reviews & further information

The Beginnings of Cinema Series

Describing in detail one of the most inventive periods in the history of English cinema, the volumes in this celebrated series are already established as classics in their field and represent a major contribution to international film studies. Each volume details the highlights of a single cinematic year, including details of production, manufacturers of equipment, dealers and exhibitors. This is augmented by numerous carefully chosen illustrations and a comprehensive filmography of English films, fiction and non-fiction, for the year. Particular attention is also paid to the ways in which the cinema of other countries affected the English industry.

The University of Exeter Press editions of Volumes 2, 3, 4 are re-jacketed re-issues of the first editions. The long-awaited fifth and final volume in the series is published for the first time by UEP, and edited and introduced by Richard Maltby, Professor of Screen Studies, Flinders University, Australia. The series will be completed in the summer of 1998 when UEP publishes a new fully revised edition of Volume I, long out of print and unavailable.

". . . essential reading . . . a labour of love that will intrigue any cineaste." 
Film Quarterly

"Film studies for years to come will be indebted to him for having immeasurably enriched the literature on his subject." 
Quarterly Review of Film Studies

Market: Film historians and researchers. Students of film history. Museums of photography, cinematography and science. Film Archives. The general film enthusiast.

Author: John Barnes has written extensively on the beginnings of the cinema and on pre-cinema history.

"The eagerly awaited publication of John Barnes' fifth volume marks the final instalment of this groundbreaking series ... it seemed for a while that it might never see the light of day. That it has done so, and that the other books in the series have been re-issued, is testimony not only to John's tenacity, but to the foresight of Exeter University Press ... The series has become the standard reference text for English cinema of this period, with its combination of technical, biographical and contextual information ... As well as providing reliable and comprehensive reference material for film scholars these books are eminently accessible and entertaining. They are a significant contribution to the canon of film scholarship and a fitting testimony to a lifetime's dedication to the cinema."
Screening the Past, May 2000

"The five Barnes' volumes stand as a solid work of reference to one of the most imaginative and creative periods of cinema in Britain or anywhere else."
Screening the Past, May 2000

"Perhaps it is a symptom of this change that the Barnes brothers have now found a publisher in the form of the University of Exeter Press, who have not only brought out this latest volume in style, but have re-issued volumes 2 to 4 in a uniform binding (with a promise of a totally revised volume 1 in 1998). Perhaps, at last, the British academic and archival establishments are coming to appreciate the fascination of the early cinema, a fascination that John and William Barnes have felt for over 60 years."
Film History, Vol. 10, No. 1, 1998

"A triumphant finale to a major achievement in social as well as cinema history. . . Barnes' chronicle is meticulous and wonderfully illustrated. Cumulatively, it has shown this period was arguably British cinema's most inventive"
Sight and Sound, Vol. 8, Issue 2, February 1998

"...this remarkable set of books should be in every university library in the country, and on the shelves of every film historian."
Viewfinder, No. 32, February 1998

"...Beginnings of the Cinema in England belongs beside such founding works as Rachael Low's History of the British Film and Denis Gifford's British Film Catalogue. It is an essential work in the literature of the film."
Film Quarterly

"Film studies for years to come will be indebted to him for having immeasurably enriched the literature on his subject."
Quarterly Review of Film Studies

". . . essential reading . . . a labour of love that will intrigue any cineaste."
Film Quarterly

Describing in detail one of the most inventive periods in the history of English cinema, this series represents a major contribution to international film studies. Each illustrated volume details a single cinematic year, including details of production, manufacturers of equipment, dealers and exhibitors, as well as a comprehensive filmography of English films, fiction and non-fiction, for the year. The previous volumes are aready established as classics in their field and have recently been re-jacketed and re-issued by University of Exeter Press.

The fifth and final volume documents the year 1900, when the conflict in South Africa against the Boers and the Boxer uprising in China proved popular subjects for news films and fictional representations. It includes a full Introduction by Richard Maltby which places Victorian cinema in its cultural, social and historical context.

