Abstract
Cinema and film form an integral part of the culture of any period of the 20th century. The thematic preoccupations of film, music, fashion, art and literature can all offer important contributions to our understanding of any given historical period. Just as the film historian must strive for a rigorous methodology which acknowledges issues of historical research, the political and social historian should not ignore important cultural indicators. However, despite their importance as social and cultural texts, all film must be interpreted cautiously. Anyone can interpret a film and see within it relevant themes, political motivations, ideological messages and easily identifiable characters and narrative. It is also easy to ally particular films with particular social moments. Yet the relationship between film and culture is rarely as straightforward as it first appears. Any study of film must consider carefully the experiences of audiences and the implications of popular taste. Box office figures, letters to popular magazines and critical reviews all allow an insight into popular taste, but recovering the experiences of audiences is difficult and many of the surviving sources of material which can be used to document popular taste are frequently sparse and uneven.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
S. Harper and V. Porter, British Cinema of the 1950s: The Decline of Deference (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 3.
R. Durgnat, A Mirror for England: British Movies from Austerity to Affluence (London: Faber and Faber, 1970).
J. Richards, ‘Film and TV: The Moving Image,’ in S. Barber and C.M Penniston-Bird (eds), History Beyond the Text: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), p. 74.
R. Williams, Problems in Materialism and Culture (London: Verso Editions and NLB, 1980).
R. Allen and D. Gomery, Film History: Theory and Practice (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985), p. 37.
J. Chapman, Past and Present: National Identity and the British Historical Film (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005), p. 11.
J. Richards, ‘Rethinking British Cinema,’ in J. Ashby and A. Higson (eds), British Cinema, Past and Present (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 21–34.
J. Chapman, M. Glancy and S. Harper (eds), The New Film History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 5.
A. Spicer, ‘Film Studies and the Turn to History,’ Journal of Contemporary History, Volume 39, Number 2 (2004), pp. 147–155.
J. Richards, The Age of the Dream Palace: Cinema and Society 1930–1939 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984)
and S. Harper and V. Porter, British Cinema of the 1950s: The Decline of Deference (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
R. Murphy, Sixties British Cinema (London: BFI Publishing, 1992)
and J. Hill, British Cinema in the 1980s (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999).
S. Harper and V. Porter, ‘Beyond Media History: The Challenge of Visual Style,’ Journal of British Cinema and Television, Volume 2, Number 1 (2005), pp. 1–17.
S. Street, ‘Designing for Motion Pictures.’ Paper given at Archives and Auteurs Conference, University of Stirling, 4 September 2009.
S. Street, British Cinema in Documents (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 2.
A. Spicer ‘Understanding the Independent Film Producer: Michael Klinger and New Film History.’ Paper given at Researching Film History: Perspectives and Practices in Film Historiography Conference, 7 July 2009.
L. Jordanova, History in Practice (London: Hodder Headline, 2000), p. 101.
J. Tosh, The Pursuit of History, 4th Edition (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2006), p. 60.
R. Samuel, Theatres of Memory: Volume 1, Past and Present in Contemporary Culture (London: Verso, 1994), p. 8.
S. Barber, Censoring the 1970s: The BBFC and the Decade That Taste Forgot, (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2011).
R. James, ‘Kinematograph Weekly in the 1930s: Trade Attitudes Towards Audience Taste,’ Journal of British Cinema and Television, Volume 3, Number 2 (2006), pp. 229–243.
M. Glancy, When Hollywood Loved Britain: The Hollywood ‘British’ Film, 1939–45 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999).
S. Harper, ‘A Lower-Middle-Class Taste Community in the 1930s: Admission Figures at the Regent, Portsmouth,’ The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Volume 24, Number 4 (2004), pp. 565–588.
S. Harper, ‘Fragmentation and Crisis: 1940s Admissions Figures at the Regent Cinema, Portsmouth, UK,’ The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Volume 26, Number 3 (2006), pp. 361–394.
S. Barber, ‘Beyond Sex, Bond and Star Wars: Exhibition Data from the Southampton Odeon 1972–1980,’ POST SCRIPT: Essays in Film and the Humanities, Volume 30, Number 3 (2011), pp. 77–90.
R. Perks and A. Thomson (eds), The Oral History Reader (London: Routledge, 1998), p. ix.
A. Spicer, ‘Film Studies and the Turn to History,’ Journal of Contemporary History, Volume 39, Number 2 (2004), pp. 147–155, p. 152.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2013 Sian Barber
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Barber, S. (2013). Film and Cultural History. In: The British Film Industry in the 1970s. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137305923_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137305923_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-34821-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-30592-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Media & Culture CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)