Directory of World Cinema: Britain: 14

274 Pages·2014·8.06 MB·English

by  Emma Bell (editor), Neil Mitchell (editor)

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DIRECTORY OF B
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WORLD CINEMA | M EDITED BY
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BRITAIN H
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EDITED BY
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EMMA BELL AND NEIL MITCHELL R I
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Bringing to mind rockers and royals, Buckingham Palace and the Scottish Highlands,
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Britain holds a special interest for international audiences who have flocked in recent
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years to quality British exports like Trainspotting, Fish Tank and The King’s Speech.

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A series of essays and articles exploring the definitive films of Great Britain, this
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addition to Intellect’s Directory of World Cinema series turns the focus on England

together with Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. W
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With a focus on the most successful, cerebral and critically important films to have
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come out of Britain, this volume explores the diversity of films and genres found
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throughout British film, highlighting important regional variations that reflect the
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distinctive cultures of the countries involved. Within these categories, Emma Bell T
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and Neil Mitchell have curated a diverse and rich collection of films for review – from
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Hitchcock’s spy thriller The 39 Steps to Powell and Pressburger’s arthouse classic N
The Red Shoes to Shane Meadows’ gritty and heartfelt This is England. Interspersed E
throughout the book are critical essays by leading experts in the field providing M
insight into shifting notions of Britishness, important industry developments and the A
endurance of the British film industry. For those up on their Brit film facts and seeking
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to test their expertise, the book concludes with a helpful ‘Test Your Knowledge’
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section. A user-friendly exploration of the cultural and artistic significance of British I IDIRECTORY OF
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cinema from the silent era to the present, Directory of World Cinema: Britain is
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essential reading for those fascinated by the country’s bright and resurgent film I WORLD
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industry.
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Intellect’s Directory of World Cinema aims to play a part in moving intelligent,
CINEMA
scholarly criticism beyond the academy by building a forum for the study of film that
relies on a disciplined theoretical base. Each volume of the Directory will take the form
of a collection of reviews, longer essays and research resources, accompanied by film
stills highlighting significant films and players.
Directory of World Cinema ISSN 2040-7971
Directory of World Cinema eISSN 2040-798X B
Directory of World Cinema: Britain ISBN 9781841505572
Directory of World Cinema: Britain eISBN 9781841506074
www.worldcinemadirectory.org
intellect | www.intellectbooks.com
Volume 14
DIRECTORY OF
WORLD CINEMA
BRITAIN
Edited by Emma Bell and Neil Mitchell
intellect Bristol, UK / Chicago, USA
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First Published in the UK in 2012 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds,
Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
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First published in the USA in 2012 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press,
1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2012 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
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photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Publisher: May Yao
Publishing Manager: Melanie Marshall
Cover photo: Fish Tank 2009, BBC Films/The Kobal Collection
Cover Design: Holly Rose
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Copy Editor: Heather Owen
Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, E. Yorkshire
Directory of World Cinema ISSN 2040-7971
Directory of World Cinema eISSN 2040-798X
Directory of World Cinema: Britain ISBN 978-1-84150-557-2
Directory of World Cinema: Britain eISBN 978-1-84150-607-4
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Printed and bound by Cambrian Printers, Aberystwyth, Wales.
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DIRECTORY OF
WORLD CINEMA
BRITAIN
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Acknowledgements 5 Horror 144
Essay
Introduction 6
Reviews
Film of the Year 9
Sci-Fi 160
The King’s Speech
Essay
Award of the Year 12 Reviews
Harry Potter
T Social Realism 166
The Pioneers 14 Essay
Reviews
British Silent Cinema 17
Film Culture Focus 184
Industrial Spotlight 25
British Arthouse Cinemas
British Film Studios
Women in British Cinema Arthouse 188
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Cultural Crossover 35
Reviews
Multiculturalism in British Cinema
Documentary 206
On Location 43
Essay
Brighton and Hove
Reviews
Directors 51
Scotland 224
David Lean
Essay
Powell and Pressburger
Reviews
Shane Meadows
Wales 236
O Melodrama 70 Essay
Essay
Reviews
Reviews
Northern Ireland 244
Crime 86
Essay
Essay
Reviews
Reviews
Recommended Reading 252
Comedy 106
Essay British Cinema Online 259
Reviews
Test Your Knowledge 264
C Heritage 126
Notes on Contributors 266
Essay
Reviews Filmography 271
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This Directory would not have been possible without the efforts and generosity of the
contributors, and the support and assistance of Intellect’s staff, particularly May Yao and
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Melanie Marshall. In addition, Emma Bell would like to thank her friends and colleagues
Frances Tempest, Fi Roxburgh, Frank Gray, Ewan Kirkland, Louise Fitzgerald and Jedge
Pilbrow for their advice and support. Neil Mitchell would like to thank Alan Hodge, John
Berra and Gabriel Solomons for welcome advice, information and support on this and
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other projects, as well as his family and friends for their unwavering encouragement.
Emma Bell and Neil Mitchell
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Acknowledgements 5
Directory of World Cinema
INTRODUCTION
Film-making in Britain has a long and illustrious history dating back to the nineteenth
century when pioneers in the embryonic technology, art and industry of motion picture
production, such as photographer Eadweard Muybridge – one of the ‘fathers of cinema’
– and film-makers Robert Paul and George Albert Smith, lay the foundations for Britain’s
