Campulung Moldovenesc

Profil filologie, sectia limba engleza intensiv

THE BEGINNING
OF
CINEMA
IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

Coordonator: Autor:
PROFESOR CATARGIU
GAGNIUC RAMONA SIMONA-MIHAELA
CAMPULUNG MOLDOVENESC SUCEAVA
SESIUNEA MAI 2011

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………1

 Early British Cinema………………………………………………………………………………2

 The desperate 20’s and developing 30’s………………………………3

 The War Years 40’s……………………………………………………………………………………5

 The British Watermark 1950–59………………………………………………………6

 British New Wave 1959-63 and the 60’s Boom……………………7

 The Stagnation of the 70’s………………………………………………………………8

 The 80’s Decline and Renaissance………………………………………………9

 Divergent 90’s to 21Century…………………………………………………………10

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………11
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………12
 Introduction
British cinema in the late-1990s is recognized by many as an important
window on the past, and during the late 1980s and early 1990s, has been seen to
have become a dynamic and rapidly growing area of study.

Hollywood can be considered the heart of the film industry, but was in London that
celluloid film process was patented in 1890. Fifteen years later, the audience sat in
specific theaters which showed fragments of minute of horse racing and the news
together with additional sound. The British public was undoubtedly the first to
witness the big screen in action, which gradually became the films that we know
today.

Emerging stars as the lovable Charlie Chaplin and suspense Alfred Hitchcock
rootless land UK own experts and they sailed to the bright lights of Hollywood.

The World War II interrupted the golden age of British cinema during the 1920s and
1930s. This was a time when filmmakers focused on perfecting the propaganda
documentaries and films of heroic war spell. Even with Hitchcock in Hollywood, new
British talent took their place in the Chair of director of. Brief encounter catapulted
David Lean's epic career. Powell and Pressburger followed, with hits as The Red
Shoes, while Carol Reed enjoyed a similar success with Anglo film noirs as the third
man.

Tastes of the national cinema dominate the 1950s, with comedies of Ealing, being
succeeded by hammer horrors and Carry-Ons. Although popular, it was during the
1960s that British films were global. His films of the new wave challenged audience
with themes of gender and class, with Joseph Losey, Tony Richardson and Lindsay
Anderson is leading the movement. However, it was British escapism from the
1960s that stole the hearts of the public around the world, which includes the Bond
movies, Doctor Zhivago, Mary Poppins and - last but not least - The Sound of
Music.

Many cinemas struggled to fill posts in the 1970s as a result of the recession and
the rise of the TV. There were films scandalous (the time), as The Devils, dogs of
straw and A Clockwork Orange - to undoubtedly neighbors talking about. Without
however, the eighty recession hit British film the most. After more than half of a
period of a century, the Rank organisation shut down. It's the largest film company
in Great Britain, which provides facilities for production, distribution and exhibition
and was recognized by many due to its distinctive logo of a Gongman.

Since the 1990s, stars, and British films enjoy success around the world as a result
of the increase in international cooperation in the talent of moviemaking. You
comedies social four weddings and a Funeral and The Full Monty won box office
smash hit the State, as well as royal dramas of the Queen and more recently,
speech by the King. Many critics will agree that we are now taking the new golden
age of British cinema.

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 Early British Cinema

Modern cinema is generally regarded as

descending from the work of the French Lumière
brothers in 1892, and their show first came to
London in 1896.
William Friese Greene

The first moving pictures developed on celluloid film were made in Hyde Park
in 1889 by William Friese Greene, a British inventor, who patented the
process in 1890. The film is the first known instance of a projected moving
image. At the end of the 19th America had started to experiment in how to
get a moving image onto a screen and in Britain Friese-Green was working
hard at doing much the same thing on a commercial basis. The first people
to build and run a working 35 mm camera in Britain were Robert W. Paul
and Birt Acres. They made the first British film ‘Incident at Clovelly Cottage’
in February 1895, shortly before falling out over the camera's patent.

Another British fellow called George Albert Smith devised

the first colour system, Kinemacolor, in 1908. But even
now there was competition - Gaumont and Pathe had
both opened film companies by 1909 and there were now
films coming into England from Europe.
George Albert Smith

America was advancing at a similar pace to Britain at

around this time (pre –war) and two Americans, Jupp and
Turner, were starting to make American films in Britain. This of course was
all halted by the Great War in 1914 and efforts were directed elsewhere. By
this stage Britain was starting to lag behind the US. Post war saw the nearly
the death knell of British cinema as the desire for American films, and lack of
money in Britain saw the industry slow down and by the mid twenties it had
practically stopped.