John Barnes has written extensively on the beginnings of the cinema and on pre-cinema history. Richard Maltby is Professor of Film Studies, Sheffield Hallam University.

Exeter Studies in Film History

A Chorus of Raspberries

‘It is only recently that the film comedies have come into focus. And this book is the most thorough investigation into the matter, concentrating on an period of growth for the British film industry in which, as David Sutton convincingly argues, British film comedy reached its maturity.’
Film & History. An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies Vol 32.1 (2002)

‘The study is lively, well informed and thoughtful, and does not fall into the trap of some critical treatments of comedy which, in their drive for analytical rigour, fail to appreciate the humour in their subject. The best compliment that can be paid to a work of excavation is that it instils in the reader an urgent desire to experience the films.’
Scope: An Online Journal of Film Studies, 2001

‘One of the most useful recent theoretical discussions of comedy.’
Screening the Past, 2001

"Sensible, thoughtful and wide-ranging . . . This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the 1930s in particular, and British film comedy in general."
Journal of Popular British Cinema, Vol. 4, 2001

The book looks in detail at the work of a number of key stars, including George Formby, Gracie Fields, The Crazy Gang, Cicely Courtneidge and Ernie Lotinga, revealing the wide range of comic styles and meanings they produced in seemingly formulaic films. It unearths a host of previously forgotten but notable films, and an important tradition in British popular culture, tracing the roots of the genre to its music-hall beginnings.

Includes George Formby, Gracie Fields, The Crazy Gang First full-length study of the subject Will appeal to those studying popular culture and film history Market: Scholars and students of film studies, popular culture, media studies, especially those taking courses on British cinema. Academic libraries. The general reader with an interest in twentieth-century popular culture and British cinema.

Author: David Sutton is a freelance writer, researcher and lecturer. He has taught courses on British cinema at the BFI and Brunel.

CONTENTS

Introduction
Chapter One: British Film Comedy/British Film Culture
Chapter Two: Theorising British Comedy
Chapter Three: Good Old Days-Music Hall Roots and Early Film Comedy
Chapter Four: British Film Comedy in the 1930s
Chapter Five: Working-Class Comedy
Chapter Six: Middle-Class Comedy
Chapter Seven: Female Comedy
Chapter Eight: Situation Comedy
Conclusion
Appendix: Filmography
Bibliography

"Film Europe and Film America"

"Higson and Maltby’s work provides a much needed contribution to the limited scholarly work on film distribution history . . . “Film Europe” and “Film America” presents a major addition to film scholarship and, hopefully, will instigate further research in this area of cinema studies."
Scope: An Online Journal of Film Studies, 2001

"An interesting and useful anthology which focuses on various discourses surrounding the possibility of coordinated European efforts to offset the dominance of the American film industry in the 1920s ... relevant not only for film historians, but also for those whose work centres on considerations of globalisation and cultural exchange more broadly."
Screening the Past, May 2000

"Usefully situates national developments, movements and cinematic expressions of local cultures in a broader international context, analysing the process of reciprocity, collaboration, exchange and resistance that animated the era on both sides of the Atlantic." 
English Historical Review

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 to further research.

"Film Europe" and "Film America" is the latest volume in the series Exeter Studies in Film History, and represents a major contribution to cinema scholarship as well as reflecting a strong interest in an area of study currently being developed in university departments and at the British Film Institute.

• Includes contributions from internationally renowned scholars
• An area of study currently being developed in University departments
• Includes primary documents as a stimulus to further research

Editors: Andrew Higson is Senior Lecturer in Film studies, University of East Anglia. He is the author of Waving the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain (OUP, 1995), and editor of Dissolving Views: Key Writings on British Cinema (Cassell, 1996). Richard Maltby is Professor of Film Studies, Sheffield Hallam University. He is the author of numerous essays and books on the history of American cinema, including Hollywood Cinema: an Introduction (Blackwells, 1996).

