Reframing British Cinema, 1918-1928: Between Restraint and Passion

by Gledhill, Christine

• ISBN13: 9780851708898
• ISBN10: 0851708897
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-01-27
• Publisher: British Film Inst

Summary

Examining a cinema intertwined with notions of theatricality, pictorialism and literariness, in which the high cultural, middlebrow and popular intersect, this study of British cinema's formative years re-evaluates the little-known, but interesting and often startling films of the 1920s.

Author Biography

Christine Gledhill is Professor of Cinema Studies at Staffordshire University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	1	(6)
PART ONE: CO-ORDINATES	7	(84)
1 THEATRICALISING BRITISH CINEMA	9	(22)
PROGRAMMING AND EXHIBITION PRACTICES	10	(6)
Crossing the Boundary between Theatre and Cinema	11	(1)
Mixing Live and Filmed Performers	12	(2)
Theatricalising Film	14	(2)
HISTORCISING THEATRICALITY	16	(4)
Reforming Melodrama	16	(3)
Geography Versus Biography	19	(1)
THE THEATRICALISATION OF CINEMATIC SPACE	20	(8)
Cinematic Stages	21	(1)
Geographic Stages and Social Mapping	22	(3)
Narrative as Boundary-Crossing: The Rat and Underground	25	(3)
PERFORMER AND AUDIENCE	28	(3)
2 GOING TO THE - BRITISH - PICTURES	31	(31)
PICTURES AS POPULAR CULTURE	31	(6)
Picturing the World: From Painting to Pictures	32	(1)
Thinking in Pictures	33	(1)
Realisations	34	(1)
Old and New Masters: Populist Aesthetics	35	(2)
GESTURE AND PICTURE	37	(11)
Staging Pictures	37	(1)
Figures in a Landscape: Tansy	38	(2)
Gestural Aesthetics	40	(2)
The Intervention of the Camera	42	(1)
The Registers of Gesture	43	(2)
Pictorial Articulation: Frames, Vignettes and Boundaries	45	(2)
Ivy Duke: Pre-Raphaelite of the Cinema	47	(1)
SERIAL DISCONTINUITY	48	(3)
The Illustrative Mode	48	(1)
Magic Lantern as Intertextual Relay	48	(1)
Pictorial Views and Travelogues	49	(1)
Serial Discontinuity and Parallel Pleasures	50	(1)
PICTORIALISM AND MODERNITY	51	(6)
Problems of Continuity	51	(1)
Picture Collage	52	(2)
Montage of Emotions	54	(1)
Pictorialism and the Aesthetics of Affect	55	(1)
Aesthetics as Heritage	56	(1)
PICTURES AS DISCOURSE	57	(5)
Picture as Cultural Document	58	(1)
The Discourse of Pictures	59	(3)
3 PERFORMING BRITISH CINEMA	62	(29)
RESTRAINT AND PASSION	62	(9)
The Power of Restraint	62	(2)
A Distinctly English Style of Underplaying	64	(1)
Masterly Inactivity or Unnatural Restraint? The Problem of the Actress	65	(2)
Acting from the Heart	67	(1)
Self and Role	67	(1)
Matheson Lang in Othello and Carnival	68	(3)
CHARACTER ACTING	71	(6)
Nationalising Naturalism: Hindle Wakes	72	(2)
Moore Marriott -'Our Best Character Actor'	74	(1)
Technologies of Performance	75	(1)
Acting or Being?	76	(1)
STARS AND BRITISH CINEMA	77	(7)
The Non-Actor and Stardom	78	(2)
Sincerity Versus Spontaneity	80	(1)
Stars as Characters	80	(1)
Contra the Non-Actor	81	(1)
Nationalising Stardom	82	(1)
Two British Stars	83	(1)
AN ACTOR'S ART CINEMA?	84	(4)
Henry Edwards: Debonair Naturalist	85	(1)
Guy Newall: British Cinema's Finest Actor	85	(2)
The Art of Casting: Kenelm Foss	87	(1)
CODA: COMING HOME TO BRITISH CINEMA	88	(5)
The Acculturation of Recognition	88	(3)
PART TWO: CONJUNCTIONS	91	(87)
4 DIRECTORS' PICTURE STORIES	93	(30)
CECIL HEPWORTH: PICTORIAL POET OF BRITISH CINEMA	93	(7)
The Pastoral Context	94	(1)
Pastoral Moves: Tansy	95	(2)
Picture Stories: Pipes of Pan	97	(3)
MAURICE ELVEY AND PICTORIAL NARRATION	100	(11)
Heart-Reading Pictures: Comradeship	102	(4)
Picturialism Modernised	106	(2)
From Picture Stories to Flicker-Book Montage	108	(3)
JACK GRAHAM CUTTS AND CINEMATIC VISION	111	(8)
'We touch each other with the sense of sight'	112	(1)
Cutts: Master Showman	112	(2)
Eye Power in The Wonderful Story	114	(2)
Forbidden Looks	116	(1)
Visions and Screens	117	(2)
CODA: HITCHCOCK, THE MANXMAN AND THE POETICS OF BRITISH CINEMA	119	(4)
5 CLASS ACTS: GENRES, MODES AND PERFORMERS	123	(28)
CULTURAL MODALITIES	124	(11)
Revivals and Reinventions	125	(1)
Acting Romantic	126	(1)
Dressing Up: The Costume Romance	127	(2)
Ethnic Transvestism	129	(2)
From Pantomime to Tango	131	(1)
Melodrama at the Threshold of Modernity	132	(2)
Bringing Hollywood Home: The Crime Melodrama	134	(1)
GENERIC STRATAGEMS: CROSS-DRESSING, DISGUISE AND DOUBLES	135	(9)
Villainy Doubled: Sweeney Todd	136	(1)
Domesticating Melodrama: Doubling for the Family Romance	137	(2)
The Aristocratic Villain and Female-Oriented Romance: If Youth But Knew	139	(1)
The Passionate Adventure: Doubling and Cross-Class Dressing	140	(4)
TAKING TURNS: MUSIC HALL'S PARODIC ACTS	144	(7)
Community Versus the Boundary: Squibs Wins the Calcutta Sweep	146	(2)
Music-Hall Performance: Role and Star	148	(1)
Shooting Stars and British Cinema Culture	149	(2)
6 THE STORIES BRITISH CINEMA TELLS	151	(27)
'THE STORY'S THE THING'	151	(6)
Eminent British Authors	152	(2)
A Story Told in a Series of Pictures	154	(1)
Real Writers for Real Stories	155	(1)
The Teller not the Tale	156	(1)
TELLING TALES AND THE LITERATE IMAGE	157	(5)
The Traveller's Tale: Call of the Road	157	(2)
Wit and the Image: the Minerva Comedies	159	(1)
A Cinema of Intertitles	160	(2)
STORYTELLING AS CONSTRUCTION	162	(7)
Projecting Life Stories: The Garden of Resurrection	163	(3)
The Picture's Story: Detection and the Image	166	(3)
'TELL ME A STORY': A CHILD IN FILMLAND	169	(2)
A Makeover World: The Man Without Desire	170	(1)
FILMLAND AND MODERNITY: THE WOMAN'S STORY	171	(3)
A Heroine Who Does Big Things': George Pearson's The Little People	172	(2)
BRITISH CINEMA GOES TO THE BALL: PALAIS DE DANSE	174	(4)
IN CONCLUSION: THE CULTURAL POETICS OF BRITISH CINEMA	178	(5)
Notes	183	(17)
Filmography	200	(3)
Sources and Select Bibliography	203	(6)
Index	209