BRITISH FILM AND MEDIA

ESSAY TOPIC: WHAT CONSEQUENCES DID WARTIME CONDITIONS

(1939-1945) HAVE FOR THE BRITISH FILM INDUSTRY?

1
 The beginning of the war in 1939 seemed to pose a treat to an already insecure
British Film industry. When the war started on 3 September 1939, all cinemas, theatres and
sports halls in Britain were closed. There was a general fear of mass slaughter with air raids
in crowded places as the above. Fortunately nothing happened and most places of
entertainment started to reopen little by little. The public needed a way of escaping the
reality of war and turned to the more genteel, sanitized versions available in cinema.

However through the difficult times of the war there was a shortage of new films.
The distributors supported that they wanted 600 long films a year for the British Cinemas to
perform successfully. But a new spirit of austerity and hard work led to the abandonment of
the stupidity and extravagance of the past decade. With many of the employees being
engaged in war work, available manpower was reduced to one third and half of the studio
space was requisitioned. Only sixty films were produced annually.

In 1939, Britain’s 4,800 cinemas were open. There was considerable pressure on the
British Film industry to produce British Films to supply the obvious need for films to show.
Not only there were financial reasons, but also a need to resist the cultural impact of
unleavened Americanism.

The Second World War brought a huge mobilization of popular effort and endurance
and much thought about the nation on whose behalf all of this was being done. While some
drew on deep resources of national character and history, for others it was a “people’s war”,
and an opportunity to redefine the nation in a more democratic and progressive way.
Popular culture was at the heart of this redefinition not just of national identity, but also of
the institutions and social relations that establish British Culture.

One feature of the war was the emergence of a “war culture”, populist, sentimental,
insistent on immediate answers to the big questions, tempered by the awareness of the
suddenness of death. Throughout the 1930s the British Board of Film Censors had exerted
moral and political censorship of British Films and this influence was supplemented by the
influence of the Ministry of Information. New realism in wartime pictures and a demand
for documentaries gave a whole new look to British Films. Moreover, the war machine
demanded that British Films continue to celebrate stable and reassuring gender roles. So the
British Studios, who survive throughout the war brought about the “melodrama of everyday
life” and revealed an “ethos of community” that was prevalent across genres.

2
 ‘The story of the British cinema in the Second World War is inextricably linked with
that of the Ministry of Information’1. Across the spectrum of Ministry o Information Films
one figure stands out, Humphrey Jennings. Jennings had been one of the organisers of the
Mass Observation movement, which was launched in 1937. In 1938 Jennings had been
involved in the GPO film-making unit, but it was the coming of war, which allowed his
talents to shine, and provided him with a mobilising purpose. After a few films, the first of
his masterpieces was “Listen to Britain”, which he co-directed in 1941. The film spoke with
economy, but with extraordinary power about how the British people faced up to the war.
There is no narration in the film and it is astonishing how Jennings could select or create
the material and anticipate the effect, which it would have on those watching it. “Fires were
started” is widely regarded as his finest achievement. Towards the end of the war, in 1944,
he made a unique film “A diary for Timothy”. The film bids us to look at a baby and
consider the world into which that child would grow up.

Most of the films in this period were documentaries about the war, its tactics and its
politics. The people needed information and enlightenment about the war. They were in one
strange situation and they were lost. Men were in the war and women stayed back at homes
to wait for a response. People wanted something to show them the facts and the truths of
that war. So, documentaries came to give this to the people and to show the truth and
educate the youngest.

The films that came out in 1930 had served to dramatize myths of national identity,
monarchy, empire, personal heroism and consensus. Films about the events of the Second
World War are usually described as war films rather than historical films, even though they
were made some years after the events they portrayed and their narratives were therefore
set in past. The category of historical films would also include biographical pictures known
as biopics, based on historical personages. They tend to be based either on monarchs (Mary,
Queen of Scots, Elisabeth), on statesmen (The Prime Minister) or on other famous national
figures (Lawrence of Arabia).

War and anti-war films often acknowledge the horror and heartbreak of war, letting
the actual combat fighting (against nations of humankind) provide the primary plot or
background for the action of the film. Usually Germans are frequently depicted as torn
between the duty to country and hatred of the Nazi system.

1
Anthony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richards, 1994, Britain can take it, Edinburgh, page 4, 3rd paragraph.

3
 However, for the first time ever, the majority of film makers were committed to
showing and celebrating, the lives of ordinary people. This change of attitude might have
sprung from the shared sense of danger. The body of melodrama films, focussing on the
experience and aimed at an audience of women, has been discounted within the patriarchal
system. That melodramas were intended primarily for a female audience is of clear
importance to many writers on the subject. One of the issues raised is whether the films
expose the contradictions of masculinity, dominant male society and women’s roles within
that society, or whether they merely reinforce the dominant ideology.

The female representation appeared in several types. The ‘sensible girls’ of the 30’s
had metamorphosed into strong, still feminine presences or wicked ladies who kicked
against the pricks or the women of Ministry of Information whose function was to remind a
temporarily dislocated nation of the benefits of patriarchal structures. ‘Wartime propaganda
ostensibly addressed to women spoke also to men: for the patriotic endeavours of the men
serving in the armed forces were secured by reference to their paternal and filial duties to
women-by putting themselves at risk they were protecting wives, mothers and daughters
waiting in their homes’2. Women exist in order to be left behind is the message of the
propaganda but in a more human way. ‘The nation’s morality and culture is entrusted into
female hands, so long as those hands are engaged in ratified activities’3.

To conclude, ‘of course film production in Britain itself was particularly badly hit’4.
However, with the coming of Second World War, British Cinema entered its golden period.
For the first time ever, the majority of film makers were committed to showing and
celebrating the lives of ordinary people. Whatever the reason, British Films actually
connected with British audiences. ‘In short, British Films continued to play an important
and necessary part in ensuring that cinemagoing in Britain remained, as it had been
throughout the 1930s an “essential social habit”.’5

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
2
Christine Gledhill and Gillian Swanson, 1996, Nationalising Femininity, Manchester, page 238, 1st paragraph
3
Christine Gledhill and Gillian Swanson, 1996, Nationalising Femininity, Manchester, page 201, 2nd
paragraph
4
Anthony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richards, 1994, Britain can take it, Edinburgh, page 2, 3rd paragraph.
5
Anthony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richards, 1994, Britain can take it, Edinburgh, page 3, 1st paragraph.

4
Aldgate, A. and Richards, J.: Britain can take it, 1994, Edinburgh, Edinburgh
University Press Ltd
Armes, R.: A critical History of British Cinema, 1978, London, Secker & Warburg
Ashby, J. and Higson, A.: British Cinema, Past and Present, 2000, London, Routledge
Balcon, M.: Twenty Years of British Film, 1925-1945, 1947, London, Falcon Press
Coultass, C.: Images for Battle: British Film and the Second World War 1939-
1945,1989, London, Associated University Press
Gledhill, C. and Swanson, G.: Nationalising Femininity, 1996, Manchester, Manchester
University Press
Lant, A.: Blackout: Reinventing Women for Wartime British Cinema, 1991, Princeton
Richards, J.: The Age of the Dream Palace, 1984, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul
plc
Talor, P.M.: Britain and the Cinema in the Second World War, 1988, London, Macmillan