CONTENTS

Introduction, Andrew Higson and Richard Maltby
"Film Europe": cultural policy and industrial practice, Andrew Higson
The end of the "Film Europe" movement, Kristin Thompson (Department of Communication Arts, University of Wisconsin)
Cinema and the League of Nations, Richard Maltby
The international language problem: European reactions to Hollywood's conversion to sound, Richard Maltby and Ruth Vasey (Ruth Vasey is Lecturer in Screen Studies, Flinders University)
"Film Europe" and ideas of national cinema, Tim Bergfelder (Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Southampton)
Erich Pommer, the German film industry, "Film Europe" and Hollywood, Thomas Saunders (Associate Professor in the Department of History, University of Victoria)
Versions, Joseph Garncarz (Institute for Theatre Studies, University of Cologne)
Hollywood Babel: the multiple language version, Ginette Vincendeau (Professor of Film Studies, University of Warwick)
Hollywood's hegemonic strategies: overcoming French nationalism with the advent of sound, Martine Danan (Department of Foreign Languages, University of Memphis)
Amusement taxes and national cultures, Jens Ulff-Møller (completing a Ph.D at Brandeis University)
Polyglot Films for an international market: E.A. Dupont, the British film industry and the idea of a European cinema, Andrew Higson
Afterword, Thomas Elsaesser (Professor of Film and Television Studies, University of Amsterdam)

The Great Art of Light and Shadow: Archaeology of the Cinema

"If there is one book to use as a starting-point for an understanding of the history of image projection, and how pictures came to move, this is the book. Written in a clear and thoughtful style, maintained in an elegantly sympathetic translation by Richard Crangle."
Living Pictures: The Journal of the Popular and Projected Image before 1914, Vol. 1:3, 2001

"Richard Crangle’s technical understanding is evident throughout – and the result is peerless   . . . It has taken a great many years to create a widespread understanding that screen techniques did not start with 1895 and the Lumières.  In this contribution to that understanding Laurent Mannoni tackles, with resounding success, a myriad of related media techniques, spanning half a millennium. To quote David Robinson’s Foreward, this is 'no cold, dry, academic study, but a pulsing, vital chronicle'."
The New Magic Lantern Journal, Vol. 9, No. 1, Winter 2001

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 years of the magic lantern in the seventeenth century, the peepshows and perspective views of the eighteenth century, and the many weird and wonderful nineteenth-century attempts to recreate visions of real life in different ways and forms. The book introduces to an English-speaking readership many aspects of pre-cinema history from other European countries.

• A fully-illustrated and accessible account of a strange mixture of science, magic, art and deception
• "A fine book, in my opinion the best 'pre-cinema' book ever written." Tom Gunning, University of Chicago

Author: Laurent Mannoni is Curator of the equipment collection of the Cinémathèque Française.

Translator/Editor: Richard Crangle is a freelance researcher and writer and formerly Assistant Director, Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture, University of Exeter.

CONTENTS

PART ONE - The dreams of the eye

CHAPTER 1 - Dark rooms and magic mirrors
CHAPTER 2 - Light in the darkness
CHAPTER 3 - The 'Lantern of Fear' tours the world
PART TWO - Triumphant illusions

CHAPTER 4 - Magie Lumineuse in the country and the city
CHAPTER 5 - ''Life and Motion' The eighteenth-century lantern slide
CHAPTER 6 -The Phantasmagoria
CHAPTER 7 - From Panarama to Daguerreotype
PART THREE - 'The pencil of nature'

CHAPTER 8 - The Pirouette of the dancer
CHAPTER 9 - The 'vital question' resolved?
CHAPTER 10 - Great Expectations
CHAPTER 11 - The Magic Lantern: A Sovereign and her subjects
PART FOUR - Inscribing Movement

CHAPTER 12 - The passage of Venus and the galloping horse
CHAPTER 13 - Marey releases the dove
CHAPTER 14 -The big wheel of little mirrors
CHAPTER 15 - Edison and his 'films through the keyhole'
CHAPTER 16 - The labourers of the eleventh hour

APPENDIX A: Museums displaying interesting items relating to the history of 'pre-cinema' media.

APPENDIX B: Report of the scientists Jamin and Richer on the phantasmogirie of Robertson anf the Phantasmaparastasie of Clisorius (17 July - 2 August 1800).

