THE EBBS and FLOWS of BRITISH CINEMA BRIAN Mcfarlane
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ISSUE 37 SCREEN EDUCATION 8 This is the second in Screen Education’s series on national cinemas, which will draw attention to the histories and contempo- rary production of film industries from around the world. Our aim is to highlight the ongoing significance and interconnected- ness of these industries to world cinema, and to extend teachers’ and students’ awareness of film production beyond the limits of Hollywood. NOW AND THEN: THE EBBS AND FLOWS OF BRITISH CINEMA BRIAN McFARLANE WHAT IS IT? British cinema, in Australia at least but probably elsewhere too, has always occupied a sort of middle ground. ISSUE 37 In the days when it was a recognizable national cinema, with a regular output and with cinemas largely (sometimes exclusively) devoted to screening this, it fell somewhere between the mainstream and the art- SCREEN EDUCATION house. Those days came to an end in the early 1960s, but until then what was often referred to as ‘a good British film’ was seen as a sort of opposition to the Hollywood domination of our screens without, however, giving us the arthouse trouble of reading subtitles. Like the revived Australian cinema since the 1970s, British cinema had the problem—as a national cinema trying to stake out an audience area of its own—of using the same language (more or less) as Hollywood, whose conquest of the world’s English-speaking audiences was completed during the teens of the twentieth century. It was a conquest that met with little resistance from the public, but there were always other filmmakers who needed to create their own stories and who sought to persuade that public to give them at least some of its attention. 9 Select Filmography ecades have passed since the (1945) and Hamlet (1948); and of short stories NB Though I have set out the situation when British cinema by Graham Greene (The Fallen Idol, 1948) titles in this Filmography in was a clear entity on Australian and Somerset Maugham (Quartet, 1948). For chronological order, and though Dscreens. Cinema-going habits once, critics were almost unanimous in their I did want to indicated some have changed greatly since then, in matters praise of literary adaptations, fi nding them sense of spread over the dec- of production and exhibition, but it is still true much more ‘faithful’ to their source works ades, my main aim has been to say that some fi lms feel as if they could than Hollywood usually was, and regarding to represent the main areas of only be British, whatever their indebtedness this as a matter for praise. British fi lm production over that to fi lmmaking conventions. In this essay, I period—that is, to ensure that want to suggest some key defi ning features But there was more to Britain’s being a ‘liter- the most infl uential fi lmmakers, of British cinema, as well as indicating some ary cinema’ than merely a host of adapta- studios, genres and production of the periods when it has been most suc- tions. Whether adapted from novels and trends are represented. This cessful. It is worth keeping in mind the truism plays or not, the fi lms tended to rely more on being so, I have not deliberately that any viable national cinema must also be the verbal than the visual to ensure putting sought out the esoteric and I’ve an international cinema; that is, it must have their meanings across. A later director, Karel also been mindful of what titles some kind of identity on the world scene—in Reisz, who began directing features in 1960, might actually be available. For Britain’s case, at least on the Anglophone once described a lot of earlier British fi lms instance, most of the famous scene; and it must be commercially viable as as ‘photographs of people talking’, implying documentaries of the 1930s or well as culturally specifi c. There are today, for that they didn’t make their visual imagery the immensely prolifi c ‘B’ movies instance, plenty of British fi lms made which work hard enough and that they were inclined (the supporting fi lms in double are certainly wholly indigenous in content and to be rather static while the talk held sway. bills of the 1950s and 1960s) are personnel, but a great proportion of these This is an exaggerated account, but there is very hard to come by. The fi lmog- fi lms either never see the some truth in it: some British raphy then is generally speaking light of day or fail to escape cinema of even this ‘golden a mainstream guide to the sort the shores of their native age’ can seem very wordy of fi lms that most substantially land. compared with its American account for the entity ‘British counterparts. Also, British cinema’. For those who’d like What are British cinema