A Social History of the Crime Film

Abstract

Is it possible to read a nation through its popular entertainment? With the growth of new critical theory, mainstream media ranging from television soap operas to comic books have been pressed into service as signifiers of the social and political ethos of individual countries, notably the USA. Needless to say, however much the illusion of verisimilitude is created by such entertainment media as film, in the final analysis the keyword remains illusion — any notions of reality are as false as those found in, say, reality TV — the careful organisation, staging and editing of events is directed towards one end: the presentation of a writer’s or director’s vision. Any truthfulness that may appear in the interstices is usually in the nature of a happy accident. To suggest, as this book will attempt to do, that Britain’s long tradition of crime cinema may offer a more nuanced, intelligent and politically informed analysis of British society from the 1920s onwards than more overtly respectable ‘heritage’ cinema is something of a hostage to fortune — but there is a great deal of evidence to support this thesis, as I will attempt to show.