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Welcome!
And not just to my A420 students – but to any A420 student, past as well as present (unfortunately not future as 2002 is the last year) who lands here – and indeed anyone with an interest in British film.
If you have already studied
A318 War, peace and social change
and/or
A324 Liberation and reconstruction: politics, culture and society in France and Italy 1943-1954
Do revise the film elements there and bring them in to compare/contrast with what was happening in Britain – especially with the New Wave.
Or any course on modern literature or art course where you might have learnt about modernism, structuralism, semiotics, pschoanalysis, feminism, neoMarxism, etc. – all these concepts have been applied in film studies – if this is of interest look up one of best standard undergraduate textbooks on film studies
The Cinema Book, Edited by Pam Cook and Mieke Bernink BFI Publishing
2nd edition1999
Two books (click here to go to the Books page) that I always recomend my students to get copies of are -
Timothy Corrigan A Short Guide to Writing about Film 4th edition 2001 Pearson Education
John Hill Sex Class and Realism - British Cinema 1956-1963 BFI Publishing1986 reprinted 1995 (currently out of print but I will post here any news about a further reprint in 2002)
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bfi National Library Users Top 100 British Films of the 20th Century
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This came out in a newsletter in December 1999 – I won’t give the full 100 – but the all time top 10 are -
The Third Man (1949) Carol Reed
A Matter of Life and Death (1946) Powell & Pressburger
The 39 Steps (1939) Alfred Hitchcock
Brief Encounter (1945) David Lean
Don’t look Now (1973) Nicholas Roeg
Black Narcissus (1947) Powell & Pressburger
Kes (1969) Ken Loach
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) Robert Hamer
Lawrence of Arabia (1962) David Lean
Performance (1970) Donald Cammell & Nicholas Roeg
How come there are two each from Lean, from Powell & Presseburger, from Roeg? Five out of ten from the forties?
The top ten for the 50s are –
The Ladykillers 1955
Night of the Demon 1957
Ice Cold in Alex 1958
I’m All Right Jack1059
The Happiest Days of your Life 1950
The Dam Busters 1955
Dracula 1958
Gideon’s Day 1958
The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957
The Lavender Hill Mob 1951
Compare this list with the one for the most popular films in Appendix 1 in the Study Guide. What does this tell you about British genres and their popularity in the fifties?
The top ten for the 60s are –
Kes 1969
Lawrence of Arabia 1962
2001 A Space Odyssey 1968
If… 1968
Peeping Tom 1960
A Hard Day’s Night 1964
The Ipcress File 1965
Saturday Night Sunday Morning 1960
The Servant 1963
A Taste of Honey 1961
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This should raise lots of questions about auteurs, popular genres and what a ‘British’ film is. Of course bear in mind who the users of the bfi library might be – probably not a typical cross section of the film going public nor even of the wider population. How might these films be rated according to box office takings & profits? Maybe you can think through some of these for the first tutorial
I suggest you might also do some research by looking up on IMDB, (link to Internet page)
From the above –
The Third Man 1949
Night of the Demon 1957
The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957
Gideon’s Day 1958
Lawrence of Arabia 1962
2001 A Space Odyssey 1968
And from Appendix 1 -
Captain Horatio Hornblower 1951
King Solomon’s Mines 1951
The African Queen 1952
Ivanhoe 1952
Moulin Rouge 1953
And
Stage Fright (Alfred Hitchcock) 1950
Bau Brummell 1954
The Killing of Sister George (Robert Alrdrich) 1968
And the film I give a photo from at the end of this site
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Look at Robert Murphy’s chapter on Hollywood’s England in Sixties British
Movies, as well as the Hill chapter in Offprints – and if you have the time and the inclination (that is if you think you might do something related in the project) Alexander Walker’s Hollywood, England
Just how ‘British’ are they? Who were the producers? - the stars? - the directors? Where were they made? What are the themes? Would you say Dr. Zhivago was a ‘British’ film? What about the James Bonds? Denis Gifford's The British Film Catalogue is a great reference book for these issues - see BOOKS
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