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Overview
Originally published in 1991.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691637228 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/19/2016 |
| Series: | Princeton Legacy Library , #1205 |
| Pages: | 592 |
| Product dimensions: | 7.10(w) x 10.20(h) x 1.50(d) |
Read an Excerpt
British Genres
Cinema and Society, 1930-1960
By Marcia Landy
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1991 Princeton University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-03176-7
CHAPTER 1
British Cinema History
Histories of British cinema have emphasized the fluctuating fortunes of the industry, often at the expense of its achievements. After early successes in the area of technology, the cinema was beset by a number of problems: inadequate confidence in the industry, weak incentives for investment, and American hegemony after the Great War. The cinema in Britain began as an artisanal form of production which expanded unimpeded by large financial interests. As Michael Chanan says, initially "cinematography was more than a means of mechanical reproduction. In creating so suddenly a huge and hungry following, the primary characteristic of the film, in its early days, was the sense, and the fact, of unsatisfied demand. The sense of unsatisfied demand lay in the baffling fact that, like the primary, basic material needs of human existence—for food, clothing, a dwelling and warmth—the demand for the cinema seemed to anticipate the particular means of satisfying it."
British entrepreneurs had not arrived at any standardized methods in the creation of equipment, nor was there any strict division of labor in the areas of production, distribution, and exhibition. The making of film was still a family affair, dependent on local support. By the time the realization dawned that the film industry would need larger infusions of capital and more rationalized modes of production, the Americans had swept the field. World War I was instrumental in establishing American hegemony. While Britain, like other European powers, had to divert financial and technical resources toward the war effort, Hollywood producers took advantage of the shortage of films and of film equipment to inundate the European market with their own products. In the area of exhibition, there were more American than British films available to be shown and profits to be made in Britain by exhibiting them. The Americans produced more films, made them less expensively, and could distribute them at lower costs in foreign countries, having recovered costs in their own large markets. Furthermore, the vertical organization of the American film industry by the mid-1920s was in place, and the Americans, by means of a number of strategies such as block booking and blind booking, could consolidate their monopoly.
The British, like the other Europeans, learned to their disadvantage that cinema was an international phenomenon and that the United States had, in the entertainment industry, colonized them. That the British and Americans shared a common language only made the situation more critical. The effects of this situation were that "the British cinema, such as it was, lost its self-confidence. It was unable to sell in the American market, and in other foreign markets was forced to compete against the Americans on unfavorable terms.... British film-makers quite simply developed an inferiority complex. This was a typical effect of neo-imperialism in the cultural sphere: cultural imperialism." Rather than encouraging investors, the economic and cultural dependency of the British cinema on Hollywood retarded development. This situation is roughly comparable to the dilemma of Third World filmmakers forced to compete with the Hollywood films that now flood their countries. The state intervened to alter the picture somewhat, but never to the great advantage of the British industry.
Every decade saw the enactment of legislation designed to mitigate the prejudice against British films and to encourage indigenous production. The industry and the government sought to develop a system that would establish a ratio for the production and exhibition of British films in relation to foreign productions. According to the 1927 Cinematograph Act, to qualify under the established quota system as British, the film had to be authored by a British subject, the studio scenes filmed in the British Empire, and at least seventy percent of the labor costs paid to British subjects. Of course, this did not eliminate the possibility of an American company's financing a production under these terms. The 1930s saw the rise of the "quota quickie," a pejorative term for shoddily constructed and technically inferior films financed cheaply to meet the required quota for exhibition of indigenous films established by British law. These films, however, did offer work to aspiring filmmakers such as Michael Powell. The 1938 act sought to address the problem of poor-quality British films by establishing a minimum cost requirement for registration that could ensure adequate budgeting for the production and, hopefully, eliminate low production standards. The general effect of both cinematographic acts was, in balance, not as helpful as the outward signs of the growth of companies and cinemas seem to suggest. The 1927,1938, and 1947 acts did not solve the problem of Hollywood dominance. Despite moments of prosperity and profit, the history of British film production is one of unmitigated dependence on America and of cultural imperialism.
