British cinema of the 1950s : a celebration / edited by Ian MacKillop and Neil Sinyard.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

MacKillop, I. D. (Ian Duncan)

Sinyard, Neil.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures--Great Britain--History.

Motion pictures.

Great Britain.

History.

Physical Description:

xi, 236 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press ; New York, NY, USA : Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave, 2003.

Summary:

This Book Offers a welcome revaluation of an underrated period of British cinema. Twenty writers contribute essays that rediscover and reassess the films of the Festival of Britain decade, during which the vitality of wartime film-making flowed into new forms. They write about genres (B-picture, war film, woman's picture), theatre adaptation, Festival celebrations, censorship, film criticism, gender, comedy and the representation of childhood. There are fresh assessments of Pat Jackson, Robert Hamer and Joseph Losey, and the critic Raymond Durgnat. There are also three personal views from people individually implicated in 1950s cinema: Corin Redgrave on Michael Redgrave, Isabel Quigly on film reviewing of the 1950s, and Bryony Dixon of the British Film Institute on film archiving and preservation. In the 1950s British cinema enjoyed unprecedented popularity with home audiences: this book offers the most exhilarating survey yet of 1950s British film. By challenging conventional attitudes to movies of the decade, it will prove indispensible to students of the cinema at all levels and a stimulating companion for the critic and the historian.

Contents:

Critics

Raymond Durgnat and A Mirror for England / Robert Murphy 1

Lindsay Anderson: Sequence and the rise of auteurism in 1950s Britain / Erik Hedling 23

Mirroring England

National snapshots: fixing the past in English war films / Fred Inglis 35

Film and the Festival of Britain / Sarah Easen 51

The national health: Pat Jackson's White Corridors / Charles Barr 64

The long shadow: Robert Hamer after Ealing / Philip Kemp 74

'If they want culture, they pay': consumerism and alienation in 1950s comedies / Dave Rolinson 87

Boys, ballet and begonias: The Spanish Gardener and its analogues / Alison Platt 98

Intimate stranger: the early British films of Joseph Losey / Neil Sinyard 111

Painfully squalid?

Women of Twilight / Kerry Kidd 127

Yield to the Night / Melanie Williams 130

From script to screen: Serious Charge and film censorship / Tony Aldgate 133

Housewife's choice: Woman in a Dressing Gown / Melanie Williams 143

Adaptability

Too theatrical by half? The Admirable Crichton and Look Back in Anger / Stephen Lacey 157

A Tale of Two Cities and the Cold War / Robert Giddings 168

Value for money: Baker and Berman, and Tempean Films / Brian McFarlane 176

Adaptable Terence Rattigan: Separate Tables, separate entities? / Dominic Shellard 190

Personal views

Archiving the 1950s / Bryony Dixon 205

Being a film reviewer in the 1950s / Isabel Quigly 213

Michael Redgrave and The Mountebank's Tale / Corin Redgrave 221.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0719064880

0719064899

OCLC:

51031511