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The desperate 20’s and developing 30’s
Leslie Howard But there was several embers of hope, the careers of
Ronald Coleman, Victor McLaglen, Leslie Howard and
Charles Laughton were starting and although Howard was to
be a casualty of WWII these actors along with Balcon and
Wilcox were determined that British pictures should survive.

Even the son of the Prime Ministers Anthony Asquith joined

in to keep the industry alive. But in 1927 Parliament
brought in an important piece of legislation the
Cinematographers Trade Bill,
designed to ensure there was a
guaranteed home market for British made films.
This meant that 5% of the total number of movies
shown in theatres had to be from Britain this figure
rose to 20% by 1936. Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail
(1929) is regarded as the first British sound
production.

All was not lost and in the 30’s the British Cinema Industry would start to
rise from its knees. The advent of sound offered more challenges to the
British Film Industry's financial stability., Some of the films that Britain was
to make were pretty bad some of the exceptions were Juno and the Paycock
(1930); Hindle Wakes, Tell England; (1931), Rome Express, (1932) and the
brilliantly successful Korda production The Private Life of Henry VIII with
Charles Laughton. ‘Wings of the Morning’ (1937) is widely accepted as
Britain's first colour feature film.
Korda had failed in Hollywood, and when the boom started in the UK, he
decided to try his luck there. He founded London Films and built, reputedly,
the finest studios in the world at Denham. Here he made Katherine the
Great; Don Juan, with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. The Scarlet Pimpernel,
Raymond Massey and Leslie Howard; Things to Come Massey and Ralph
Richardson; the Man Who Could Work Miracles; Rembrandt with Laughton.
John Maxwell's British International Studios trained many of this period's
notable directors, writers and cameramen. Among them were Sidney Gilliat,
J. Lee Thompson, Ronald Neame, Jack Cardiff and Charles Frend. He also
had some high calibre artists appearing with him, including Richard Tauber,
Douglas Fairbanks Jn, Will Hays, John Mills and Carol Reed was one of
Maxwell’s directors.

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 In 1933 J. Arthur Rank, who had started by making
religious films, founded British National. In 1935 he
went into partnership with Woolf to take over Pinewood
Studios. Boom turned to slump in 1937. The year
before, the British film industry had over produced,
making 220 pictures. Studio space had increased
seven fold in ten years. This mean that the
overproduction gave rise to poor quality films and this
in turn opened up the door to the American industry,
and American companies moved into the UK to make
quality British films that would qualify them for the
home market quota.
Lord Rank
All the major film producers started to take over studios. MGM-British,
Warner, Radio, 20th Century Fox, they all moved in to virtually swallow up
the failing industry. This was a period of classic movies. Some of these
included The Citadel with Robert Donat and Rosalind Russell, Goodbye Mr
Chips also with Donat; Pygmalion with Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller;
Victoria The Great, Nell Gwynn and Glorious Days all with Anna Neagle; The
Man Who Knew Too Much; The 39 Steps; The Secret Agent; Sabotage; The
Lady Vanishes; and Jamaica Inn.
The British Board of Film Censors had been founded in 1912 primarily to
keep the foreign imports ‘acceptable in terms of content and to be able to
control their numbers on the pretext of unsuitability. Home grown
productions had an easier time passing the censors. It was now that the
certificates U, for universal and A, for Adult were introduced.

During the 1930's two other valuable assets came along; the British Film
Institute and the National Film Archives. They maintained, and still do, a film
library not just of British films, but International ones too. They restore
damaged prints and transfer nitrate stock onto safety film, as well as funding
projects. Without them, many classics would be lost today.

The War Years 40’s

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 The Second World War caused a minor miracle to happen to movie
making in the Britain. A new spirit of enthusiasm coupled with strenuous
work led to the abandonment of the stupidity and extravagance of the
previous decade. After a faltering start, British films began to make
increasing use of documentary techniques and former documentary film-
makers to make more realistic films, like In Which We Serve (1942), Went
the Day Well? (1942).

With many of the employees being engaged in war work, available

manpower was reduced to one third and half of the studio space was
requisitioned, only sixty films were produced annually. New realism in
wartime pictures and a demand for documentaries gave a whole new look to
British films.