Select Bibliography

Hollywood, Westerns and the 1930s: The Lost Trail

Peter Stanfield  

‘Although it would seem that everything one might want to know about westerns has already been written, Peter Stanfield’s new book on the subject proves otherwise . . . His decision to treat all westerns equally, as output produced by the studios, instead of privileging a small canon of classics, yields fascinating new insights into the genre during this decade . . . Stanfield’s work provides an entertaining chronicle as well as a valuable contribution to scholarship.’
Western Historical Quarterly, Autumn 2002

For the first time, this book tells the ‘lost’ story of the 1930s Western.  Written from a concern to understand Western films primarily as products of Hollywood’s studio system, it recovers the context in which Westerns were produced, exhibited and viewed in the 1930s. Peter Stanfield highlights the hitherto marginalised ‘B’ or ‘series’ Western, the significance of female audiences, the role of independent exhibitors and of censorship in shaping film production.  

•      'Peter Stanfield has blazed a new trail in the history of the Western. The value of Stanfield's work is that it does not confine itself to the recognised classics, dealing instead with the genre as a whole. Stanfield writes with wit and insight, and an astonishing knowledge of the more arcane reaches of American popular culture. This is the book the Western has long needed.'  Edward Buscombe, editor of The BFI Companion to the Western

•      'Full of insights, painstaking scholarship and lively writing. It will become a classsic. A definite recommendation. Steve Neale, Research Professor in Film, Media and Communication Studies, Sheffield Hallam University and author of Genre and Hollywood

•     Includes illustrations from the following films: Arizona, The Big Trail, Billy the Kid, Cimarron, Destry Rides Again, Dodge City, In Old Arizona, In Old Santa Fe, Jesse James, The Lash, Let Freedom Ring, Oh, Susanna!, Oklahoma Kid, The Plainsman, Ramona, Santa Fe Trail, Stand Up and Fight, Three Godfathers, Trail of the Lonesome Pine, Tumbling Tumbleweeds, Union Pacific, Virginia City, The Virginian, The Westerner.

Market:  Film historians.  The general reader interested in the Western, Hollywood cinema and 1930s American culture.  Undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses in film history and American studies. Scholars of film history.  Academic and general libraries. 

Author: Peter Stanfield is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Media Arts at Southampton Institute.

CONTENTS

Introduction
1. The First Cycle of Sound Westerns
2. Series Westerns, Will Rogers and the Emergence of the Singing Cowboy, 1931–1935
3. Series Westerns: Masking the Modern
4. Class-A Western Features, 1935–1938
5. Democratic Art: Westerns 1939–1941
6. Dixie Cowboys: Representing the Nation

Conclusion
Bibliography

Legitimate Cinema: Theatre Stars in Silent British Films, 1908–1918

Jon Burrows

This is the first new book-length study of British cinema of the 1910s to be published for over fifty years, and it focuses on the close relationship between the British film industry and the Edwardian theatre.  Why were so many West End legends such as Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Ellen Terry repeatedly tempted to dabble in silent film work?  Why were film producers so keen to employ them?  Jon Burrows studies their screen performances and considers how successfully they made the transition from one medium to the other, and offers some controversial conclusions about the surprisingly broad social range of filmgoers to whom their films appealed.

      ‘This study of theatre-film relationships and acting practices in the teens offers a major contribution to British film history, rigorously grounded in empirical research, compellingly argued and engagingly written . . . It will make an invaluable contribution not only to knowledge of the silent period of British filmmaking, but to the increasing interchange between film and theatre scholarship.’  Professor Christine Gledhill, Staffordshire University

      ‘This book is well researched and makes an important intervention in the field.  It will be of interest to theater historians, film historians and cultural historians interested in British audiences and popular amusements in the early twentieth century.’  Professor Lea Jacobs, University of Wisconsin-Madison

      ‘Jon Burrows is destined to become a significant figure in Film Studies in the UK.  His research on theatre acting and silent British cinema is of the highest possible order and he is an assured and engaging writer.’  Professor Andrew Higson, University of East Anglia

Market: Film historians. Theatre historians. Cultural historians interested in early 20^th century British history.  Students taking courses in film, theatre and British cultural history.  Academic and specialist libraries.