renowned cinema industry.
After over 100 years of film-making, anyone compiling an overview of a national
cinema is tasked with identifying a coherent definition of the ‘national’ that can be
sustained throughout shifting social, historical, cultural, industrial and political contexts.
Films placed under the banner of ‘British cinema’ can be differentiated from those
of, say, Hollywood, France or Japan, yet do not all neatly fit into one definition of the
national in terms of conditions of production, modes of exhibition, genre, style or con-
tent. While this is as true of Britain as it is of many national cinemas, it is the consistent
diversity of British cinema that makes it so interesting to study.
Accordingly, this Directory comprises one way of organizing British cinema, which
acknowledges that there are other ways of doing so. The films and film-makers here
appear in loose categories – history, industry, identity and genre – that are explored
on their own terms. Trying to maintain the boundaries of those categories, however,
beneficially reveals how much they interlink and affect each other. In other words, this is
an attempt to capture the substance and diversity of British cinema, rather than to disag-
gregate it.
The Directory’s historicization of British cinema starts with the nineteenth-century
Pioneers, particularly the Brighton school, and ‘On Location’ then explores the role that
Brighton and Hove have (actually) played in British cinema’s creative imagination. The
industrial base of British film-making is mapped throughout, but there are special sec-
tions on the silent era, British studios, women in the industry and the arthouse sector.
Individual essays discuss specific practitioners – David Lean, Michael Powell and Emeric
6 Britain
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Pressburger and Shane Meadows – whose work, in very different ways, has made an
important contribution to British cinema culture.
Most of the essays and reviews discuss the social relevance of British cinema and its
relationship to national identities. Britain, of course, comprises distinct regions – Eng-
land, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland – that are increasingly involved in an ongoing
process of political and cultural devolution. While British cinema is notoriously Anglocen-
tric, it is not beneficial to assume that the majority of its films are ‘English’. Britain’s simul-
taneous unity and divisions need to be acknowledged, and the impact of devolution on
the film industry explored. While many of the films throughout the Directory are Scottish
in origin or substance, the independence of the Scottish industry is explored in detail
in a specific chapter. Given that many surveys of British cinema neglect the modest but
important film cultures of Wales and Northern Ireland, there are sections on film-making
in, and representations of, those regions.
One might suggest that British cinema represents and reflects ‘Britishness’, yet
‘Britishness’ is a loaded term that invites one to think of what might make a national
culture unique to the exclusion of whatever does not ‘fit’ that model. Any definition of
Britishness has to include its endemic divisions and syntheses of regions, social classes,
ethnicities and the English North/South divide. It must also acknowledge that national
identities shift over time according to political, social and economic conditions, and
that the ongoing process of economic and cultural globalization destabilizes ideas of
the ‘national’. While many authors here examine cultural shifts in, and diversification of,
national identity, an in-depth discussion on multiculturalism explores some of the ways in
which British cinema reflects experiences of ethnicity, race, post-colonialism, immigration
and cultural hybridity in Britain.
The remaining essays and reviews are organized by genre – melodrama, crime,
comedy, horror, science fiction, art and documentary – that identify types of film in which
British cinema has shown particular strength and explore the ways in which British film-
makers have interpreted and developed genres. While identifying national film ‘types’ is
problematic, the Directory distinguishes more characteristically ‘British’ genres – social
realism and the heritage film – describing their origins, forms and functions.
This Directory’s first review, The King’s Speech, its cover film Fish Tank, and its Award
of the Year film, Harry Potter, highlight issues raised above. The King’s Speech is a
quality heritage biopic that offers an intimate portrait of a British monarch at a pivotal
moment in British history; its manner is patriotic, sentimentally Anglocentric and uncriti-
cal of the seemingly intractable British class system. The King’s Speech was drawn from
British source material, created by a British-American screenwriter, realized by a British
director, and employed a British and Commonwealth cast and crew. It has been phenom-
enally successful across the globe, winning many important international awards. Fish
Tank is an exploration of class and gender in the British social realist tradition, depicting
a young girl struggling to find her place in a bleak urban landscape. It was written and
directed by a British woman, uses regional actors and creative professionals, is mostly
British funded and did reasonably well at the the arthouse and independent box office.
Harry Potter is a superlative blockbuster franchise of fantasy films telling the story of a
lowly orphan liberated from dreary suburban England into an epic, magical realm. It is
adapted from children’s books by British author JK Rowling, employed a predominantly
British crew and reproduces archetypical British landscapes, landmarks and mytholo-
gies, yet is American owned and funded. Though they draw on different genres, cultural
references and histories, were created in different industrial conditions and represent
radically different images of Britishness, The King’s Speech, Fish Tank and Harry Potter
are apposite examples of contemporary British cinema.
Britain’s substantial volume of classic and innovative films made the final selection of
topics and titles in the Directory extremely difficult, yet the final list was chosen because,
Introduction 7
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together, they reflect something of British cinema’s richness and complexity. Our con-
tributors thoughtfully talk about many other British films and film-makers that we hope
the reader will find interesting and enjoyable.
Finally, in this Directory, the credit ‘Production Designer’ is used to signify the person
who designed the overall look of a given film. In early productions, however, that
person was often credited as ‘Art Director’. As the responsibilities of an Art Director
have changed significantly over time, that credit no longer always signifies the person
responsible for the film’s overall look. While the credit may sometimes differ in related
publications or websites such as imdb.com, to ensure consistency, it was appropriate to
use Production Designer throughout.
Emma Bell
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The King’s Speech, See-Saw Films/The Kobal Collection.
FILM OF THE YEAR
THE KING’S SPEECH
Film of the Year 9