIA AND EDWARD VII 53 GEORGE V 62 THE PRINCE OF WALES 69 EDWARD VIII AND GEORGE VI 75 CONCLUSION 84 ‘A TRAIN FULL OF TRAGEDIES’: FIRST WORLD WAR AMBULANCE TRAINS ON FILM 93 THE AMBULANCE TRAIN 96 THE ROLE OF FILM IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR 104 THE AMBULANCE TRAIN ONSCREEN 112 A SHARED VOCABULARY 119 CONCLUSION 124 PORTERS, PROJECTIONETTES AND PRIVATE DETECTIVES: WOMEN’S OCCUPATIONS OF RAILWAYS, CINEMAS AND SCREENS 136 WOMEN’S OCCUPATIONS UP TO 1939 140 ‘OF COURSE, THIS IS A MAN’S JOB’ 149 WOMEN’S OCCUPATIONS IN WARTIME 157 ‘I CAN’T CHANGE MYSELF’ 166 CONCLUSION 174 INSIDE THE CINEMA TRAIN: ARCHIVING MODERNITY AND EVERYDAY LIFE 184 THE EMERGENCE OF THE MOVIE COACH 187 INSIDE THE CINEMA TRAIN 197 THE CINEMA TRAIN’S AFTERLIFE 209 CONCLUSION 214 CONCLUSION 225 REFLECTIONS AND FURTHER QUESTIONS 229 AFTERWORD 232 FILMOGRAPHY 235 BIBLIOGRAPHY 243 LIST OF IMAGES Introduction 1. Gander antagonises Winthrop through the window of a first class carriage in The Ghost Train (Walter Forde, UK, 1944). 2. George Cruickshank, The Railway Dragon (1841-1850). 3. Eric Ravillious, Train Landscape (1939). 4. SR’s ‘South for Winter Sunshine’ advertisement (1929). 5. LNER’s ‘Take Me by the Flying Scotsman’ advertisement (1932). Chapter One 1. Eadweard Muybridge’s proto-cinematic images (Horses in Motion, 1878). 2. A still from George Albert Smith’s A Kiss in The Tunnel, 1899. 3. A dog’s heartbeat is displayed on a ‘string galvanometer’. The Illustrated London News, May 22, 1909. 4. The LNWR royal train diagram for George and Mary’s journey, October 1901. 5. Edward looking through the camera in Canadian Tour Plus Other Prince of Wales (British Pathé, UK, 1911-1925). 6. The view of the ‘flying machine’ from inside Edward’s train. Canadian Tour Plus Other Prince of Wales (British Pathé, UK, 1911-1925). 7. Inside Edward’s bedroom on Oropesa. The Illustrated London News, January 21, 1931. 8. Edward’s static portrait framed by the iris. Mrs Simpson and Belvedere (British Movietone News, UK, 1936). 9. An aerial shot looking down on Edward’s home at Fort Belvedere. Mrs Simpson and Belvedere (British Movietone News, UK, 1936). 10. George and Elizabeth on an open-sided train in New York. Daily Mail, June 23, 1939. 11. Elizabeth inspects the ambulance train. Her Majesty Inspects Casualty Train (British Pathé, UK, 1939). 12. The Prime Minister appears in the train doorway in The Premier’s Return Journey (British Movietone News, UK, 1942). Chapter Two 1. The staff car aboard the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway ambulance train. Ambulance Train Exhibition brochure, c.1915-1918. 2. LSWR ambulance train diagram. The Railway News, “The London and South- Western Railway Ambulance Train,” August 29, 1914. 3. Postcard of nurses in a lying-down ward, c.1914-1918. 4. Photograph of sitting-up cases, c.1914-1918. 5. Pathé Frères Cinema advertisement in The Bioscope, January 29, 1915. 6. Gaumont Company Limited advertisement in The Bioscope, February 25, 1915. 7. Soldiers watch films projected on the ceiling. The Illustrated London News, “A Hospital Ceiling as a Screen for Moving Pictures: A Cinema for Bedridden Wounded Soldiers at a Base in France”, August 10, 1918. 8. Patients are loaded on a train in The Wonderful Organisation of the RAMC (British Topical Committee for War Films, UK, 1916). 9. Patients are loaded on a train in Behind the Lines with Our French Ally (Pathé Frères, UK, 1917). 10. Leonard Wiseman Horner’s office diagrams. Private Papers of L W Horner, 1915- 1918, September 26, 1917. Chapter Three 1. A woman trapped by the train smash in The Wrecker (Géza von Bolváry, UK, 1929). 2. The Railway Queen arrives at the station in The Railway Queen (British Pathé, UK, 1929). 3. Nora is loaded on the train in Number Seventeen (Alfred Hitchcock, UK, 1932). 