United Kingdom

United Kingdom

By Kallan Benjamin

The United Kingdom was involved in film production from the earliest days of cinema technology, though it reached what some consider to be its artistic peak in the 1940s with directors like David Lean and filmmaking team Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, among others. The materials in this collection cover this history and more, stretching from 1889 to 1961. Throughout the UK film industry’s development, it faced tough competition from other markets, particularly the US. It sought to address this competition in various ways, including a quota for local production that led to a boom in low-quality films in the mid-30s. During World War II and after, the industry revived itself with a surge in movie-going and those critically-acclaimed 1940s films and filmmakers. The publications in this collection speak to these national and international shifts, tensions, and concerns. Trade papers like The Bioscope and The Film Renter and Moving Picture News, fan magazines like Pictures and the Picturegoer, and works of light criticism like The Filmgoer’s Annual balance national interests with the need to appeal to readers and viewers via popular American films and stars. Some other publications make their attention to specifically British concerns more explicit; The Cine-Technician, published in London by the Association of Cine-Technicians, asks British studios directly to hire British technicians in place of “a technician from abroad.” In a different example of transnational exchange, Home Movies & Home Talkies, a magazine for amateur filmmakers, had British as well as American and Canadian readers. The UK also has an important documentary tradition, thanks in part to the work of John Grierson and others in his British Documentary Film Movement, and this tradition is covered in the 1940s issues of Documentary News Letter.