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Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/chjf20
The British Cinema Book (3rd edition) Scott Henderson
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Brock University Published online: 23 Mar 2011.
To cite this article: Scott Henderson (2011) The British Cinema Book (3rd edition), Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 31:1, 125-127, DOI: 10.1080/01439685.2011.553440 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01439685.2011.553440
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God ‘refused to take sides, then neither will the film’ (p. 158). Chadwick has made a similar point about the absence of blame in earlier Civil War films. But these words were lifted directly from Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address:
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Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. . . The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. Lincoln refused to ascribe blame. His primary interest in March 1865 with the war’s outcome assured was to ‘bind up the nation’s wounds’, not to embark on retributive crusades. Many of Hollywood’s Civil War films come to a similar conclusion. It is better to make love than to make war. It is not quite true that slavery rarely appears in Civil War films. The Birth of a Nation, Gone with the Wind, and the more contemporary Gods and Generals include slaves in their narratives. But it is not the whipping, body-selling, endless-toiling institution of the history books. As many of the Civil War films, regardless of genre, have stressed personal and national reconciliation, slavery is an institution of yesteryear, wiped out by the war, and a cause of great dissonance that has no place in the new nation forged from battle. As quick as northerners and the federal government forgot about the former slaves, Hollywood has followed suit. In this, they have merely reflected the national consciousness. DAVID GOLDFIELD University of North Carolina, Charlotte ß 2011, David Goldfield
The British Cinema Book (3rd edition) ROBERT MURPHY (ed.) London, Palgrave MacMillan–British Film Institute, 2009 xiiþ452 pp., illus., £19.99 (paper) As a Canadian student studying Film in the UK in the late 1980s, I was somewhat taken aback by the attitudes that the British largely held regarding their own cinema. In comparison to what I had experienced in Canada, British cinema seemed incredibly vibrant, with British films regularly appearing in cinemas, and support readily available from television, particularly Channel Four. This British inferiority complex in relation to Hollywood, seemed, to me, misplaced in comparison to the cinematic paucity that I had left behind. This same era saw the emergence of a significant wave of academic texts focused on British cinema. In the intervening years, such publications have continued to flourish, and there is ample evidence of continued maturity and depth evident in British film scholarship and in the British film industry more broadly. Among these key texts has been the edited volume from Robert Murphy entitled The British Cinema Book. Now in its third edition, this collection has continued to transform and grow, mirroring many of the crucial critical and theoretical developments in both British cinema, and in the field of Film Studies as a whole.
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While the original edition was a much slimmer volume, this third version is much more robust, demonstrating the wide range of interests that fall under the British cinema banner. The collection is divided into five sections. The first of these establishes some of the key debates and controversies within the field while the second section examines broader industry, genre and representation issues. The remaining three sections are in chronological order, dividing British cinema into eras from 1895– 1939, from World War II to the 1970s, and finally contemporary British cinema. Inevitably, in an extended volume such as this, there is the need for a practical, if tedious, sense of organization such as that provided by sticking to a chronological order. One of the real strengths in this collection is the nature of the arguments established in the opening two sections. The debates and ideas introduced in these earlier chapters lend extra resonance to the later pieces as various chapters essentially ‘speak’ to each other. This approach also permits contradictory perspectives to be offered. In one chapter, Lawrence Napper provides a thoughtful revisiting of some of the arguments surrounding ‘quota quickies’, encouraging a less negative attitude, yet Tom Ryall in the next chapter is equally willing to heap scorn on this same body of films. Linda Wood’s chapter then follows, offering yet another perspective, one that finds critical fault in the quality of the quota quickies, but noting the industrial benefits in this process. The advantage in this, as is evident on numerous occasions in this collection, is that readers are introduced to competing perspectives, and constantly reminded that British cinema remains a lively and contested field. As more scholarship emerges, existing concepts will continue to be challenged, and it is notable that Murphy has allowed for some of these challenges to emerge within this collection. Where the book works best is in engaging with wider critical issues. In addition to the obvious focus on the debates surrounding British cinema, the book also engages with, and advances, a number of theoretical concerns of Film Studies more generally. Again, it is the chapters that provide the broader contextual arguments that often make this possible. Murphy’s own chapter on films of World War II is nicely interwoven with an enlightening social history that contextualizes the films of the era. This then allows for Marcia Landy’s more tightly focused chapter addressing femininity in melodrama. The range of approaches is even evident within certain individual chapters. John Hill’s early overview provides insight into a number of elements, including the film texts themselves, audience data and social and cultural history and contexts. This is not a collection that is simply about the films, but one that engages usefully with issues such as production and distribution, exhibition, cine-culture, censorship and other concerns that then serve to better orient the film analyses on offer. The weaker chapters in the collection are those that tend to catalogue examples, with little or no critical intervention, such as Ian Conrich’s chapter on the traditions of British horror films. There was a time when such cataloguing was a necessity in uncovering the rich, often overlooked history of British cinema. Now, alongside the numerous more robust, critical arguments found elsewhere in the book, such uncritical lists seem very much out of place. Surprisingly this tendency is most evident in the latter parts of this collection in dealing with the most recent films. In chapters that are focused on a more specific issue, such as Martin McLoone’s piece on the ‘Celtic Fringe’, there is more in depth argument put forward. In comparison, Brian McFarlane’s take on 1990s cinema is a more encyclopaedic recitation where breadth covers a lack of any meaningful engagement with wider debates. With very little
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BOOK REVIEWS
included on the 1970s in the previous section, the fact that the past 40 years of British cinema history are largely reduced to a series of film lists and casual observations is a bit disappointing. These lists have some use in reminding readers of films that they may wish to seek out, but the more robust analysis and debate from earlier in the book is hardly on display here. Consider the earlier noted diversity of takes on the quota quickie. Perhaps it is that there is now more certainty as to what is significant from these earlier eras. The latter section feels more tentative as if scholars are still waiting to determine which film texts and trends will prove to have been most significant from this era. One of the most beneficial aspects of this collection is the employment of brief, critical sidebar essays on select representative films. This has been a staple of many of the BFI readers, going back at least to the inaugural Cinema Book edited by Pam Cook. These sidebars provide a useful extension of the arguments found in each chapter. For scholars they open up new, or reaffirm existing, ideas about key works. For students and educators, they provide examples that might be employed within the classroom setting in conjunction with the book. Fortunately, the chapters are not wedded to these analyses so that ideas and arguments remain applicable to other films being taught or studied. Overall, despite less dynamic consideration being given to some areas, particularly more recent British cinema, this is a very strong and significant collection that eclipses its predecessors. The breadth of perspectives that Murphy has collected here underlines the impressive growth and maturity in British film scholarship in the past three decades. The importance of allowing such diverse perspectives is actually noted by Peter Hutchings in his comments regarding the distinction between contemporary accounts of New Wave films and current scholarship: One needs constantly to judge whatever readings one encounters in terms of their credibility and validity, but it is important to be aware that film history does not just involve the history of film but also the history of interpretation. (p. 309) It is precisely in this manner that The British Cinema Book succeeds, providing both a thorough overview of British cinema, and of the viewpoints that make up current British cinema scholarship. SCOTT HENDERSON Brock University ß 2011, Scott Henderson
The Concise CineGraph. Encyclopaedia of German Cinema HANS-MICHAEL BOCK and TIM BERGFELDER (eds) Oxford, Berghahn Books, 2009 xiiþ574 pp., $150.00/£100.00 (cloth) The endeavour of The Concise CineGraph – to offer in condensed form an overview of significant personalities within German film history – is certainly ambitious. Yet it
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