Download or read book Realism and Tinsel written by Robert Murphy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With themes ranging from passion and romance to murder and psychological disturbance, popular British film in the 1940s found little favour with the critics, but provided thrills and entertainment for millions of people during a time of austerity and danger. Realism and Tinsel looks beyond the established histories of Ealing Comedies and realist classics to excavate a rich but neglected tradition of melodrama, gangster films, morbid thrillers, and costume pictures. Discussing cinema in the context of the major social, economic, and political changes that were taking place, Robert Murphy examines the period's most popular films, including Madonna of the Seven Moons, The Way Ahead, and The Wicked Lady. The picture that emerges challenges the reassuring, cosy view of Britain presented in realist cinema, and throws new light on the British film industry of the time, and on our idea of the war era itself.

Download or read book Realism and Popular Cinema written by Julia Hallam and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2000-08-05 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compares Once were warriors with other films that have similar themes.

Download or read book British Social Realism written by Samantha Lay and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: British Social Realism details and explores the rich tradition of social realism in British cinema from its beginnings in the documentary movement of the 1930s to its more stylistically eclectic and generically hybrid contemporary forms. Samantha Lay examines the movements, moments and cycles of British social realist texts through a detailed consideration of practice, politics, form, style and content, using case studies of key texts including Listen to Britain, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Letter to Brezhnev, and Nil by Mouth. In discussing the work of many prominent realist filmmakers, the book considers the challenges for social realist film practice and production in Britain, now and in the future.

Download or read book Shocking Representation written by Adam Lowenstein and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2005-11-09 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this imaginative new work, Adam Lowenstein explores the ways in which a group of groundbreaking horror films engaged the haunting social conflicts left in the wake of World War II, Hiroshima, and the Vietnam War. Lowenstein centers Shocking Representation around readings of films by Georges Franju, Michael Powell, Shindo Kaneto, Wes Craven, and David Cronenberg. He shows that through allegorical representations these directors' films confronted and challenged comforting historical narratives and notions of national identity intended to soothe public anxieties in the aftermath of national traumas. Borrowing elements from art cinema and the horror genre, these directors disrupted the boundaries between high and low cinema. Lowenstein contrasts their works, often dismissed by contemporary critics, with the films of acclaimed "New Wave" directors in France, England, Japan, and the United States. He argues that these "New Wave" films, which were embraced as both art and national cinema, often upheld conventional ideas of nation, history, gender, and class questioned by the horror films. By fusing film studies with the emerging field of trauma studies, and drawing on the work of Walter Benjamin, Adam Lowenstein offers a bold reassessment of the modern horror film and the idea of national cinema.

Download or read book Femininity in the Frame written by Melanie Bell and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2009-11-30 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's widely assumed that Britain in the 1950s experienced a return to traditional gender roles. Popular cinema has typically been seen to represent this era through the dominant image of the 'happy housewife'. "Femininity in the Frame" is a sharply observant account of how British cinema engaged with femininity and women's roles during this important period. Written in a lively and accessible manner, it challenges received understandings, arguing that the period was marked by social unease and anxiety about gender roles and femininity, with much British cinema producing ambiguous messages about feminine identities and the role of women. Through analysing marginalized figures, such as prostitutes, criminals and femmes fatales, and addressing central themes, notably sexuality, marriage and female friendship, Melanie Bell examines how British popular cinema imagined and constructed femininity in this era of rapid social and cultural change. She draws together sources ranging from official reports to film reviews, with case studies of films across genres, including "The Perfect Woman", "Young Wives' Tale", "The Weak and the Wicked" and "A Town Like Alice", to show how new ideas and understandings of femininity were seeping into the cultural imagery at this time. She demonstrates how such films expressed proto-feminist ideas and how they ultimately explored new forms of femininity in a manner that has not until now been recognised.

Download or read book Realism and Tinsel written by Robert Murphy and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Metropolitan Police and the British Film Industry 1919 1956 written by Alex Rock and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-06-15 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking book investigates the murky relationship between the Metropolitan Police Press Bureau and the British film industry, shedding new light on police-media relations. Beginning with the culture of suppression during the interwar period, when retired police inspectors were threatened with loss of pension should they become involved with the film industry, the relationship shifted when a forgotten pioneer of public relations, Percy Fearnley, was appointed to the role of Metropolitan Police Public Information Officer in 1945. Fearnley was the first-ever journalist to take up this role and, through him, the Metropolitan Police embarked on a series of collaborations with the highest echelons of postwar British cinema, including J. Arthur Rank, Ealing Studios and Gainsborough Studios. Using newly-declassified internal Metropolitan Police and Home Office correspondence, Alexander Charles Rock tells the story of the Metropolitan Police's project to manipulate the British film industry into producing propaganda under the guise of mainstream entertainment cinema. In doing so he offers a radical re-reading of the context of production of a number of canonical British films such as The Blue Lamp (1950), I Believe In You (1952) and Street Corner (1953).