Initially, many cinemas closed down for fear of air raids, but the public
needed a way of escaping the reality of war, and turned to the more genteel,
sanitized versions available in the cinema. The majority was war related, The
Stars Look Down; 49th Parallel; Convoy and This Happy Breed.

Some of the finest British work came out of the period including Brief
Encounter; The Wicked Lady; The Man in Grey; Olivier’s Henry V. New
directors, artists and writers came to the fore, David Lean as a director,
Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat as writers and Richard Attenborough,
Michael Redgrave, David Niven and Stewart Granger were elevated to
stardom.

In post war Britain, during the period 1945-1955, the Rank Organization,
with Michael Balcon at the helm, was the dominant force in film production
and distribution. It acquired a number of British studios, and bank-rolled
some of the great British film-makers which were emerging in this period.
Their rivals, Korda's London Films continued to expand, taking over the
British Lion Film Corporation in 1946 and Shepperton Studios the following
year.

1949 was a bad year financially partly due to a series of good, but big
budget movies. The Red Shoes; Hamlet; Fallen Idol; Great Expectations and
Oliver Twist. Smaller budget productions also left there mark with Passport
to Pimlico; and the very successful Kind Hearts and Coronets that
established Alec Guinness as a star.

The British Watermark 1950 – 59

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 It was symptomatic of the changing entertainment habits of the
general public that Rank sold their Lime Grove Studios in West London to the
BBC in 1949. Television was just beginning to have an effect on the film
industry. During the 1950' and early 60's Films had to learn to be more
exportable and welcome to foreign audiences. Many achieved both of these
criteria among them works by David Lean and Carol Reed.

Then in 1947, Ealing's comedy Hue and Cry, was a surprise hit. An
entertaining story of a criminal gang foiled by an enthusiastic army of
schoolboys, the film met a public desire for relief after years of fighting and
continuing hardships.

The studio released many comedies before and during the war but 'Ealing
Comedy' proper began in 1949, with the consecutive release of Passport to
Pimlic, Whisky Galore! and Kind Hearts and Coronet. The Lavender Hill Mob
was also very successful, in which a mild-mannered bank clerk masterminds
a robbery of the Bank of England's gold reserves.

There were important newcomers in the acting field that had international
appeal, Jack Hawkins, Kenneth More, Richard Todd, Richard Burton and
Peter Finch. British actresses of this calibre remained scarce. Films like The
Lady Killers; Genevieve; The Cruel Sea and The Colditz Story helped to keep
the UK's reputation high. Funding was also kept up by well made popular,
but erring on schoolboy bathroom humour series. Which included the Doctor
and the Carry On series. An unusual success in this decade The Blue Lamp
which was a documentary on life in Britain at the time. Interestingly it
actually was more of a tribute to the police written by won of their own.

Also the fifties saw the beginning of Hammer Horror studios which went to
be by far the most successful studio in the History of the British Isles. It
launched the careers of Christopher lee and Peter Cushing and the directorial
success of Terence Fisher.

British New Wave 1959-63 and the 60’s Boom

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 British New Wave or Free Cinema, describes a group of films made
between 1959 and 1963 which portray a more gritty
realism. They were influenced by the Angry Young Men
of the mid-50s along with the documentary films of
everyday life commissioned by the Post Office during and
after the Second World War, and are often associated
with kitchen sink drama.
The group was established around the film magazine
Sequence that was founded by Tony Richardson, Karel
Riesz and Lindsay Anderson who together with future
James Bond producer Harry Saltzman established the
company Woodfall Films which made their early films.
These included adaptations of Richardson's own stage productions of Look
Back in Anger and The Entertainer. Other significant films in this movement
include Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), A Kind of Loving
(1962), and This Sporting Life (1963). The Free Cinema films also made
stars out of their leading actors Albert Finney, Alan Bates, Richard Burton,
Rita Tushingham, Richard Harris and Tom Courtenay.
The boundaries were pushed further by Alfie; Up The Junction and Women in
Love. New, young actors were needed; Richard Harris, Julie Christy, Peter
Sellers, Terrence Stamp, David Hemmings, Donald Pleasance and Paul
Scofield. Brian Forbes and Richard Attenborough began to make names for
themselves as up and coming directors. Not all movies were of this genre
David Lean made Bridge over the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia
amongst others there was Oliver!; and the beginnings of the James Bond
series of movies.
Overseas film makers began to come to London too, including Roman
Polanski and Michelangelo Antonioni. Blacklisted in America Joseph Losey
had a significant influence on UK Cinema in the 60s as did Stanley Kubrick,
especially in the decade to follow.
The sixties were perhaps the ‘holding era’ for British cinema with an
expansive 50’s directors like Lean really held the reins and the industry
charged on. Commercially the bond movies were highly successful and
quality films were also directed by Basil Dearden. Actors and actresses were
aplenty and in much demand. Four of the decade's Academy Award winners
for best picture were British productions.

