British Cinema and World War II
- Our group chose to research a collection of essays on the topic of British cinema in World War II, ‘Britain and the Cinema in the Second World War’ by Philip M. Taylor. It is a secondary source, with the edition published in 1988. It gives background information on World War II as a whole, as well as showing a deep understanding of 1940’s British society, British film industry, national identity and the star system that had not come into play as it had in Hollywood until this decade.
- We believe this collection of essays was created to record and shed light on the history of the ‘golden age’ of British Cinema. It examined the role of cinema in this society and the impact it had on the people during a certainly tumultuous time. Furthermore, it explains why the war played such a strong part in this decade of cinema, and it goes deeper into how British cinema became an instrument of propaganda as well as a morale booster in such dangerous times and a form of uplifting entertainment. Film students like ourselves can use this source to give us insight to this period of history that we are currently studying.
- This collection tells us about how the war effected cinema in Great Britain by its topics of national identity in wartime films and how it reminds us of the ‘wartime marriage’ between documentary and fiction film. The documentary film emphasises its realistic and emotional techniques of film making which was especially important in war time as it was an opportunity for companies to use documentary film as a form of propaganda presentation. An example of this is the Ministry of Information taking over the GPO film unit in 1940 and turning documentary into an official for film propaganda. This was renamed the ‘Crown Film Unit’. Furthermore, this collection helps us to understand the effect of war as it helped Britain create more of a fleshed out, patriotic identity through (some) means of film.
- From this collection of essays we arguably miss out on the social context which informed wartime cinemas’ popularity and thus the reason why it now stands as an important area to reflect on for film historians. Cinema was arguably the only form of propaganda media (except radio) that was able to reach the masses. This increased cinema’s popularity as it came during hardship, offering a form of escapism as well as patriotism. Furthermore, going to the cinema was ‘safe’ for the public, adding to the popularity, for example, during the Blitz. Thus it can be said that in order to interpret this item better it would be useful to be aware of the social context in World War II.
This is impressive work that analyses Phillip M. Taylor’s book Britain and the Cinema in the Second World War. Firstly, it is well-written, clearly structured and makes impressive use of images and gifs to underscore its aims and provide additional information. You have carried out some very solid background research to support your argument and thus the post is well contextualised. A little more on the book itself would perhaps help you to delve deeper still. Who published it? What might this tell us about its intended audience? It may also be helpful to list a couple of chapter titles to illustrate your aims (even taking a photo or screen grab of the table of contents would suffice). This would better help to anchor your claim that the book does not succeed in providing information on social context. Good work.