Science Fiction Cinema and 1950s Britain

241 Pages·2018·38.164 MB·English

by  Matthew Jones

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‘This is the book on British 1950s sci-fi we’ve been waiting for! Authoritative,
accessible, covering a wide range of films and directors, this is the one-stop
volume on this key period in British cinema, carefully written and researched,
making these films come alive for a whole new audience.’
Wheeler Winston Dixon, James Ryan Professor of Film Studies,
University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA
‘In this fascinating study of the British reception of 1950s American science
fiction films, Matthew Jones shows that these films are more than just about the
fear of communism and The Bomb. Boldly challenging critical orthodoxy, Jones’s
work has enormous implications for our wider understanding of genre and
national cinema.’
Barry Keith Grant, Professor Emeritus, Brock University, Canada, and
author of Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology
‘With this book, Matthew Jones provides a fascinating revisionary account
of 1950s science fiction cinema. Through focusing on the specifically British
reception of both British and American SF films, Jones challenges the “commie-
baiting” readings that have become firmly associated with this kind of cinema
and finds instead new and sometimes surprising significance, nuance and
ambivalence. Accessible, stimulating and provocative, Jones’s study is a valuable
contribution to our understanding of British film culture during the 1950s. It is
also a welcome reminder that films are as much defined through the contexts of
their reception as they are through the circumstances of their production.’
Peter Hutchings, Professor of Film Studies, Northumbria University, UK
‘Science Fiction Cinema and 1950s Britain cleverly rethinks the reception of
a range of genre films in the British context, challenging received wisdoms and
revising established histories along the way. Matthew Jones skilfully rereads the
likes of monster movies, alien invasion narratives and nuclear nightmares to show
how British audiences of the time were unlikely to mirror the kinds of cinematic
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understandings historically linked to US culture. Rather than “reds under the
bed”, this was an era of Establishment defectors in Britain, whilst Jones also
analyses how “atomic anxieties” were distinctively filtered through memories and
practices of the “Blitz”. Offering timely new ways of approaching 1950s science
fiction cinema, this book brilliantly complicates film history’s dominant accounts.’
Matt Hills, Professor of Media and Film, University of Huddersfield, UK
‘Received wisdom on the 1950s wave of English language science fiction films
views them primarily as articulating distinctively American fears of communist
infiltration and nuclear science, albeit in allegorical form. In this volume
Matthew Jones offers a more nuanced reading, reconsidering the films in their
context of reception in Britain where, he argues, rather different public anxieties
play into their likely understanding by audiences. In a UK in the throes of losing
its empire, the threat of communism was seen rather differently, attitudes to
nuclear energy and science were arguably more complex, and race was becoming
a significant factor in public perceptions. Re-examining the films in this cultural
context gives rise to a fascinating study which obliges us both to rethink the
traditional critical approach to 50s SF cinema and, more generally, to recognize
that it is always necessary to pay full attention to the cultural landscapes within
which films are received and understood.’
Andrew Tudor, Professor Emeritus, University of York, UK
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Science Fiction Cinema

and 1950s Britain
Recontextualizing Cultural Anxiety
Matthew Jones
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
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Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
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BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published 2018
© Matthew Jones, 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or
refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted
by Bloomsbury or the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-2253-2
ePub: 978-1-5013-2256-3
ePDF: 978-1-5013-2254-9
Cover design: Louise Dugdale
Cover image: Film Devil Girl from Mars © 1954 STUDIOCANAL FILMS LTD. ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED / THE KOBAL COLLECTION
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For Betty – a cinema book for a lifelong cinemagoer
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Contents

Acknowledgements viii
Introduction: Teacups and Flying Saucers 1
Part A Communist Infiltration and Indoctrination 35
1 Soviet Brainwashing, British Defectors and the Corruptive Elsewhere 37
2 ‘He Can Be a Communist Here if He Wants To’: Living with the
Monster 53
Part B Nuclear Technology 69
3 The Beast in the Atom: Britain’s Nuclear Nightmares 71
4 Atomic Albion: Britain’s Nuclear Dreams 85
Part C Race and Immigration 101
5 It Came from the Colonies!: Mass Immigration and the Invasion
Narratives 103
6 Loving the Alien: After the Notting Hill Race Riots 121
Part D Britain at Home and Abroad 133
7 Still Overpaid, Still Oversexed and Still Over Here: The American
Invasion of Europe 135
8 Science Fiction Britain: The Nation of the Future 151
Conclusion 165
Notes 179
Bibliography 202
Filmography 216
Media Sources 221
Index 223
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Acknowledgements

