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British Cinema in the 1930s
C. A. Lejeune's exasperated remark is perhaps a good place to start, since it encapsulates an attitude that dominated critical thinking about 1930s British cinema for over half a century. This chapter explores three distinct modes of British film production in the 1930s, and firmly establishes a hierarchy between them. First, there are films such as Jew Suss – epic, expensive dramas, far removed in time and place from the ordinary lives of British audiences and designed in various ways to compete with Hollywood productions. The second category is of films that are indeed set closer to home. They are films like Sing As We Go – narratives about contemporary British life, often centring on working‐class characters played by working‐class stars. The third category of films is the one that Lejeune champions, but laments is not actually made by commercial producers.
Book Chapter
The Great War in popular British cinema of the 1920s : before journey's end
\"This book discusses British cinema's representation of the Great War during the 1920s in both battle reconstruction films and in popular romances. It argues that popular cinematic representations of the war offered surviving audiences a language through which to interpret their recent experience, and traces the ways in which those interpretations changed during the decade. A focus on the distinctive language evolved for battle reconstruction films forms a central chapter - such films use a distinctive kind of 'staged reality' to address their veteran audiences, and were often viewed within a specific Remembrance context. Other chapters cover the representation of the returning soldier as a 'war touched man' in a range of fictional narratives, and the centrality of rituals of remembrance to many post-war narratives. 1920s British cinematic representations of the war are distinctively of their period, and are appraised as part of a wider culture of war representation in the decade. \"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
LOCAL ATTRACTION
Napper talks about the film 'Opening of the New Benton Bank Tram Route.' The film was made by 'Henderson's North of England Film Bureau'. The film opens outside Newcastle Town Hall, in the Bigg Market. The Market Vegetarian Cafe is visible in the background, while in the foreground is a scrum of Edwardian masculinity. This is a very male film, but also a very jovial one. Besuited, bewhiskered dignitaries laugh and chat with each other, and josh with the cameraman as they queue up to board the tram.
Magazine Article
AMID THE GUNS BELOW
The Battle of the Somme(1916) is a remarkable film by any standards. It has a claim to be one of the biggest blockbusters in British film history. It is one of the few films to be registered on the UNESCO 'Memory of the World' register. Here, Napper talks about the restoration of the film and its release to mark the event's centenary.
Magazine Article
An insufferable little jerk LAWRENCE NAPPER reviews REBEL: THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF JAMES DEAN by Donald Spoto HarperCollins pounds 18, pp306
`James Dean died at the right time. Had he lived, he'd never have been able to live up to his publicity.' Humphrey Bogart's observation is as apt today as it was when he made it, for with over seven biographies currently in print, and a further six due for release this year, interest in Dean seems unabated even 41 years after his untimely death. How can one explain the enduring appeal of this singular icon? Those looking for an answer will no doubt be disappointed by this latest offering, for despite his title, Donald Spoto relegates the creation of the James Dean legend to the first and last chapters of his biography. He chooses instead to concentrate on the life of somebody very different from the potently rebellious youth of the images. Somebody in fact who, stripped of the mystique of stardom, comes across ultimately as an insufferable little jerk. Spoto tries hard to account for this behaviour, specifically with reference to his early life. Born in 1931 into the fiercely puritanical Midwest, Dean, we learn, was the unwanted child of a shotgun wedding. While his mother doted on him, encouraging him to act out their favourite folk tales and songs before friends and neighbours, his father was a cold, unimaginative man who found it difficult to relate to his already unruly son. Thus, his mother's sudden death, when Dean was only six, and his subsequent experience of being packed off on a train with her coffin to be brought up by a wholesome aunt and uncle, forms the central crisis in a psychological profile only too familiar in the biographies of Hollywood icons.
Newspaper Article