always liked to at- more out of the way titles, please fi lms like? tract the services of authors get in touch with me. who had earned their The two replies most often reputations in purely verbal The Films given to this unanswerable question are that media (so did Hollywood but it tended to shut British release date, director’s it is on the one hand a literary cinema and on them in rooms with a typewriter and ignore name, and brief generic com- the other a cinema that has favoured realism. them). As a result, there was often, for better ment in brackets. *These three There’s much more to be said about the defi n- as well as worse, a close alliance between documentaries are available on ing tendencies of British fi lms than these two fi lmmakers on the one hand and novelists and a compilation DVD of ‘Empire terms suggest, but they do embody a good playwrights on the other. Graham Greene, Marketing Board Classics’ deal of what was most important about the who worked several times with director Carol prestige arm of the British industry. Further- Reed, is perhaps the most notable example, *Drifters (1929, John Grierson, more, both the literary and the realist strands but another is thriller-writer Eric Ambler who documentary) were seen as offering some sort of response wrote several screenplays for director Roy *Industrial Britain (1931, Robert to the irresistible glamour and narrative verve Ward Baker and others. The positive aspect Flahery, documentary) of Hollywood. of such collaborations was a high level of skil- The Private Life of Henry VIII ful verbal characterization through dialogue; (1933, Alexander Korda, historical ‘Like a good book’: a literary it was then a matter for the director to ensure drama and international breakthrough cinema that the verbal didn’t swamp the visual. The for British fi lms) trend in literary adaptation continues unabat- One of the most obvious ways in which Britain ed to this day, where British fi lms such as The *Song of Ceylon (1934, Basil ISSUE 37 qualifi es as a literary cinema is in the prepon- Wings of the Dove (1997) and I Capture the Wright, documentary) derance of adaptations from literary sources, Castle (2003) still fi nd appreciative audiences. (1938, Alfred including novels, plays and short stories. In its SCREEN EDU The Lady Vanishes Hitchcock) period of highest prestige, in the mid-to-late ‘So true to life’: a realist cinema 1940s, most of the fi lms on which that pres- Pygmalion (1938, Anthony Asquith C tige depended were derived from literature: Commercial British cinema of the 1930s, with ATION and Leslie Howard, comedy adapted there were defi nitive versions of Dickens’s some exceptions, was apt to be at some from George Bernard Shaw’s play) novels in David Lean’s Great Expectations remove from the facts of life as most of the (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948); of Shake- British population lived it, emerging as they 10 speare’s plays in Laurence Olivier’s Henry V did from The Depression at the start of the continued opposite... decade only to be confronted with the rise less likely to acknowledge these. One can Millions Like Us (1943, Frank of Nazism and the imminence of the Second see why they were sniffy about No Orchids Launder and Sidney Gilliat, realist World War. But you’d hardly have guessed at for Miss Blandish (1948): it is ridiculous in drama of WW2) such realities from the overwhelming output of its efforts to be sadistically compelling; but The Way Ahead (1944, Carol Reed, the fi lm studios. There were hundreds of so- Brighton Rock and They Made Me a Fugitive, wartime drama) ciety comedies (with madcap heiresses, and both made in 1947 and both hard-hitting, A Canterbury Tale (1944, Michael lords disguised as butlers) and thrillers with intelligent thrillers with a whiff of postwar Powell and Emeric Pressburger, drama master criminals intent on world domination, malaise and grim corruption about them mixing wartime and timeless themes) but outside the documentary (though Brighton Rock is set movement there was very pre-war, it could not have Henry V (1945, Laurence Olivier, little sense given of ordinary been made then) deserve adaptation of Shakespeare’s play) lives. serious consideration. They Brief Encounter (1945, David Lean, are the progenitors of, say, romantic drama) The documentarists, led by Get Carter (1970) or Lock, John Grierson, claimed to be Stock and Two Smoking The Wicked Lady (1946, Leslie representing life as it was, in Barrels (1998) or Sexy Beast Arliss, costume melodrama) fi lms with titles like Industrial (2000), all as British as fi sh Great Expectations (1946, David Britain (1933) and Housing and chips, but, ‘back then’, Lean, drama adapted from Charles Problems (1935).