Like a new-b orn alien creature, this book has now finished gestating and has burst
free of its human host. As with any marauding infant beast, it has left a trail of
casualties in its wake. Though it was their time and energy, rather than their lives,
that my monster claimed, I owe the following people a great debt of gratitude for
their generosity in reading, debating and finessing earlier drafts of the chapters
contained here, or for otherwise supporting the project: Ashley Brown, David
Butler, Felicia Chan, Rajinder Dudrah, Richard Flackett, Christine Gilroy, Peter
Hutchings, Jane Jones, Ken Jones, Kevin Jones, Linda Kaye, Victoria Lowe, Alex
May, Kate Mycock, Graham Rees, Simon Spiegel, Jackie Stacey and Melvyn Stokes.
I am also grateful to a range of institutions, whose collections have been
invaluable to this project and whose staff have kindly given their time and exper-
tise: the British Film Institute, the British Universities Film and Video Council,
the Cinema and Television History (CATH) Research Centre at De Montfort
University, the National Archives, the North West Film Archive in Manchester,
the National Media Museum and the National Museum of Nuclear Science and
History in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Dave Gargani kindly sent a copy of his wonderful documentary film, Monsters
from the Id (2009), across the ocean for me to view.
Steve Chibnall allowed me to consult archival materials from his own unri-
valled collection, which I have never seen in its totality but can only imagine
must resemble the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
An earlier version of Chapter 1 was originally published as ‘1950s Science
Fiction Cinema’s Depersonalisation Narratives in Britain’ in Science Fiction Film
and Television 7:1, 2014. The journal very kindly agreed to give permission for
an expanded version of that article to appear here.
I am also grateful to De Montfort University, which granted a generous
period of research leave to enable me to complete this book, and to my former
and current students at the University of Manchester, UCL and De Montfort
University, who have all explored and improved the ideas contained here with
me over the years.
All images are reproduced from the DVD releases of the respective films.
1
Introduction: Teacups and Flying Saucers

A nuclear test takes place in the Arctic Circle. The explosion melts the ice that has
kept a gigantic, reptilian beast in a deep sleep since prehistoric times. Once awoken,
the creature carves a path of destruction along North America’s Atlantic coast, ending
in a deadly rampage through New York City. This sequence of events, which forms
the plot of the American 1950s science fiction film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
(1953), has tended to be interpreted in both academic and popular writing as a met-
aphorical representation of US Cold War anxieties about nuclear weaponry, with the
monster serving as an embodiment of the dangerous potential of the explosion that
released it.1 Drawing on the seminal work of Susan Sontag, a number of the era’s
American radioactive monster movies have similarly been connected by scholars and
critics to US fears of nuclear technology and particularly Soviet nuclear weaponry.2
However, these anxieties were not consistent across every nation to which these
films were exported. Across the Atlantic Ocean, Britain was engaged in a period
of what Keith Chapman has described as ‘considerable optimism’ about nuclear
technology, culminating in the opening of ‘the first nuclear plant in the world to
supply power on a commercial rather than an experimental basis’ in 1956.3 The
promise of cheap electricity allowed the British nuclear industry to promote itself
as ‘a tremendous opportunity for growth and prosperity in postwar economic
development’.4 The financial opportunities presented by nuclear technology were
framed by Britain’s significant debt to America as a result of the Anglo-A merican
Loan Agreement of 1946 and the struggle to recover the nation’s former economic
strength after the Second World War. While 1950s science fiction films have often
been made sense of as representations of American Cold War nuclear anxieties, in
Britain, where The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms was released in 1953, a different rela-
tionship to nuclear technology was emerging.5
As Paul Swann argues:
American films did not ‘mean’ the same thing to British audiences as they did
to audiences in the United States. The two audiences drew upon very different