With the coming of sound, the British cinema, like other European cinemas, had to undergo massive changes in equipment, personnel, and financing. The effects of the changeover were seen in the disappearance of many of the cheap quota companies, who could not afford the expenses entailed, though by no means did the coining of sound curtail the quota quickies. The early 1930s saw the rise of film as "big business" with the production of international features through the efforts of Sir Alexander Korda and his London Films. Studios such as British International made a profit, and Gaumont-Bridsh managed to stay afloat. The quota legislation ensured that there was a demand for British films, and many of these companies cashed in on that demand. World War II was also to improve dramatically the quality of British films, owing to a number of factors—American-British cooperation, the insatiable demand of wartime audiences for films, and the existence of an ideology of consensus and cooperation in the face of threats to the nation and to personal survival. Robert Murphy cites the popularity of In Which We Serve (1942), which "grossed $1.8 million in America," and "British films ranging from realist war dramas like 49th Parallel (U.S. title: The Invaders) and Target for Tonight to escapist melodramas such as The Man in Grey and Madonna of the Seven Moons rivalled the top Hollywood pictures in popularity with British audiences."
Margaret Dickinson identifies three issues that have consistently plagued the British cinema: "the dominant influence of America; the monopoly exercised by the major British interests; and the lack of a stable domestic production industry." Though World War II was a prosperous time for the British film industry, the period from the 1940s to the 1960s witnessed extreme changes as cinema was transformed from an influential mass medium to "a minority entertainment and a sideline of the leisure industry." After an unsuccessful attempt to challenge American competition and carve out a share for himself in the American market, J. Arthur Rank, a dominant and dominating figure in British film production from the 1930s, settled for cooperation with American interests, and the 1950s saw greater Anglo-American production in big-budget films than low-budget films. More than ever, the British cinema was firmly in the hands of Hollywood, a Hollywood that was itself struggling to maintain its leadership in the entertainment industry. Moreover, the cinema now had to contend with yet another competitor: television.
While the market directly influences the kinds of films produced, there are other and equally important controlling factors to be considered. Censorship determines what the public can and cannot see. As in the United States, various local authorities, religious groups, and political constituencies in Britain began early to agitate for the creation of a body that could outline and control the representation of certain subjects in the cinema. Direct governmental intervention was, for some, the most desirable way to set up a supervisory apparatus. For others, internal surveillance by the filmmakers was preferable. A compromise position called for a semi-autonomous body made up of representatives from the industry and the government. In 1912, the British Board of Film Censors was finally composed of representatives of the trade, with the chair appointed by the home secretary and supported financially by those seeking to get a certificate that would permit their films to be exhibited.
The first censorship regulations other than safety regulations concerned the representation of nudity and the materialization of Jesus Christ. By 1914, other restrictions were added, involving such things as indecorous dancing, cruelty to animals, vulgarity and impropriety of dress, scenes suggesting indelicate marital relations, gruesome murders or wartime mutilation, morbid death scenes, cruelty to women, scenes tending to disparage public characters and institutions, medical operations, drunken scenes carried to excess, painful scenes in connection with insanity, suicides, incestuous relations, native customs abhorrent to British ideas, and, during wartime, the disposition of troops and other information calculated to enlighten the enemy. In 1915, other items were added to the list of prohibitions, concerning the portrayal of industrial relations, the religious beliefs of Indian nationals and the maltreatment of natives, antagonistic relations between capital and labor, scenes holding up the monarchy to contempt or ridicule, scenes bringing into disrepute British prestige in the empire, controversial politics, drugs, men and women in bed together, prostitution and procuration, prolonged fight arid struggle scenes, and the effects of venereal disease. More sensitive areas concerned the positive representation of the Communist Revolution and, more generally, films sympathetic to the Soviet Union. Still other areas included the unauthorized use of royal names and public personalities, scenes calculated to inflame racial hatred, the American form of criminal interrogation (the "third degree"), doubtful characters exalted into heroes, advocacy of free love, and the portrayal of the sacrificing of a woman's virtue as laudable. If interracial marriages were shown, one or another of the couple would die or the marriage was shown to result in failure. Real institutions were not to be identified; hence the college in A Yank at Oxford (1938) has no specific name. Words like "bloody" and "bastard" were not to be used. Gangster films were frequently cut, and horror films banned.
Nicholas Pronay and Jeremy Croft describe the board in the following manner: "Theoretically, the Board's certificate only served the purpose of advising local authorities, which actually possessed the power to permit or ban the exhibition of a film in the cinemas of their district, as to the suitability of the film concerned. In practice, after a few, although much publicized, assertions of independence by some local authorities during the 1920s, the Home Office had succeeded in inducing all of them to require the possession of a BBFC Certificate as a precondition of exhibition." The Cinematograph Exhibitors declared that its members could only show films with the BBFC certificate. The only way around these restrictions was to belong to a cinema club or to have private access to a copy of a film that had not been passed.
