British Silent Cinema and the Great War

205 Pages·2011·2.063 MB·English

by  Michael Hammond, Michael Williams (eds.)

British Silent Cinema and the Great War
Also by Michael Hammond
THE BIG SHOW: BRITISH CINEMA CULTURE AND THE GREAT WAR
THE CONTEMPORARY TELEVISION SERIES (co-edited with Lucy Mazdon)
CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN CINEMA (co-edited with Linda Ruth Williams)
Also by Michael Williams
IVOR NOVELLO: SCREEN IDOL
British Silent Cinema and
the Great War
Edited by
Michael Hammond
and
Michael Williams
Palgrave
macmillan
Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Michael Hammond and
Michael Williams 2011
Individual chapters © Contributors 2011
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-29262-8
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2011 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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ISBN 978-1-349-33237-3 ISBN 978-0-230-32166-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230321663
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
British silent cinema and The Great War/edited by Michael Hammond,
Michael Williams.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. World War, 1914–1918—Motion pictures and the war. 2. Silent
films—Great Britain—History and criticism. 3. Historical films—Great
Britain—History and criticism. 4. Motion pictures—Great Britain—
History—20th century. I. Hammond, Michael, 1954– II. Williams,
Michael, 1971–
D522.23.B75 2011
791.43’63582821—dc22 2011016926
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Notes on Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xi
1. Goodbye to All That or Business as Usual? History and
Memory of the Great War in British Cinema 1
Michael Hammond and Michael Williams
Part I: The War
2. The Battle of the Somme (1916): An Industrial Process
Film that ‘Wounds the Heart’ 19
Michael Hammond
3. British and Colonial: What the Company Did in the
Great War 39
Gerry Turvey
4. ‘Improper Practices’ in Great War British Cinemas 49
Paul Moody
5. ‘Shells, Shots and Shrapnel’: Picturegoer Goes to War 64
Jane Bryan
Part II: Aftermath: Memory and Memorial
6. ‘A Victory and a Defeat as Glorious as a Victory’:
The Battles of the Coronel and Falkland Islands
(Walter Summers, 1927) 79
Amy Sargeant
7. Remembering the War in 1920s British Cinema 94
Christine Gledhill
8. Remembrance, Re-membering and Recollection: Walter
Summers and the British War Film of the 1920s 109
Lawrence Napper
v
vi Contents
9. ‘Fire, Blood and Steel’: Memory and Spectacle in
The Guns of Loos (Sinclair Hill, 1928) 118
Michael Williams
Part III: Notes from the Archive
10. Hello to All This: Music, Memory and Revisiting the
Great War 137
Neil Brand
11. The Dead, Battlefield Burials and the Unveiling of War
Memorials in Films of the Great War Era 145
Toby Haggith
12. Anticipating the Blitz Spirit in First World War
Propaganda Film: Evidence in the Imperial War
Museum Archive 160
Roger Smither
13. ‘How Shall We Look Again’? Revisiting the Archive in
British Silent Film and the Great War 170
Bryony Dixon and Laraine Porter
References 186
Index 192
List of Illustrations
Cover image from Journey’s End (James Whale, 1930).
Photograph courtesy of BFI Stills, Posters and Designs.
Still image from Sir Douglas Haig’s Great Push, a special
magazine published to coincide with the release of The Battle
of the Somme. Reproduced here are the titles taken from
the film. 4
Jameson Thomas as Brown in Poppies of Flanders (Arthur
Maude, 1927). Photograph courtesy of BFI Stills, Posters
and Designs. 13
The industrial process of battle. From Sir Douglas Haig’s Great
Push, published with the release of The Battle of the Somme. 26
Warwickshires have dinner the night before the battle.
A shot of soldiers’ faces addressed to local audiences back
home. This image typifies the primary form of address of
the film. From Sir Douglas Haig’s Great Push. 30
King George V on the front cover of Pictures and the
Picturegoer (August 22 1914). 65
Cartoon depicting a war correspondent’s dream of filming
at the front line (Pictures and the Picturegoer, October 17
1914). 67
Naval cadets saluting ships in The Battles of the Coronel
