A Chorus of Raspberries is the first full-length academic study of one of the most popular, profitable and persistent genres in British cinema. It redraws the map of British film history by arguing that comedy was the most successful, and perhaps the most important, genre of the 1930s, and that the very qualities which ensured the comedy film's low status are also its particular strengths. In the process it uncovers a whole tradition of popular cinema which criticism has relegated to the sidelines of history. The book looks in detail at the work of a number of key stars, including George...

Paul Rotha was one of the major figures of the British Documentary Movement, second only to John Grierson. He was also a prolific writer, beginning with his celebrated book The Film Till Now, published in 1930. This volume brings together an edited collection of some of his most important writings and addresses a variety of topics including the theoretical basis of cinema, the emergence of an intellectual film culture in Britain, the state of the British film industry and his own experience of directing and producing films. A Paul Rotha Reader marks a major reappraisal of Rotha's significance...

This book brings together the study of silent cinema and the study of British cinema, both of which have seen some of the most exciting developments in Film Studies in recent years. The result is a comprehensive survey of one of the most important periods of film history. Most of the acknowledged experts on this period are represented joined by several new voices. Together they chart the development of cinema in Britain from its beginnings in the 1890s to the conversion to sound in the lates 1920s. From these accounts the youthful British cinema emerges as far from innocent. On the contrary,...

A volume of specially-commissioned essays dealing with the attempts to create a pan-European film production movement in the 1920s and 1930s, and the reactions of the American film industry to these plans to rival its hegemony. The book has an impressive array of top scholars from both America and Europe, including Thomas Elsaesser, Kristin Thompson and Ginette Vincendeau, as well as essays by some younger scholars who have recently completed new archival research. It also includes a number of primary documents selected by the contributors to illuminate their arguments and provide a stimulus...

Widely regarded by historians of the early moving picture as the best work yet published on pre-cinema, The Great Art of Light and Shadow: Archaeology of the Cinema throws light on a fascinating range of optical media from the twelfth century to the turn of the twentieth. First published in French in 1994 and now translated into English, Laurent Mannoni's account projects a broad picture of the subject area now known as 'pre-cinema'. Starting from the earliest uses of the camera obscura in astronomy and entertainment, Mannoni discusses, among many other devices, the invention and early...

Examines the world-wide influence of the American film industry during its golden age - the 1920s and 1930s - and investigates the business policies that shaped the fictional universe of Hollywood movies. This volume shows how the industry's self-censorship shaped the content of the films to make them saleable to as many foreign markets as possible and in the process created an isiosyncratic world on screen that was glamorous and exotic, but peculiarly narrow in scope.

From the earliest days, the cinema has enjoyed a special kinship with the railroad, a mutual attraction based on similar ways of handling speed, visual perception and the promise of a journey. This work explores and explains this relationship in both historical and theoretical terms, blending film scholarship with railroad history.

From the earliest days, the cinema has enjoyed a special kinship with the railroad, a mutual attraction based on similar ways of handling speed, visual perception and the promise of a journey. This work explores and explains this relationship in both historical and theoretical terms, blending film scholarship with railroad history.

Through a fresh analysis of the relationship between the British film industry and such culture industries as radio, music recording, publishing, and early television, Lawrence Napper reevaluates the history of British cinema and culture between 1928 and 1939. Reappraising what has previously been considered a weak era in British filmmaking, Napper argues that the interwar period and its aesthetic were part of a specific strategy aimed at the rapidly expanding British lower middle class in order to differentiate this new generation of British film from movies produced by Hollywood.

This book offers the first full account of the volunteer-led film society movement in Britain and its contribution to postwar film culture. It brings to life a lost history of alternative film exhibition and challenges the general assumption that the study of film began with university courses in film studies. Showing how film societies operated and the lasting impression they made on film, Richard MacDonald also details the history of film education in Britain, along the way addressing tensions that existed within the voluntary societies between avant-garde ideals and the desire to increase...