British National Cinema
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British national cinema With films as diverse as Bhaji on the Beach, The Dam Busters, Mrs Miniver, Trainspotting, The Draughtsman's Contract, and Prick Up Your Ears, twentieth- century British cinema has produced wide-ranging notions of British culture, identity and nationhood. British National Cinema is a comprehensive introduction to the British film industry within an economic, political and social context. Describing the development of the British film industry, from the Lumière brothers’ first screening in London in 1896 through to the dominance of Hollywood and the severe financial crises which affected Goldcrest, Handmade Films and Palace Pictures in the late 1980s and 1990s, Sarah Street explores the relationship between British cinema and British society. Using the notions of ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ cinema, the author demonstrates how British cinema has been both ‘respectable’ and ‘disreputable’ according to the prevailing notions of what constitutes good cinema. British National Cinema analyses the politics of film and establishes the difficult context within which British producers and directors have worked. Sarah Street questions why British film-making, production and distribution have always been subject to government apathy and financial stringency. In a comparison of Britain and Hollywood, the author asks to what extent was there a 'star system' in Britain and what was its real historical and social function. An examination of genres associated with British film, such as Ealing comedies, Hammer horror and 'heritage' films, confirms the eclectic nature of British cinema. In a final evaluation of British film, she examines the existence of 'other cinemas': film-making which challenges the traditional concept of cinema and operates outside mainstream structures in order to deconstruct and replace classical styles and conventions. Illustrated with over 30 stills from classic British films, British National Cinema provides an accessible and comprehensive exploration of the fascinating development of British cinema. Sarah Street is a lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of Bristol. She is the joint author of Cinema and State. National Cinema series General Editor: Susan Hayward Reflecting growing interest in cinema as a national cultural institution, the new Routledge National Cinemas series brings together the most recent developments in cultural studies and film history. Its purpose is to deepen our understanding of film directors and movements by placing them within the context of national cinematic production and global culture and exploring the traditions and cultural values expressed within each. Each book provides students with a thorough and accessible introduction to a different national cinema. French National CinemaSusan Hayward Italian National Cinema 1896±1996Pierre Sorlin Australian National CinemaTom O’Regan British national cinema Sarah Street London and New York First published 1997 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 ©1997 Sarah Street All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Street, Sarah British national cinema /Sarah Street. p. cm. —(National cinemas series) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Motion pictures—Great Britain—History. 2. Motion picture industry—Great Britain—History. I. Title. II. Series. PN1993.5.G7S75 1997 791.43’0941-dc20 96–34314 CIP ISBN 0-203-41488-8 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-72312-0 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-06735-9 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-06736-7 (pbk) For Sue Contents List of plates vii Acknowledgements viii Introduction 1 1 The Fiscal Politics of Film 4 2 Studios, Directors and Genres 27 3 Genres from Austerity to Affluence 59 4 Genres in Transition, 1970s-1990s 88 5 Acting and Stars 109 6 Borderlines I: Modernism and British Cinema 140 7 Borderlines II: Counter-Cinema and Independence 161 Conclusion 188 Notes 192 Bibliography 201 Subject index 208 Name index 211 Index of films and television programmes 220 List of plates 2.1 Squibs Wins the Calcutta Sweep 37 2.2 Victoria the Great 41 2.3 The Drum 43 2.4 First A Girl 46 2.5 On the set of In Which We Serve 49 2.6 In Which We Serve 51 2.7 The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp 52 2.8 The Man In Grey 55 3.1 The Happiest Days of Your Life 64 3.2 The Dam Busters 70 3.3 The Quatermass Experiment 74 3.4 Location still from A Taste of Honey 81 3.5 The Servant 85 4.1 A Room With A View 99 4.2 Bhaji On the Beach 102 4.3 The Crying Game 104 4.4 Trainspotting 106 5.1 The Lodger 117 5.2 Anna Neagle 123 5.3 Anna Neagle 124 5.4 They Flew Alone 127 5.5 Diana Dors 130 5.6 Yield To the Night 131 6.1 The Red Shoes 155 7.1 The Gold Diggers 168 7.2 The Draughtsman’s Contract 172 7.3 The Last of England 174 7.4 Brief Encounter 186 7.5 Flames of Passion 187 Acknowledgements Many institutions and people have encouraged me to pursue my interest in British cinema over the years. Of special importance were extramural study evening classes I taught for Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education in the 1980s, with their enthusiastic and enquiring students, particularly Craig Dowler and Doug Halliday. My academic supervisor for my D.Phil. thesis, the late D.J.Wenden, provided me with a long-term ambition to subject British cinema to the same critical scrutiny which Hollywood has received since the 1970s. Over the years I have enjoyed contact and friendship with other film scholars, including Tony Aldgate, Charles Barr, Richard Dyer, Robert Murphy and Janet Thumim who encouraged me in my original researches and into a teaching career. I am grateful to Susan Hayward for commissioning British National Cinema and for useful comments on the manuscript suggested by herself and Sue Simkin. The continuing support of my family and friends has also enabled this book to be written, especially Linda Fitzsimmons, Zubeen Mehta and Judith Priestman. I am grateful to the Department of Drama: Theatre, Film and Television at the University of Bristol for granting me a term’s study- leave to complete this book. The film stills featured in this book were reproduced by the British Film Institute’s Stills, Posters and Designs Department, with the exception of Trainspotting which is courtesy of Polygram Filmed Entertainment. Introduction: British national cinema It is quite possible to conceive of a national cinema, in the sense of one which works with or addresses nationally specific materials, which is none the less critical of inherited notions of national identity, which does not assume the existence of a unique or unchanging ‘national culture’, and which is quite capable of dealing with social divisions and differences. (Hill, 1992:17) As the above quotation indicates, the question of national cinema is complex and contentious. On the one hand, there is a British film industry with relatively clearly defined economic boundaries and methods of classification, producing films which may not necessarily involve British themes or preoccupations, often including financial and labour participation from other countries. On the other hand, there is the cultural conception of what we mean by British films: the extent to which they participate in establishing nationhood as a distinct, familiar sense of belonging which is shared by people from different social and regional backgrounds. We have inherited a dominant conception of what it is to be British, a collective consciousness about nationhood which has, in part, been constructed by cultural referents, including cinema. Nationhood as the expression of a collective consciousness, rather than the sole product of militaristic conquest, is an idea derived from Benedict Anderson (1983) who argues that mass communication assists in the complex process of creating an ‘imagined community’ which differentiates itself from others. As Andrew Higson has pointed out, the achievement of this is often at the expense of representing the diversity of British society: ‘This imaginative process must be able to resolve the actual history of conflict and negotiation in the experience of community. It must be able to hold in place—or specifically to exclude—any number of other experiences of belonging’ (1995:6). Until relatively recently the diversity of Britishness referred to by Hill and Higson has not been fully represented on screen. With some notable exceptions, until the 1960s the dominant construction involved films which reflected a limited, often privileged experience of the class system, starring actors and actresses with BBC English 2 BRITISH NATIONAL CINEMA accents and set in metropolitan locations. While audiences may well have read against the grain, the ideological construction of most pre-1960 British films encouraged acceptance of the status quo. Yet despite the ascendancy of particular recurring filmic representations of British people and aspects of their lives, for example in films which employed the documentary realist tradition, the term ‘British national cinema’ is clearly not homogenous. A person’s experience of being British will depend on a variety of factors which influence their production and consumption of films: place of birth; gender and sexuality; race; class, education and occupation.