and Falkland Islands (Walter Summers, 1927). Photograph
courtesy of BFI Stills, Posters and Designs. 81
Jameson Thomas in Blighty. Photograph courtesy of BFI
Stills, Posters and Designs. 96
A young Herbert Wilcox, director of Dawn and producer of
The Wonderful Story. Photograph courtesy of BFI Stills,
Posters and Designs. 97
The Divisonal Baths, Ypres: The Story of the Immortal Salient
(Walter Summers, 1925). Photograph courtesy of BFI Stills,
Posters and Designs. 114
vii
viii List of Illustrations
Heroic action in Ypres: The Story of the Immortal Salient.
Photograph courtesy of BFI Stills, Posters and Designs. 117
Revels below stairs before leaving for the Front in The Guns
of Loos. Photograph courtesy of BFI Stills, Posters
and Designs. 122
A blind John Grimlaw (Henry Victor) returns from the front
in The Guns of Loos (Sinclair Hill, 1928). Photograph courtesy
of BFI Stills, Posters and Designs. 129
Robin Villiers (Godfrey Winn) shakes hands with David
Marshall (Jameson Thomas) in Blighty (Adrian Brunel, 1927).
Photograph courtesy of BFI Stills, Posters and Designs. 141
The ceremonies promoted the military ethos among the
young. Unveiling of the Ystalyfera War Memorial, Saturday
December 16th 1922 (Imperial War Museum film number
MGH 3720; still image number IWM FLM 3205). Photograph
courtesy of the Imperial War Museum, London. 150
The concrete cross. Unveiling of the Rawmarsh & Parkgate War
Memorial by Col. Stephen Rhodes DSO, Sunday 3rd June 1928
(Imperial War Museum film number MGH 3598; still image
number IWM FLM 3931). Photograph courtesy of the Imperial
War Museum, London. 154
A still from the film Visit of HRH the Prince of Wales to
Ebbw Vale, February 21st 1918 (Imperial War Museum film
number IWM 170; still image number IWM FLM 1067).
Photograph courtesy of the Imperial War Museum, London. 164
A still from the 1917 film A Day in the Life of a Munition
Worker (Imperial War Museum film number IWM 510; still
image number IWM FLM 2066). Photograph courtesy of the
Imperial War Museum, London. 167
Sybil Thorndike as Edith Cavell in Dawn (Herbert Wilcox,
1928). Photograph courtesy of BFI Stills, Posters and Designs. 171
‘Old Bill’ (Syd Chaplin) and his two chums in The Better ‘Ole
(Charles Reisner, 1926). Photograph courtesy of BFI Stills,
Posters and Designs. 180
Notes on Contributors
Neil Brand is best known as one of the world’s finest silent film
accompanists. He has written extensively on the First World War
in plays and essays, as well as articles on film music and the book
Dramatic Notes: Foregrounding Music in the Dramatic Experience
(1998).
Jane Bryan wrote her PhD thesis on British film fan magazines of the
1910s at the University of East Anglia, where she has also taught silent
cinema history and worked on the British Cinema History Research
Project.
Bryony Dixon is a curator at the BFI National Archive with a special-
ism in silent film. She has researched and written on many aspects
of early and silent film and co-directs the annual British Silent Film
Festival, as well as programming for a variety of film festivals and
events worldwide.
Christine Gledhill is Visiting Professor of Cinema Studies at the
University of Sunderland. She has published extensively on feminist
film criticism, melodrama and British cinema, including Reframing
British Cinema, 1918–1928: Between Restraint and Passion (BFI, 2003).
Toby Haggith joined the Imperial War Museum’s Film Department in
1988, where for the last ten years he has been head of non-commercial
access and responsible for devising the Public Film Show programme in
the cinema. He is now a Senior Curator in the Department of Research.
He has a PhD in Social History from the University of Warwick.
Michael Hammond is Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of
Southampton. He has published widely on British cinema and Holly-
wood cinema. He is the author of The Big Show: British Cinema Culture
in The Great War (Exeter University Press, 2006). He is presently
working on a British Academy-funded project, ‘The After Image of
the Great War in Hollywood, 1919–1939’.
Paul Moody is completing a PhD at the London School of Econo-
mics on national identity in pre-Second World War British cinema.
ix