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Universal’s influential Americanised version of the horror genre was formulated in the 1930s. Throughout this period British cinema was strikingly deficient in horror production. The small number of horror films that were made were either pale imitations of the American product (a plot synopsis for Castle Sinister [Widgey Newman, 1932] reads: ‘Mad doctor tries to put girl’s brain into apeman’s head’) 1 or isolated attempts to locate horror within a recognisable British landscape (for
such an approach has for other aspects of British cinema. Secondly, it is important to understand that examining the style and meaning of any individual film allows that film’s position within any kind of broader framework – whether historical, ideological or in any other reasonable context – also to be reconsidered. In the particular case of the British New Wave, this is vital if each of these films is to be sensibly discussed individually without continually having to resort to finding common features. This allows discussion to move forward and prevents it from
they might convert the base’s regular film night screenings into organised film seasons, where, as she puts it, they examine ‘the body of an auteur’. Lisa (Sharon Horgan) speaks up for many of the women present by declaring that ‘when we watch films, usually we like them to be fun’. Sex and desire in British films of the 2000s: Love in a damp climate will seek to illustrate that promising film writers and directors did emerge in British cinema during the 2000s, and that many of the films exploring romantic and sexual themes during this period might well appeal to
right to take an alternative approach and consider each of the films individually. This is not to deny that the TBNC01 1 15/3/06, 10:01 AM 1 2 The British New Wave similarities between these films do exist. Nevertheless, for the sake of revivifying the study of British cinema, there is little methodological sense in merely reproducing existing critical discussions. Instead, I will define my own critical position in relation to the British New Wave and demonstrate that we can fruitfully consider the detail of these films individually without continually re
1930s and the 1960s. This focus on the glamour boys and glamour years of British cinema is only now beginning to be shifted by a line of inquiry which combines a resurgent auteurist perspective on the work of neglected filmmakers with a socio-historical interest in its conditions of production and consumption. This has been a significant part of the project of the British Cinema and Television Research Group at De Montfort University, 1 and is an
vision of the postwar future. Lawrence Napper’s analysis of interwar British cinema and middlebrow culture describes the suburbs as ‘the middlebrow place par excellence ’: as a site exemplifying the ever-tricky-to-pin-down definition of the middlebrow as ‘in-between’ or characterised by ‘balance’ – famously described by Virginia Woolf as ‘neither one thing nor the other […] betwixt and between’. 4 Napper highlights how suburban homes were at once modern – ‘with bathrooms, indoor plumbing, electric lighting and gas-fuelled kitchens’ – while ‘much of the aesthetic of
This chapter will explore the ways in which a significant number of directors and writers working in the British film industry during the 2000s sought to examine and investigate the social and personal relationships, sexual yearnings and hopes and desires of a range of characters in a series of contemporary settings and situations. British cinema has developed a reputation for providing thoughtful dramatisations that concern what Thomas Carlyle once formulated as the question of the ‘Condition of England’. 1 Chapters in Raymond Durgnat’s A Mirror for England
As Carol Reed began to make his way in films the British cinema in the 1930s was already characterised, on the one hand, by the rise of the documentary tradition epitomised by Grierson and Cavalcanti and, on the other, by popular genre-based, star-studded films and studio production headed by moghuls like Alexander Korda. Reed’s films, like those directed by Victor Saville, Alfred Hitchcock, Michael
to one unfamiliar with post-war British cinema, this approach is as good as any: Fade-up Pathé News styled theme tune and patronising off-screen announcer. ‘Sidney James – your all-purpose British character actor! He can play hard-bitten reporters!’ Cue Sid being shot by enemy alien forces in Quatermass 2 . ‘Italian!’ Cue footage of Sid sporting a very dubious false accent in The Venetian Bird (Ralph Thomas 1952). ‘American!’ Cue footage of Sid in the company of Bonar Colleano in Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? ‘Australian!’ Cue Sid
This book examines how the working-class people are portrayed in the British cinema. Leaving aside problems of definition, it is indisputable that class permeates British feature films, from Claude Hubert’s silly asses to Norman Wisdom’s little man in a cap. Sometimes it comes to the fore as in the films of Lindsay Anderson, though frequently it remains pervasive but unacknowledged. Nor does class know