Author: Jon Burrows is a lecturer in the Department of Film and Television Studies, University of Warwick.  He is the author of numerous articles about silent British cinema, including contributions to British Stars and Stardom (Manchester, 2001), The British Cinema Book, 2^nd edition (London, 2001), Young and Innocent? The Cinema in Britain, 1896–1930 (University of Exeter Press, 2002).

Parallel Tracks

"Kirby's well-researched and well-written text places the separate, but as the author convincingly argues, conceptually related phenomena of silent cinema and the railway within both historical and theoretical contexts."
American Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2, 1998

From its 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. PARALLEL TRACKS is the first book to explore and explain this relationship in both historical and theoretical terms, blending film scholarship with railroad history.

This highly original work reveals the profound impact that the railroad and the cinema have had on Western society and modern urban industrial culture. It will be eagerly received by those involved in film studies, American studies, feminist theory and the cultural study of modernity. It will also have appeal to general readers interested in silent films or in the history of the railroad.

• Essential reading for students of early film history
• Also useful for students of cultural studies
• Includes discussion of many well-known silent films

Author: Lynne Kirby is a Senior Producer at Court Television Network. Her articles on the railroad and cinema have appeared in major American film journals.

CONTENTS

Chapter One: Inventors and Hysterics: The Train in the Pre-History and Early History of Cinema
Chapter Two: Romances of the Rail in Silent Film
Chapter Three: The Railroad in the City
Chapter Four: National Identity in the Train Film

Conclusion

A Paul Rotha Reader

"Rotha’s writing itself seems incredibly fresh and vibrant. A no-nonsense, clearly written personal view of filmmaking, the book is a pleasure to read and triggers off many a train of thought about the nature of documentary filmmaking . . . As a starting-point for discussion about the thinking behind documentary and the effect it can have on the viewer, it is a highly stimulating collection . . . The introductory chapters pull into focus Rotha’s aims and intentions which remind the reader what documentary has the potential to do. To make us think."
Journal of Popular British Cinema, Vol. 4, 2001

A Paul Rotha Reader marks a major reappraisal of Rotha's significance as a theorist, critic and advocate for cinema as the most important form of mass communication in the modern world. It will be essential reading for anyone seriously interested in British cinema history.

• An invaluable commentary on intellectual film culture in Britain
• Insight into the development of film theory
• Essential reading for those seriously interested in British cinema history

Editors: Duncan Petrie is Senior Lecturer in Film in the University of Exeter and Director of the Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture. His books include Creativity and Constraint in the British Film Industry (Macmillan, 1991), New Questions of British Cinema (BFI, 1992), The British Cinematographer (BFI, 1996). Robert Kruger has worked as an editor, director and producer, mainly within the British documentary movement, and set up the TSW Film and Video Archive, now largest regional archive in the country. He started his working life with Paul Rotha's 'Films of Fact' company and edited Rotha's final two films.

Popular Filmgoing in 1930s Britain: A Choice of Pleasures

"Sedgwick’s attempt to bring about a new kind of synthesis of economic and cultural history, offering in the process a new way of assessing the relative popularity of the films that were available to the enormous cinema-going public in the Britain of the 1930s, is a resounding success. It should be essential reading for business historians, because it starts from the premise that the making and distribution of films is above all a business . . . a book which deserves to dominate its field for years to come, generating valuable follow-up research in the process."
Business History, 2002

2The book brings a valuable new economist’s perspective to our understanding of cinema and a strong argument that British cinema enjoyed good health in the 1930s."
Contemporary British History, 2002

