"British filmmaking has a curious history: great films, but no consistent tradition; brilliant individuals but few successful companies"

"The nation’s filmmakers, like its people can’t express emotion; they lack drive and passion, they’re tame and repressed. As a result, the British can write novels and plays, but when it comes to cinema, they might as well forget it."

(James Park, British Cinema)

This is what is generally thought of the concept British Cinema. The British are said to lack emotion and their national character is often blamed for the poor success of British films. It has been said in the thirties that film is a form of art which is fundamentally unsuited to the expression of the English character, that either British life doesn’t show up well enough in front of the camera, or that British filmmakers can’t use the camera to probe behind the surface of things. This very attitude towards British cinema has lowered British critics’ and scholars’ interest to study their own national cinema. Much more is known about the American, Italian or French cinema, which has resulted in describing British Cinema as unknown cinema (Alan Lovell). This paper covers nearly a hundred years of British filmmaking. It doesn’t go into details, but the aim was to give a brief description of the development of British Cinema, its successes and failures.

British cinema has existed as long as any other cinema. At the same time when the Lumière Brothers were shooting a train arriving at the station and a baby eating food, there were British individuals who were making the same kind of experiments. Some early pioneers include William Friese-Greene, Eadweard Muybridge (who did some photographic experiments), William K. Laurie Dickson (who worked for the Edison Company), James Williamson and Robert William Paul. These names are not so well known as The Lumière Brothers, but they certainly did contribute to the development of the new medium.

The first public exhibition of moving pictures in Britain took place in February 1896. This was within two months of hearing about the Lumière invention. British pioneers had had the same technical knowledge and skills as their counterparts in France and America, but they only had limited access to capital resources, and thus their companies never grew to any significant size. And it’s also doubtful whether these filmmakers had any idea how significant this new invention was to become. This was seen as a mere development in photography. Films were not distinguished as a separate medium until the emergence of the first feature films.

There’s a huge variety in the films produced at that time. This shows the diversity of sources from which the filmmakers took their ideas. There were actuality films exploiting the novelty value of the cinema, newsreels, films of music hall acts, comedies and dramatic story pictures. An early example of a multi-shot film is Stop Thief (Williamson, 1901), which was a chase film - an important genre for the development of editing and narrative continuity. More complicated chase films include Rescued by Rover (Cecil Hapworth, 1905) and Salmon Poachers (William Haggar, 1905).

Initially, there had been a substantial market for British films in America, where demand was ahead of the production levels. But in 1908 Edison founded the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) that, among other things, tried to increase the share of domestic productions in the US market by driving out the small importers. And unfortunately British companies were such small importers. It was no longer useful to produce national films, because they only had little export value and the import from America and France was so huge. The most favourable estimate suggests that only 25% of the films screened in Britain were of British origin.

American film industry got its leading position in the world market during the First World War, since the war had curtailed European production severely. During these war years Hollywood had established a star system that included famous names such as Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. In 1927 new legislation, The Cinematograph Films Act was introduced in Britain to protect the national film industry. Prior to this, film companies in Britain had been relatively small, but now also larger companies emerged - British International Pictures and the Gaumont British Picture Corporation. The aim of this new legislation was that by the mid-thirties at least 20% of the films screened in Britain had to be British in origin. In order to satisfy this quota requirement of British films they had to make low budget films known as quota quickies. They lacked artistic value and prestige and gave British cinema its bad repu tation. And the better films were said to imitate great American films. There was also a system of censorship, which prevented filmmakers from dealing with matters of social and political controversy.

However, due to the development of the companies, Britain emerged as the leading production centre in Europe.

The Second World War is presented as a transformative period in British cinema. Although cinemas were closed at the beginning of the war, they were soon reopened, because the government saw the cinema as a good propaganda channel. At the same time films offered entertainment for people who suffered during the war. Prior to this there had been a significant distinction between documentary films and pure fictional entertainment films. The war brought these together with fictional documentary-based films, such as The Gentle Sex (1943) and documentaries with fictional world as in Fires Were Started (1943). Many of the films made in the 1939-45 period mix propaganda and romance or dramatic action as in commercial films. (One of Our Aircraft is Missing, 1942 ; Millions like Us, 1943) .

Filmmakers enjoyed now much more freedom than under the strict censorship rules in the thirties. For example, censors had rejected a script version of the novel Love On the Dole, because it dealt with a socially alert matter - depression, but in 1941 it was made possible.

It would be wrong to say that all the films made during this period dealt with war. The influence of literature and theatre continued to provide the audiences with something else than war propaganda. Costume melodramas, such as The Wicked Lady (1945) with Margaret Lockwood in the title role, were extremely successful. The Wicked Lady was remade in 1983 with American actress Faye Dunaway in Lockwood’s role.

A major change in the industry was the rise of The Rank Organisation film company. Between 1941 and 1947, Rank’s companies were to finance half of the films made in Britain. The Rank Company was comparable to large American companies, and its leader, J. Arthur Rank also wanted to sell British films in the American market. These included such films as The 49^th Paraller, Target Tonight and In Which We Serve, all of which did well at the box-office.

The post-war time was another crisis in the film industry. Britain had imposed a tax on imported American films, as a result of which the American industry boycotted the British market. The tax measures were soon repealed, because there wasn’t enough domestic production to fill the gap left by Hollywood films. New legislation was created to protect British films. Mere protection of domestic films wasn’t enough, but additional funds had to be provided also. The National Film Finance Corporation was founded to lend money to independent producers working outside the large companies (ABPC, Rank).

