Film Studies Notes

Whether you ultimately identify the main consistent factor in your definition to be financial, thematic, or to concern narrative, you should attempt to fortunate an answer to this question. The ‘Golden Age’ of British cinema The sass’s in British cinema is often considered to have been a Golden Age in British Film production. The commencement of the Second World War in 1 939 had had default a significant blow to the British Film industry: cinemas were closed, because of the threat of bombing.

Of course, within a period of wartime, where national morale was low and individuals craved an escape from the privations brought on by the war, film was a potential means of escape and the closing of the cinemas did little to improve the spirits of the British public. The British government quickly realizes this, but also realizes the importance of film within propaganda campaigns. The role of film in the drawing together of the national community, and the demounting of the threat to that community’s safety, became evident in many of the films which were released during the early offs.

What was also significant at this time was the particular representation of Brutishness that was found in many films released. Not all film products were propagandist in tone and many presented the shifting nature of class and society in Britain at this time. Two major British studios during this period that you need to consider were Leaning and Johannesburg Studios. Leaning Studios created films from 1938 to 1959. The studio became synonymous with a particular type of film, to such a degree that it is possible to detect a studio ‘signature’ in many of the films produced.

Leaning comedies reflected a changing social world in Britain. The Second World War had produced a Britain that challenged class and social hierarchies, questioned gender roles and longed for a period without economic repression. The films that came out of Leaning Studios at this time were often comedies that presented authority and outmoded social codes as humorous. Those films of the late sass’s and early sass’s were especially saturating of these social structures and issues.

Passport to Pimping (1949), Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) and The Ladyfingers (1955) all enjoyed heart box-office success. Johannesburg Studios produced a very different kind of film product. If Leaning’s films reflected a contemporary Britain and the concerns of British people at that mime, Johannesburg films were far more escapist. These films were not without some political content, however, but this was presented in a much glossier and more dramatic way.

Ignoramus’s 1945 film The Wicked Lady, for example, has a central female highwayman, played by Margaret Lockwood. She is independent and will not be confined to the roles that have been prescribed for her by society. The women who took over the manufacturing and farming jobs made vacant by soldiers going to war would probably have been very sympathetic to a character who did not see why she had to stay at home and give up her independence.