Given the list of censorable items, it is important to see that any reading of British films must take into account not only the subjects selected for representation, but also the absence of many subjects. Moreover, the filmmakers often had to resort to indirect discourse in order to circumvent the censor's axe, adopting conventions that would suggest the film's moral disavowal of certain attitudes and actions offensive to the censor: killing off illegitimate children and adulterous women, punishing lawbreakers, resolving unresolvable marital conflicts, and producing ellipses in explicitly sexual material. In general, according to Pronay and Croft, the system operated through negative constraints "with well-defined 'Don'ts.' As long as filmmakers avoided all the subjects proscribed by the ninety-eight rules ... they were free to make films about whatever they wished."
There was no need to develop an elaborate censorship apparatus with the coming of World War II: "All that was necessary was, firstly, to close the loopholes which had deliberately been left open before the war for films that could only be shown to an intellectual minority behind the closed doors of cinema societies and the like, and, secondly, to introduce some new categories relating to the military security needs of wartime." The closing of the loopholes, however, also brought with it more stringent and extensive forms of control involving such issues as who could have access to film stock, favoring of certain filmmakers over others, and preferences for certain themes over others. On the positive side, some of the prewar regulations were relaxed, as in the case of the representation of industrial relations, the treatment of marital problems, the portrayal of a foreign government in a disparaging light, and the impersonation of actual individuals.
The preparation of scripts was not merely a matter between the writer and the studio, subject to the producer's approval—the censors played an integral part in the determination of the text, even to the point of choosing which scripts would see the light of day and which would not. The case for wartime censorship was legitimated in the name of raising cultural standards as well as creating positive civilian morale. The operations of the BBFC and later the Ministry of Information imposed restrictions on an industry that was only too familiar with economic and cultural constraints. Moreover, the existence of the board is a specific instance of the collaboration of state and private institutions in the interests of political control. In the public arena, the overtly political nature of British censorship was evident in its restrictions on the portrayal of class conflict, resistances and rebellions against the state, and criticism of government policies, especially during times of crisis. In the private sphere, the restrictions governing sexual behavior and morality were equally political. The existence of censorship serves as a reminder that, in spite of the asseverations of free speech and private property, British state and civil apparatuses were zealous in curtailing both in the interests of social and political conformity. British censorship practices must, then, be seen as an integral force in determining not only the parameters of British film production but the arena of acceptable social attitudes and values that are articulated, ignored, or subverted.
In determining the specific character of film texts, the role of the director must also be accorded a position in the ensemble of relations that govern film production. The auteur theory has been subject to a good deal of criticism recently because of the way it accords primacy to the director as the author of a text and slights the roles of producers, studios, writers, stars, and camerapersons as well as the determining roles of censorship and the genre system. Janet Wolff asserts that "the author as a fixed, uniform and unconstituted creative source has indeed died.... But the author, now understood as constituted in language, ideology, and social relations, retains a central relevance." In certain instances in British cinema, it is possible to identify styles, themes, and ideological predilections with particular directors, but, as Christine Saxton has argued, "the author is a juncture of multiple codes (representational, narrative, iconographic, cinematic, cultural) and multiple practices (production, promotion, reading, critical reading, theoretical analysis). The collective voice generated by this nexus of codes and practices and manifested as the author-function, is ultimately imbued with a culturally defined world view that invades every aspect of the film's representation." In the case of British cinema, there are groups of films in which the voice seems to be predominantly that of the director, and in which the director's presence can be read as orchestrating cultural concerns through his (rarely her) agency. However, even where the text is identified with the voice of the director, this voice must be understood as an "authorizing force ... nothing other than a predication of the representation." The following discussion of directors is predicated on this assumption.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from British Genres by Marcia Landy. Copyright © 1991 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
- FrontMatter, pg. i
- Contents, pg. vii
- Illustrations, pg. ix
- Acknowledgments, pg. xi
- Author’s Note, pg. xiii
- Introduction, pg. 1
- CHAPTER ONE. British Cinema History, pg. 23
- CHAPTER TWO. The Historical Film, pg. 53
- CHAPTER THREE. Empire, War, and Espionage Films, pg. 97
- CHAPTER FOUR. The War Film in War and Peace, pg. 140
- CHAPTER FIVE. The Woman's Film, pg. 189
- CHAPTER SIX. Tragic Melodramas, pg. 237
- CHAPTER SEVEN. Family Melodramas, pg. 285
- CHAPTER EIGHT. Film Comedies, pg. 329
- CHAPTER NINE. Horror and Science Fiction, pg. 388
- CHAPTER TEN. The Social Problem Film, pg. 432
- Epilogue, pg. 483
- Notes, pg. 487
- Filmography, pg. 503
- Bibliography, pg. 521
- Index, pg. 535