"Thorough and engaging . . . fascinating to a wide range of scholars and students . . . a terrific bibliography that will allow any scholar or reader wishing to delve into the motion picture industry an easy leg up on the literature . . . while the rich data set that Sedgwick uses is from 1930s Britain, the points he highlights are general and should appeal to anyone with an interest in the economic or social history of the movies . . . The theories he proposes and the models he creates to test them are general in scope and leave lots of room for future scholars to follow his path and extend his research. In the end, he has produced a top-notch study of an industry that is under-explored in the economics literature. While focusing on a narrowly defined data set, he manages to produce a volume that cuts a wide swath through the history of the motion picture industry. It is a highly recommended read."
EH.NET, Aug 2001

In the 1930s there were close to a billion annual admissions to the cinema in Britain and it was by far the most popular paid-for leisure activity. This book is an exploration of that popularity. John Sedgwick has developed the POPSTAT index, a methodology based on exhibition records which allows identification of the most popular films and the leading stars of the period, and provides a series of tables which will servce as standard points of reference for all scholars and specialists working in the field of 1930s cinema. The book establishes similarities and differences between national and regional tastes through detailed case study analysis of cinemagoing in Bolton and Brighton, and offers an analysis of genre development. It also reveals that although Hollywood continued to dominate the British market, films emanating from British studios proved markedly popular with domestic audiences.

• Explores film popularity in Britain during the 1930s
• Develops an analytical framework which allows an understanding of the commercial development of the film industry

Author: John Sedgwick is Principal Research Fellow at the University of North London.

CONTENTS

Introduction

CHAPTER 1: A Simple Theory of Film Choice
CHAPTER 2: The Context Film in 1930s Britain
CHAPTER 3: Measuring Popularity
CHAPTER 4: Shares in the British Market
CHAPTER 5: Popular Films and their Stars in Bolton (Worktown)
CHAPTER 6: Comparative Cinemagoing Preferences, 1934-1935: National, Bolton and Brighton audiences
CHAPTER 7: Profits, Film Budgets and Popularity
CHAPTER 8: Genres, Generic Lineages and 'Hits'
CHAPTER 9: Stardom and 'Hits'
CHAPTER 10: Michael Balcon's Close Encounter with the American Market
CHAPTER 11: Difficulties Facing the Production Sector of the British Film Industry during the late 1930s
CHAPTER 12: Conclusion
APPENDIX 1: The national sample cinema set
APPENDIX 2: 126 London West End 'hits' screened between 1 January 1932 and 31 March 1938
APPENDIX 3: POPSTAT Top 100 films in Britain, 1932-1937

Winner of the 1997 Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards

The World According To Hollywood 1918-1939, a title in UEP's Studies in Film History series, has won the Culture and History category in the 1997 Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award.

The awards - that give a total of £22,000 in prize money - received over 200 entries from 14 countries, including submissions from publishers such as Oxford University Press, Heinemann and Focal Press.

Judges included Executive Editor of Screen Digest Ben Keen and Chief of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division at the Washington D.C Library of Congress David Francis.

The judges praised the book, written by Australian Academic Ruth Vasey for "breaking new ground in the historical analysis of the motion picture business.....Ruth Vasey is the first to analyse the way that the American movie majors have consciously shaped the content of their films with their international audience in mind".

The author, a lecturer in Screen Studies at Flinders University in Adelaide Australia, won £10,000.

For more information about the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation click here

The World According To Hollywood

‘Vasey’s book is extremely well researched and contributes new knowledge and arguments to the field of censorship history.  Vasey’s book is not only relevant to film history (specifically histories of censorship and the Hollywood studio system modes of production) but also to genre studies, national cinema and representations of race, ethnicity and sexuality.  Vasey’s book is innovative and signposts a number of related areas for further research in her field.  As an excellent example of film scholarship, The World According to Hollywood 1918-1939 is certainly worth reading even if it is not in your area.’
Scope: An On-Line Journal of Film Studies (Dec 1999)

"Vasey is a determined researcher, ably demonstrating that diligent searching can produce telling documentation. Here she has skilfully mined a vast array of data from the records left by the Production Code Administration, the studios - particularly Warner Bros. - and the public record of the US Department of Commerce."
Screen 39:3 Autumn 1998. Reviews

The World According to Hollywood 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. Vasey 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 idiosyncratic world on screen that was glamorous and exotic, but peculiarly narrow in scope.