Download or read book Powell and Pressburger written by Andrew Moor and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2005-03-23 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The film-making partnership of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger was one of the most remarkable and visionary in cinema. They made an extraordinary range of films, from The Spy in Black and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp to A Canterbury Tale and The Red Shoes. With champions like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, and revived critical interest worldwide, they now find new generations of admirers. This illuminating new book looks closely at these classic films to explore their complex relationship to national identity, and their interest in exile, borderlands, utopias, escapism, art and fantasy. Moor reveals for example how the visual imagery of the films of the Second World War question current cinematic styles and how post war films like The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffman are in their highly expressive use of design, music and dance utterly international in character.

Download or read book Beyond the Epic written by Gene Phillips and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2006-11-24 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two-time Academy Award winner Sir David Lean (1908–1991) was one of the most prominent directors of the twentieth century, responsible for the classics The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and Doctor Zhivago (1965). British-born Lean asserted himself in Hollywood as a major filmmaker with his epic storytelling and panoramic visions of history, but he started out as a talented film editor and director in Great Britain. As a result, he brought an art-house mentality to blockbuster films. Combining elements of biography and film criticism, Beyond the Epic: The Life and Films of David Lean uses screenplays and production histories to assess Lean’s body of work. Author Gene D. Phillips interviews actors who worked with Lean and directors who knew him, and their comments reveal new details about the director’s life and career. Phillips also explores Lean’s lesser-studied films, such as The Passionate Friends (1949), Hobson’s Choice (1954), and Summertime (1955). The result is an in-depth examination of the director in cultural, historical, and cinematic contexts. Lean’s approach to filmmaking was far different than that of many of his contemporaries. He chose his films carefully and, as a result, directed only sixteen films in a period of more than forty years. Those films, however, have become some of the landmarks of motion-picture history. Lean is best known for his epics, but Phillips also focuses on Lean’s successful adaptations of famous works of literature, including retellings of plays such as Brief Encounter (1945) and novels such as Great Expectations (1946), Oliver Twist (1948), and A Passage to India (1984). From expansive studies of war and strife to some of literature’s greatest high comedies and domestic dramas, Lean imbued all of his films with his unique creative vision. Few directors can match Lean’s ability to combine narrative sweep and psychological detail, and Phillips goes beyond Lean’s epics to reveal this unifying characteristic in the director’s body of work. Beyond the Epic is a vital assessment of a great director’s artistic process and his place in the film industry.

Download or read book Anthony Asquith written by Tom Ryall and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-19 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first comprehensive critical study of Anthony Asquith. Ryall sets the director's work in the context of British cinema from the silent period to the 1960s, examining the artistic and cultural influences which shaped his films. Asquith's silent films were compared favourably to those of his eminent contemporary Alfred Hitchcock, but his career faltered during the 1930s. However, the success of Pygmalion (1938) and French Without Tears (1939), based on plays by George Bernard Shaw and Terence Rattigan, together with his significant contributions to wartime British cinema, re-established him as a leading British film maker. Asquith's post-war career includes several pictures in collaboration with Terence Rattigan, and the definitive adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (1951), but his versatility is demonstrated in a number of modest genre films including The Woman in Question (1950), The Young Lovers (1954) and Orders to Kill (1958).

Download or read book Colour Films in Britain written by Sarah Street and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 595 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did the coming of colour change the British film industry? Unlike sound, the arrival of colour did not revolutionise the industry overnight. For British film-makers and enthusiasts, colour was a controversial topic. While it was greeted by some as an exciting development – with scope for developing a uniquely British aesthetic – others were deeply concerned. How would audiences accustomed to seeing black-and-white films – which were commonly regarded as being superior to their garish colour counterparts – react? Yet despite this initial trepidation, colour captivated many British inventors and film-makers. Using different colour processes, these innovators produced films that demonstrated remarkable experimentation and quality. Sarah Street's illuminating study is the first to trace the history of colour in British cinema, and analyses the use of colour in a range of films, both fiction and non-fiction, including The Open Road, The Glorious Adventure, This is Colour, Blithe Spirit, This Happy Breed, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes, The Tales of Hoffmann and Moulin Rouge. Beautifully illustrated with full colour film stills, this important study provides fascinating insights into the complex process whereby the challenges and opportunities of new technologies are negotiated within creative practice. The book also includes a Technical Appendix by Simon Brown (Kingston University, UK), which provides further details of the range of colour processes used by British film-makers.