The Stagnation of the 70’s

With the film industry in both Britain and the United States entering into
recession, American studios cut back on domestic production, and in many

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cases withdrew from financing British films altogether. Major films were still
being made at this time, including Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), Battle
of Britain (1969), and David Lean's Ryan's Daughter (1970), but as the
decade wore on financing became increasingly hard to come by.

Ken russel
Also in the 70’s, spurred on by his success with Women In Love, Ken Russell
challenged the censors wildly with ‘The Music Lovers’ and ‘The Devils’ only
just managing to get a certificate. Likewise Roegs ‘Performance’ with James
Fox was a shock to the system for many who saw it. But boundaries were
gone by now and a couple of years later ‘The Exorcist’ was to hit the screens
only to be banned after to many people fainted or were sick in the cinema!
The British horror boom of the 1960s also finally came to an end by the mid-
1970s, with the leading producers Hammer and Amicus leaving the genre
altogether in the face of competition from America. Films like ‘The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre’ (1974) made Hammer's vampire films seem increasingly
tame and outdated, despite attempts to spice up the formula with added
nudity and gore.
Stanley Kubrick made Clockwork Orange, just about getting a certificate, Dr
Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey. In mainstream terms pure British
cinema was diminishing and was to get worse before it got even worse.

Dr. Strangelove

The 80’s Decline and Renaissance

The 1980s began with the worst recession the British film industry had
ever seen. In 1980 only 31 UK films were made, down 50% on the previous
year, and the lowest output since 1914. This decade also started the
downward trend in self financing British movies – the Americans began to
take over and really never looked back. When movies were made in Britain
they were either American financed or had American directors / producers.
This was in part because the market potential in Britain is too small to

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produce a profit return on anything more than the most modestly budgeted
production.
Lord Puttnam However, the 1980s soon saw a renewed optimism,
led by companies such as Goldcrest (and producer David Puttnam), Channel
4, Handmade Films and Merchant Ivory Productions. Under producer
Puttnam a generation of British directors emerged making popular films with
international distribution, including: Bill Forsyth (Local Hero, 1983), Hugh
Hudson (Chariots of Fire, 1981), Roland Joffe (The Killing Fields, 1984), Alan
Parker and Ridley Scott. Handmade Films, part owned by George Harrison,
had produced a series of modest budget comedies and gritty dramas such as
The Long Good Friday (1980) that had proven popular internationally.
Also in this era Sir Richard Attenborough was directing Gandhi (1982) and
Lewis Gilbert - Educating Rita (1983). The later half of the decade saw
general decline. That said there were still successful British actors and
actresses around but the big budget blockbusters were
now being populated by mainly Americans.
Following the final winding up of the Rank Organisation,
a series of company consolidations in UK cinema
distribution meant that it became ever harder for British
productions. Another blow was the elimination of the
Eady tax concession by the Conservative Government in
1984. The concession had made it possible for a foreign
film company to write off a large amount of its production costs by filming in
the UK — this was what attracted a succession of blockbuster productions to
UK studios in the 1970s. With Eady gone many studios closed or focused on
television work.

Divergent 90’s to 21st Century

Film production in Britain hit one of its all-time lows in 1989. While cinema
audiences were climbing in the UK in the early 1990s, few British films were
enjoying significant commercial success, even in the home market. Among the
more notable exceptions were the Merchant Ivory productions Howards End (1992)
and The Remains of the Day (1993), Richard Attenborough's Chaplin (1992) and
Shadowlands (1993) and Neil Jordan's acclaimed thriller The Crying Game (1992).

The surprise success of the Richard Curtis-scripted comedy Four Weddings and a
Funeral (1994), especially in the United States, lead to renewed interest and
investment in British films, and set a pattern for British-set romantic comedies,
including Sliding Doors (1998), Notting Hill (1999) and the Bridget Jones films.