• Investigates Hollywood's Golden Age — the 1920s and 1930s
  
• Illustrations from key films of the period
  
• A major contribution to film history

Market: Students and scholars of film history, film theory, cultural studies, American studies. Academic libraries. The general reader with an interest in Hollywood cinema, national identity, and censorship.

Author: Ruth Vasey is lecturer in Screen Studies, Flinders University, Adelaide. She is a contributor to The Oxford History of World Cinema, Movie Censorship and American Culture and Modern American Culture: An Introduction.

CONTENTS

Introduction

1. Image Making: Managing the Expansion of the Motion Picture Industry
2. The Open Door: The Industry's Public Relations
3. Sound Effects: Technology and Adaptation
4. Sophisticated Responses and Displaced Persons: Content Regulation and the Studio Relations Committee
5. Why is Mr Brown Eating Spaghetti? Content Regulation and the Production Code Administration
6. Diplomatic Representations: Accommodating the Foreign Market
7. The Big Picture: The Politics of "Industry Policy"

Conclusion

Young and Innocent? The Cinema in Britain 1896-1930    

"Two themes in particular stand out, which draw on the interdisciplinary pattern of much current early media work.  One is to locate moving pictures in a wider fabric of popular culture . . . The other new and welcome trend apparent in this collection is a move away from directors and even from individual films towards a consideration of industrial issues  . . . [this collection] testifies to a lively culture of research and discovery around early British cinema which is a welcome change from the self-flagellation of earlier generations."
Sight and Sound, June 2002

"This book is both necessary, and important . . . A collection of introductory essays such as this has not before been undertaken, and it provides an invaluable reference point to students of this neglected period . . . The greatest value in the book lies in its final section, in which Steve Bottomore and Jon Burrows give a comprehensive overview of the resources available to those interested in the period . . . The silent period in Britain can be daunting, given its lack of secondary source material, but the two pieces between them provide an opening into the period to any interested party, and should be recommended reading on all film history courses. These are backed up by an impressive bibliography which is well organised, thorough and completely indispensable. There is no doubt that this is a book which every film student should have on his or her shelf . . . What comes across most is the variety of approaches available and the wealth of work yet to be done, as well as the community and the enthusiasm of the academics, archivists, students and historians who are undertaking it. The message is clear; grab a notepad and join in. There is much to do. Essential."
Viewfinder, No. 47, June 2002

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 late 1920s. From these accounts the youthful British cinema emerges as far from innocent.  On the contrary, it was a fascinatingly complex field of cultural and industrial practices. The book also includes guides to bibliographical and archival sources and an extensive bibliography.

Topics covered include:

• The cinema of attractions in the early period

• The emergence of the narrative film

• The series and serials of the 1910s and 1920s

• The enormous range of actuality films

• The mainstream feature film of the late 1910s and 1920s

• The roles played by key producers, directors, scriptwriters and stars

• The changing relationships between film and literature, theatre and visual culture

• The ways in which audiences engaged with films and the patterns of exhibition and reception;

• The contribution of live music to the film experience

• British cinema’s relations with American cinema and the Empire market

• The emergence of an intellectual film culture in the 1920s

Market: Academics and film historians, especially those working on silent British cinema.  Advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students studying film and/or early 20^th century British culture.   General readers with an interest in silent cinema or early 20^th century British cultural history.

Editor: Andrew Higson is Professor of Film Studies at the University of East Anglia and Director of the British Cinema History Research Project.  His books include Waving the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain (Clarendon Press, 1995), British Cinema, Past and Present (co-edited with Justine Ashby; Routledge, 2000) and “Film Europe” and “Film America”: Cinema, Commerce and Cultural Exchange, 1920-1939 (co-edited with Richard Maltby; University of Exeter Press, 1999), which won the Prix Jean Mitry in 2000.

Contributors:  Charles Barr, Stephen Bottomore, Neil Brand, Jon Burrows, Frank Gray, Jenny Hammerton, Mike Hammond, Sylvia Hardy, Nicholas Hiley, Luke McKernan, Alex Marlow-Mann, Roberta E. Pearson, Simon Popple, Emma Sandon, Lise Shapiro Sanders, Jamie Sexton, Gerry Turvey, Mike Walsh, Haidee Wasson, Michael Williams.

CONTENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS

Introduction Andrew Higson

SECTION A – Putting the pioneers in context: films and filmmakers before the First World War

1.      “But the khaki-covered camera is the latest thing”: the Boer War cinema and visual culture in Britain Simon Popple (Senior Lecturer in Media History, University of Teeside)

2.      James Williamson’s rescue narratives Frank Gray (Principal Lecturer in Art and Media History, University of Brighton, and Director of the South East Film and Video Archive)

3.      Cecil Hepworth, Alice in Wonderland and the development of the narrative film Andrew Higson

4.      Putting the world before you: the Charles Urban story Luke McKernan (Head of Information, British Universities Film & Video Council)

5.      “It would be a mistake to strive for subtlety of effect”: Richard III and populist, pantomimeShakespeare in the 1910s Jon Burrows (Lecturer in Film and Television Studies, University of Warwick)

SECTION B – Going to the cinema: audiences, exhibition and reception from the 1890s to the 1910s

6.      “Indecent Incentives to Vice”: Regulating Films and Audience Behaviour from the 1890s to the 1910s Lise Shapiro Sanders (Visiting Assistant Professor of Literature and Cultural Studies, Hampshire College, USA)

7.      “Nothing more than a ‘craze’”: cinema building in Britain from 1909 to 1914 Nicholas Hiley (Head of the Centre for the Study of Cartoons and Caricature, University of Kent)

8.      Letters to America: a case study in the exhibition and reception of American films in Britain, 1914-18 Mike Hammond (Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Southampton)

SECTION C – A full supporting programme: serials, cinemagazines, interest films, travelogues and travel films, and film music in the 1910s and 1920s

9.      British series and serials in the silent era Alex Marlow-Mann (doctoral candidate, University of Reading)

10.    The spice of the perfect programme: the weekly magazine film during the silent period Jenny Hammerton (Senior Cataloguer, British Pathe)

11.    Shakespeare’s country: the national poet, English identity and British silent cinema Roberta E. Pearson (Reader in Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University) 

12.    Representing “African life”: from ethnographic exhibitions to Nionga and Stampede Emma Sandon (Lecturer in film studies, Birkbeck College)

13.    Distant trumpets: the score to The Flag Lieutenant and music of the British silent cinema Neil Brand (composer, writer and silent film accompanist)

SECTION D – The feature film at home and abroad: mainstream cinema from the end of the First World War to the coming of sound

14.    Writing screen plays: Stannard and Hitchcock Charles Barr (Professor of Film Studies, University of East Anglia)

15.    H.G. Wells and British silent cinema: the war of the worlds Sylvia Hardy (Research Associate, University College of Northampton)

16.    War-torn Dionysus: the silent passion of Ivor Novello Michael Williams (Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Southampton)

17.    Tackling the Big Boy of Empire: British Film in Australia, 1918-1931 Mike Walsh (Senior Lecturer in Screen Studies, Flinders University, Australia)

SECTION E – Taking the cinema seriously: the emergence of an intellectual film culture in the 1920s

18.    The Film Society and the creation of an alternative film culture in Britain in the 1920s Jamie Sexton (Junior Research Fellow, Birkbeck College)

19.    Towards a critical practice: Ivor Montagu and British film culture in the 1920s Gerry Turvey (Lecturer in Sociology and Film, Kingston University)

20.    Writing the cinema into daily life: Iris Barry and the emergence of British film criticism in the 1920s Haidee Wasson (Assistant Professor, Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota, USA)

SECTION F – Bibliographical and archival resources

21.    A guide to bibliographic and archival sources on British cinema before the First World War  Stephen Bottomore (freelance film historian) 

22.    A guide to bibliographic and archival sources on British cinema from the First World War to the coming of sound Jon Burrows (Lecturer in Film and Television Studies, University of Warwick)

23.    Bibliography: British cinema before 1930

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