Download or read book Mother of the BBC written by Jennifer J. Purcell and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-05-14 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mabel Constanduros was one of the first British radio comediennes and a beloved star of the early BBC, best known as the creator and performer of the comic Cockney family, the Bugginses. In this, the first significant biography of Constanduros, Jennifer J Purcell explores Constanduros's career and influence on the shaping of popular British entertainment alongside the history of the nascent BBC. Mother of the BBC provides new insights into programming decisions and content on the early BBC, deepening our understanding of the history and evolution of situation comedy and soap opera. Further, Constanduros's biography considers class in the representation of the British people on BBC radio, the gendered experience and performance of radio celebrity, and the intersections between BBC entertainment and other forms of popular media prior to the advent of television. Constanduros's emphasis on the everyday and the family had far-reaching impacts on the shape of sitcom and soap opera in Britain, two popular lenses through which the nation sees itself at home. Her role in developing entertainment on the BBC and the ways in which she cultivated her career make her the Mother of the BBC, but in constructing a popular image of family life she might also be considered the Mother of the Nation.

Download or read book Business in Britain in the Twentieth Century written by Richard Coopey and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-08-13 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of fresh, incisive scholarship, by some of the leading business historians, critically examines the nature of economic recovery in Britain in recent years. Covering the key issues for business history in this period, the book confronts the traditional literature on conclusions of relative decline, and monocausal, simplistic explanations. It provides an impressive range of studies forming a platform for a new debate on the nature of British business in the 20th century. Themes include productivity, management, research and development, marketing, regional clusters and networks, industrial policy, the use of technology, and gender. Sector studies include newer, post-war hopefuls and successes including: * aerospace, * IT, * retail, * banking, * overseas investment, * the creative industries. The book demonstrates that our understanding of the historic strengths and weaknesses of business in Britain, and the shifting balance between sectors of the economy, has until now been poorly understood, and that British business history needs a fundamental reappraisal.

Download or read book The British working class in postwar film written by Philip Gillett and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-04 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An incidental pleasure of watching a film is what it tells us about the society in which it is made. Using a sociological model, The British working class in postwar film looks at how working-class people were portrayed in British feature films in the decade after the Second World War. Though some of the films examined are well known, others have been forgotten and deserve reassessment. Original statistical data is used to assess the popularity of the films with audiences. With its interdisciplinary approach and the avoidance of jargon, this book seeks to broaden the approach to film studies. Students of media and cultural studies are introduced to the skills of other disciplines, while sociologists and historians are encouraged to consider the value of film evidence in their own fields. This work should appeal to all readers interested in social history and in how cinema and society works.

Download or read book Long Shadows written by Petra Rau and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few countries attribute as much importance to the Second World War and its memory as Britain; arguably nowhere else has this conflict developed such longevity in cultural memory and retained such presence in contemporary culture. Long Shadows is about how literature and film have helped shape this process in Britain. More precisely, the essays collected here suggest that this is a continuous work in progress, subject to transgenerational revisions, political expediencies, commercial considerations, and the vicissitudes of popular taste. It would indeed be more accurate to speak of the meanings (plural) that the war has been given at various moments in British cultural life. These semantic variations and fluctuations in cultural import are rooted in the specificity of the British war experience, in the political aftermath of the war in Europe, and in its significance for Britain’s postwar position on the global stage. In other words, the books and films discussed in these essays respond to how the war has been interpreted and remembered; what is at stake is the way in which the war has been emplotted as a hegemonic cultural narrative about Britain.

Download or read book International Noir written by Homer B. Pettey and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-11 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ranging from Japanese silent films and women's films to French, Hong Kong, and Nordic New Waves, this book explores the influence of noir on international cinematic traditions and challenges prevailing film scholarship. It includes extensive bibliography and filmographies for recommended reading and viewing.

Download or read book The British Trauma Film written by Adam Plummer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2023-04-20 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the historical influence of psychoanalysis on Hollywood cinema has received considerable attention, the same cannot be said for its influence on British cinema. This book examines the central position that psychoanalysis occupies in British cinema in the years immediately following the Second World War. Plummer uses a critical theory framework to understand the role that psychoanalysis plays in British culture at this time as an historical discourse, and in British cinema as a narrative, a cultural, and an ideological discourse. He defines these as arising within various areas of contemporary psychoanalytic thinking related to traumatic wartime experience, sexual difference, and the interplay between subjectivity and objectivity. He analyzes six British films of the period: The Halfway House, Dead of Night, The Seventh Veil, Madonna of the Seven Moons, They Made Me a Fugitive, and Mine Own Executioner and demonstrates how psychoanalysis operates within them as a narrative and formal structuring mechanism. He argues that this engagement enables these films to begin to address the emotional fallout of the war by creating safe representational spaces where contemporary audiences could engage with their own traumatic experiences. While The British Trauma Film defines psychoanalysis as providing a language for British cinema at this time to confront the effects of wartime trauma, it finds that it also operates within a normalizing ideological system designed to reproduce dominant pre-war relations of political, social, and sexual power. However, in this group of films, this system is often countered by subversive discursive forces that seem to be immanent to the films themselves.