4. Hannay corners Pamela in The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock, UK, 1935). 5. Harwood and luggage in Seven Sinners (Albert de Courville, UK, 1936). 6. Iris’s sight is blurred in The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock, UK, 1938). 7. Miss Froy’s name appears on the window/screen in The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock, UK, 1938). 8. Anna and Gus in Night Train to Munich (Carol Reed, UK, 1940). 9. Women and children aboard the train in Evacuees Leave London (British Movietone, UK, 1941). 10. Gladys the railway signalwoman in A Canterbury Tale (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger, UK, 1944). 11. Alison and her fellow pilgrims in A Canterbury Tale (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger, UK, 1944). 12. Joan’s dream is projected inside the carriage in I Know Where I’m Going! (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger, UK, 1945). Chapter Four 1. Inside a Hale’s Tours screening. 2. The 1924 LNER film carriage (Topical Press Agency, Getty Images). 3. Still from Cinema on Train, British Pathé, UK, 1935. 4. LNER film programme, May 1938. 5. A still from New Berth for Bananas (British Pathé, UK, 1938). 6. A still from Troy Town (British Pathé, UK, 1938). 7. Southern Rail cinema coach, 1941. From the private collection of Alan Wilmott. 8. Laura’s dream projected onto the train window in Brief Encounter (David Lean, UK, 1946). 9. Lisa and Stefan inside the proto-cinematic coach in Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophüls, USA, 1948). INTRODUCTION On a train bound for Cornwall, working-class couple Herbert and Edna sit discussing furniture. Further down the corridor bourgeois Miss Bourne protests at having to show her ticket to the guard. In First Class, Richard Winthrop, a well-spoken sportsman, objects to a lower class passenger intruding on his wife’s carriage when vaudeville star Tommy Gander bursts into her private compartment [figure 1]. The travellers in Walter Forde’s 1941 The Ghost Train are from all walks of life: they are working, middle and upper class, they are detectives and comedians, men and women.1 Yet they all share a train journey. Both rich and poor had inhabited actual railway spaces from the passenger train’s inception in 1825, with First, Second and Third class tickets on offer. And, after the cinema’s invention in 1895, people from diverse backgrounds also inhabited auditoriums. Audiences for The Ghost Train likely occupied movie theatres in which factory owners sat (albeit in more comfortable seats) alongside their employees. All three spaces—on the train, in the cinema, and in the representative space onscreen—were Fig 1: Gander antagonises Winthrop through the window of a first class carriage in The Ghost Train transformative. (Walter Forde, UK, 1944). Inside trains and movie theatres, access to public space was predicated on payment rather than birthright: on the railway and in the cinema anyone could buy a ticket so long as payment was met.2 Theatres, private horse-drawn coaches and gentlemen’s clubs were privileged arenas that remained inaccessible to particular groups, including the working class and women. However, the railways and cinema were inclusive and so revolutionised British society by offering space for mass consumption. Passengers and spectators were sold new ways of seeing and moving; indeed, the carriage and the auditorium commoditised an experience that made movement visual. In doing so, both the train and film materially transformed how people interacted with the world. I argue that as a result, the railways 1 and cinema shaped everyday life. In order for us to understand how the technologies impacted on daily life it is imperative that we investigate not only the train and film, but also the physical and conceptual intersections between them.