However, this crisis was complemented by a critical prestige for British feature films. Critics loved literary adaptations, such as Oliver Twist (1948) and sophisticated thrillers (The Third Man, 1949). This was also the time when the Ealing comedy (such as the comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, 1949) emerged as a distinctive strand of British cinema. Films like David Lean’s Brief Encounter (1945) was acclaimed for its realism and human qualities - a style that separated British cinema from the contemporary Hollywood cinema.

In the 1950s international co-production of films was developed. Major American film companies began investing in European films, including British. Major investments were such big-budget films that had an international cast and crew and mixed British and American themes. They were supposed to appeal an international audience. At the same time low-budget British comedy films continued to develop. Comic Norman Wisdom introduced his comedies that mixed slapstick and sentiment including Trouble in Store (1953). Others made fun of British institutions, the law in Brothers in Law (1956), redbrick universities in Lucky Jim (1957), the foreign office in Carlton-Browne of the FO (1958) and the trade unions in I’m All Right Jack (1959). Carry On Sergeant (1958) launched the series of "carry on" films with an emphasis on British institutions (army, school, hospital etc.) and their inability to accept animal nature of the people within. The se films most certainly lacked critical value.

At the same time The Hammer Studio was making Gothic horror films including The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958). Horror films of this kind were popular all over the world, but they too lacked critical value. A genre that was based on the Second World War was also popular at that time. These films celebrated the British war efforts and heroism (Reach for the Sky, 1956).

The late fifties saw a development of the new wave of films (nouvelle vague) in France, and this led to a similar movement in Britain as well. The key figures in this were Karel Reisz, Lindsay Anderson and Tony Richardson, who had initially come together to form free cinema documentary movement in the mid-fifties. Their first films analysed class-ridden society, mostly concentrating on bringing working class lives to the screen. Many of the films were adaptations of novels or plays, such as Richardson’s Look Back In Anger (1960, from John Osborne’s play).

However, this was only a brief fashion in film history. Instead of dealing with a class society, new films celebrated classlessness, equal opportunities for everyone. And where the previous emphasis was on realism, the new trend emphasised fantasies. Like in John Schlesinger’s Darling (1965), a normal fashion model (Julie Christie) ends up being a bored princess.

During the sixties and early seventies many American directors worked in Britain. One of them was Joseph Losey, who had come to Britain during the fifties, because he had been blacklisted in Hollywood during the McCarthy era. He worked with playwright Harold Pinter in films such as The Servant (1963) and The Go-Between (1971). Other American directors include Stanley Kubrick, famous for (among others) Lolita (1962) and The Clockwork Orange (1971), and Richard Lester, who directed Beatles films A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965).

Also a number of European directors made films in Britain at that time. Perhaps the most well-known ones are Roman Polanski (Repulsion, 1965), Michelangelo Antonioni (Blow-Up, 1966), Jean-Luc Godard (One By One, 1968) and Francois Truffaut (Fahrenheit 451, 1966).

The most dramatic success in the sixties was, however, the James Bond films, beginning with Dr. No (1962). The rise of television had reduced audiences in the cinemas, because they now had the chance to watch films from the comfort of home. But sex and violence (no longer banned subjects), such as the Bond girls and action sequences in the Bond films provided the cinema audience with something that was not available on TV at that time. Other great successes were lavish epic films, such as Dr. Zhivago (Lean, 1965). Many films, including Bond films, were financed by American companies.

In the seventies American companies reduced their British investments, and British filmmaking was thrown back on its own resources. The ABPC was taken over by the music conglomerate EMI and the company moved towards bigger budget American originated films. The Rank Organisation was barely involved in film production at that time.

Some individual directors did survive. Ken Russell, famous for his spectacular and outrageous style, had first gained attention with a series of unusual biographies of musicians done for the BBC. He specialised in cinematic biography, although his style became progressively more eccentric (The Music Lovers (1970), The Devils (1971) Mahler (1974) and Tommy (1975). Also a former cinematographer, Nicholas Roeg, has directed several films that use stunning cinematographical tricks, such as flash shots in Don’t Look Now (1973).

The eighties started well. British films seemed to get back on the international market with films, such as Alan Parker’s Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire (1981), Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1983), David Puttnam’s Local Hero (1983) and The Killing Fields (1984). For example Chariots of Fire, despite being a worldwide success, managed to retain a British identity. The eighties was the time when a number of smaller companies (Palace, Virgin, Handmade) emerged. On the minus side of the decade was the failure of Puttnam’s Revolution (1985) and financial problems due to new legislation that removed the quota requirements of British films and abolished the National Film Finance Corporation. Several studios split up, either being used for TV production or hired out for independent film production. A saving grace was the special effects industry. Some Hollywood blockbusters were partly made there, including Superman and Star Wars.

A resurgence has begun in the nineties. Britain has a lot of talented filmmakers, such as Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh. Just a couple of years ago Kate Winslet was an unknown name, but her breakthrough performance in Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, 1993) brought her to stardom. This year millions of people saw her in the female lead in Titanic. Independent films, such as The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1993), seem to attract audiences worldwide. What they need now is financing. Unlike most filmproducing countries, British government support is severely lacking.

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Bibliography:

• Ryall Tom: Popular British Cinema (CLOSE-UP, The Electronic Journal of British Cinema, 1990)
• Park James: British Cinema
• Monaco James: How To Read a Film
• An Article from O.B’s Little Page of British Cinema web page.