. --<· �� _;, -· _...,. .,... ·-' [.. '\. ..:i ;, � Richard Lowell MacDonald Thesis Title: Film Appreciation and the Postwar Film Society Movement Goldsmiths, University of London PhD in Media and Communications _ 1 GOLDSMITHS IIIIII I I II I Ill llllllll II II 111111111111111 8703241519 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS When I began this research I did not know that it would lead me towards the film societies. In fact I'm not sure that I had much sense of their existence. My interest was in exploring the internationalist sentiments of art cinema audiences. Flicking through an old copy of Films and Filming, I read about a film society in Ruislip which showed Bufiuel and Kurosawa films on l6mm projectors in my old primary school, and this captured my imagination. I owe thanks to many people for generously sharing their memories and experiences of being involved in film societies from the 1940s to the present, for passing on programmes and magazines from their personal collections and for extending me their hospitality. These conversations deepened my understanding of this movement immeasurably. Thank you to Sylvia and Peter Bradford, Sid Brooks, Gwen Bryanston, Anne Burrows, Percy Childs, James Clark, Brian Clay, Michael Essex-Lopresti, Denis Forman, Leslie Hardcastle, Alan Howden, David Meeker, John and Doris Minchinton, Gwen Molloy, Victor Perkins, Rommi Przibram, John Salisbury, Mansel Stimpson, Mike Taylor, John Turner, Jean Young and Dave Watterson. I am also grateful to Melanie Selfe who generously shared her ideas and writing on film societies. It is also true to say that I did not know much about teaching, and teaching film in particular, when I started this project. Teaching film has thrown up many questions that I then pursued in the research. I am grateful to the students I have taught who have shown great patience and good humour as I tried out different approaches, some more successful than others, and to staff at Goldsmiths who have given me opportunities to develop as a teacher, especially Cris Shore and Martin Williams. Staff in the Media and Communications department have given me valuable comments on my work. Thanks especially to Gareth Stanton and to Kay Dickinson, Natalie Fenton and David Morley. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith has been a source of friendly encouragement, advice and detailed feedback throughout the research process. The BFI History Group meetings 2 at Queen Mary, University of London brought me into contact with a research community with common interests in film appreciation and British film culture. Ian Craven commented extensively on an earlier version of the work on the National Film Library. I am especially grateful to Jon Hoare for sharing his love and deep knowledge ofBasil Wright's films with me and for all the email exchanges in which we worked through our ideas on British documentary. I had the extraordinary luck to take Rachel Moore's film course at Goldsmiths four years in a row as a seminar tutor. It is not an overstatement to say this course has changed the way I watch and think about movies. Those wintry Friday mornings watching Jane Wyman and James Cagney are etched forever on my memory. The completion of this thesis owes much to Rachel's gifts as a supervisor and teacher. I am grateful to my parents for the many ways they have found to support and encourage me throughout the long period ofresearch. Above all I owe thanks to May Ingawanij for always encouraging me to extend my reach while giving me time and space to work it all out. 3 DESCRIPTION OF THESIS Name of Candidate: Richard Lowell MacDonald Thesis Title: Film Appreciation and the Postwar Film Society Movement This thesis is an inquiry into the aims of the postwar film society movement. Film societies provided an organised alternative to commercially run film exhibition: screens and audiences for films overlooked by cinemas and opportunities to study and discuss them within voluntary associations. The thesis assesses the movement's contribution to both these objectives, focusing in particular on its promotion of film appreciation, a set of educational ideas and practices associated with training film viewers' capacity for film critical judgement. Tracing shifts in film appreciation as a discourse and as film society practice centred on screenings and discussion, the thesis contributes to our understanding of what film studies has been in Britain. It argues that appreciation connotes a cultural ambition specific to the postwar moment, broad social participation in discussion ofcinematic value. The thesis brings together research into the activities of individual societies, specifically through detailed studies of the Edinburgh Film Guild and Birmingham Film Society, with a focus on the practices and publications promoted by the Federation of Film Societies that aimed to construct a cohesive movement from disparate societies. The values nurtured by self-organised film education bodies are explored through the ideal of active participation, embodied in the membership relationship, across a spectrum of film cultural activity: exhibition, education and criticism. The self-image of the film society movement was also that of a vanguard in taste and knowledge. The thesis traces the pressures on this self-conception during a period of radical shifts in judgement associated with emergent critical and educational vanguards fostered in particular by the professionalisation of film teaching. The thesis argues that although this professionalisation created new forms of film society pedagogy it also introduced an ever-widening divide between informal learning, premised on membership exhibition and discussion, and specialised film studies in formal education. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 8-21 CHAPTER ONE: The Postwar Transformation of the 22-69 Film Society Movement Film Societies as Voluntary Association 24-27 Film Societies and Alternative Film Culture in the Interwar Years 28-35 The Development of 16mm and its 'Small Audience Economics' 35-42 Changes in Adult Education Provision 42-48 The Attraction to Film Society Activism 48-55 A New Cohort ofActivists 55-59 'Do Everything Yourself': An Ethos ofActive Participation 59-65 CHAPTER TWO: Film Appreciation and the 70-101 Responsibilities of Cultural Privilege: Roger Manvell's Film Film Theory in Translation 74-77 Amheim's Film: Aesthetic Appreciation and Medium Awareness 77-84 Manvell's Film 84-89 The Quality ofRecreation 89-97 Education and Responsibility 98-100 CHAPTER THREE: The British Film Institute and 102-128 Film Societies: The Archive, The Canon and Film Society Programming The National Film Library 107-110 'Classics' at the Film Societies 110-117 Programming for a Diverse Medium 117-124 The Balanced Season 125-128 CHAPTER FOUR: Making the World Our Home: Affirmative 129-191 Internationalism and the Film Societies Edinburgh as an Alternative Film Festival 130-136 Edinburgh's Documentary Debates 136-146 Documentary as True Internationalism 146-156 World Without End as Affirmative Internationalism 156-170 Story ofthe Rivers: Internationalism ofthe Oppressed 171-179 5 Internationalising the Film Society Programme: Contemporary Films 179-191 CHAPTER FIVE: Film Society Criticism, Middlebrow Taste 192-234 and New Cinemas Film News Reviewing Practice 194-197 Critical Evaluation as Recommendation 197-202 Outstanding Film Society Fare 202-203 Sincerity: Feeling as We are Meant to Feel 203-211 Criticism and New Cinemas 211-219 Inadmissable Obscurity 219-226 'An Evening ofAmerican Rubbish': Film Society Delegates and The 227-233 Lusty Men CHAPTER SIX: Film Societies, Universities and the Emergence 235-270 of Film Studies Film Appreciation's Curriculum 236-239 Two Contexts ofFilm Appreciation 239-241 Criticism and Democracy 241-245 The Popular Arts as the Touchstone ofCriticism 245-251 Birmingham Film Society and the University 251-252 Film Education and the New Vanguard 252-259 Film Studies and Informal Learning 259-263 Birmingham Film Society and the Idea ofFilm Culture 263-268 CONCLUSION: What Was Film Appreciation? 271-279 APPENDICES 280-340 BIBLIOGRAPHY 341-355 6 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page No. Fig. 1 Table from Mini-Cinema showing 16mm projector 38 sales 1934-1946 Figs. 2 & 3 Maps ofFilm Societies in Britain 1950 produced by 66-67 the London Regional Group ofthe Federation of Film Societies Fig. 4 Boston Film Society Annual General Meeting, 1949 68 Fig. 5 Boston Film Society Programme, 1952 69 Fig. 6 Ound1e School Film Society Programme, 1948 70 Fig. 7 Cover ofFilm, 1st edition, 1944 published by 101 Penguin Books Figs. 8-11 Stills from Song ofCeylon (Basil Wright, 1934) 151-152 Figs. 12 -16 Stills from Song ofthe Rivers (Joris Ivens, 1954) 175-176 Figs. 17 & 18 Adverts for Contemporary Films Ltd. 1955, 1957 190-191 Fig. 19 Cover ofFilm, 1963 234 Figs. 20 & 21 Birmingham Film Society Logos 1932, 1947-48 269 Figs. 22 & 23 Paddy Whannel at the Tyneside Film Society from 270 Tyneside Jubilee Film, 1959 Figs. 24 & 25 Stills from Tyneside Jubilee Film, 1959 298 Figs. 26 & 27 Solihull Film Society Programmes, 1958-59. 1969- 332 70 Figs. 28 Solihull Film Society 21st Anniversary Photo, 1979 332 7 Introduction This thesis addresses a period in British film culture when volunteer initiative, coordinated through film societies, possessed a prominence and cultural significance that has long since diminished. In 1945, film societies in England and Wales achieved a degree of collective organisation that had eluded them before the war; they established a Federation. 1 Over the next ten years through their two Federations they established two new film periodicals (Film News established 1953; Film, 1954), set up an experimental film fund that mirrored a similar initiative of the British Film Institute (1955), a film supply scheme (1956), held annual viewing sessions featuring films that were not exhibited commercially (1946) and organised Britain's first national film conference (1955). Individual film societies operated as film exhibitors under a shared assumption that the way they organised their activities marked them out as different from commercial cinema exhibition.