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Several of these were also written by Curtis, who went on to make his directorial
debut with Love Actually in 2003. Working Title Films, the company behind many of
these films, quickly became one of the most successful British production
companies, with other box office hits including Bean (1997), Elizabeth (1998) and
Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001).

Note should also be made of Channel 4’s own production company ‘Film on four’
which soon became ‘FilmFour’ turning out some classic cinema such as
‘Trainspotting’, ‘Brassed Off’ and ‘Lock Stock and Two smoking barrels’. By July
2002 Channel 4 had regained power over its subsidiary and decided to return to
commercial TV. With the introduction of public funding for British films through the
new National Lottery something of a production boom occurred in the late 1990s,
but only a few of these films found significant commercial success, and many went
unreleased.

There was no shortage of acting talent around at this time with actors like Ewan
McGregor and Ralph Fiennes truly cutting their teeth. Directors to like Sam Mendes
and Anthony Minghella began to come to the fore.

So what does the first decade of the 21st century hold for truly British Cinema – I
would have to speculate rather depressingly. In terms of actors and actresses there
are plenty still begin discovered and Jude Law, Clive Owen, Keira Knightly Christian
Bale, Ioan Gruffudd and Damian Lewis carry the candle. In terms of quilt British
film making Billy Elliott and Bend it like Beckham are two that would make it onto
my short list.
The government needs to be serious about funding and plough a great deal more
into the film industry and establish a quality British production company.
The turn of the new century also saw a revival of sorts of the British horror film,
with The Hole, 28 Days Later, Dog Soldiers and the comedy Shaun of the Dead
being among the more successful examples.

Conclusion
The United Kingdom has had a major influence on modern cinema. The
first moving pictures developed on celluloid film were made in Hyde Park,
London in 1889 by William Friese Greene, a British inventor, who patented
the process in 1890. It is generally regarded that the British film industry
enjoyed a 'golden age' in the 1940s, led by the studios of J. Arthur Rank and
Alexander Korda.
The British directors Alfred Hitchcock and David Lean are among the most
critically acclaimed of all-time, with other important directors including
Charlie Chaplin, Michael Powell, Carol Reed and Ridley Scott. Many British
actors have achieved international fame and critical success, including Julie
Andrews, Richard Burton, Michael Caine, Charlie Chaplin, Sean Connery,

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Vivien Leigh, David Niven, Laurence Olivier, Peter Sellers and Kate Winslet.
Some of the most commercially successful films of all time have been
produced in the United Kingdom, including the two highest-grossing film
franchises (Harry Potter and James Bond). Ealing Studios has a claim to
being the oldest continuously working film studio in the world.
Despite a history of important and successful productions, the industry has
often been characterised by a debate about its identity and the level of
American and European influence. Many British films are co-productions with
American producers, often using both British and American actors, and
British actors feature regularly in Hollywood films. Many successful
Hollywood films have been based on British people, stories or events,
including Titanic, The Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean and the
'English Cycle' of Disney animated films.

In 2009 British films grossed around $2 billion worldwide and achieved a

market share of around 7% globally and 17% in the United Kingdom. UK
box-office takings totalled £944 million in 2009, with around 173 million
admissions. The British Film Institute has produced a poll ranking what they
consider to be the 100 greatest British films of all time, the BFI Top 100
British films. The annual British Academy Film Awards hosted by the British
Academy of Film and Television Arts are the British equivalent of the Oscars.

Bibliography

 Aldgate, Anthony and Richards Jeffrey. 2002. Best of British:

Cinema and Society from 1930 to the Present. London: I.B.
Tauris
 Babington, Bruce; Ed. 2001.British Stars and Stardom.
Manchester: Manchester University Press
 Chibnall, Steve and Murphy, Robert; Eds. 1999. British
Crime Cinema. London: Routledge

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 Cook, Pam. 1996. Fashioning the Nation: Costume and
Identity in British Cinema. London BFI
 Curran, James and Porter, Vincent; Eds. 1983. British
Cinema History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
 Durgnat, Raymond. 1970. A Mirror for England: British
Movies from Austerity to Affluence. London: FaberHarper,
Sue. 2000. Women in British Cinema: Mad Bad and
Dangerous to Know. London: Continuum
 Higson, Andrew. 1995. Waving the Flag: Constructing a
National Cinema in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press
 Higson, Andrew. 2003. English Heritage, English Cinema.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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