Cinema of the United Kingdom

The United Kingdom has been influential in the technological, commercial and artistic development of cinema. Despite a history of successful productions, the industry is characterised by an ongoing debate about its identity (including economic and cultural issues) and the influences of American and European cinema.

Overview

Film production in the UK has experienced a number of booms and recessions. Although many factors can be used to measure the success of the industry, the number of UK films produced per year ([1]) gives an overview of its development:

1913–23: An initial boom as the film industry first developed.
1924–27: Recession caused by US competition and commercial practices.
1928–36: A huge boom after the protective Cinematograph Films Act 1927, reaching an all-time production high of 192 films in 1936.
1937–44: Over-expansion causes a major crash, followed by period of low production during World War II.
1945–76: Post-war recovery followed by relative stability, with growing American investment.
1977–92: Another recession, reaching an all-time low of 24 films in 1981.
1992 onwards: Recovery of production after renewed private and public investment, such as the National Lottery.

However, the history of British cinema is complex, with various cultural movements developing independently. Some of the most successful films were made during 'recessions', such as Chariots of Fire (1981).

Early UK cinema

Modern cinema is generally regarded as descending from the work of the French Lumière brothers in 1892, and their show first came to London in 1896. However, the first moving pictures developed on celluloid film were made in Hyde Park in 1889 by William Friese Greene, a British inventor, who patented the process in 1890. The film is the first known instance of a projected moving image.

The first people to build and run a working 35 mm camera in Britain were Robert W. Paul and Birt Acres. They made the first British film Incident at Clovelly Cottage in February 1895, shortly before falling out over the camera's patent. Soon several British film companies had opened to meet the demand for new films, such as Mitchell and Kenyon in Blackburn. From 1898 American producer Charles Urban expanded the London-based Warwick Trading Company to produce British films, mostly documentary and news. He later formed his own Charles Urban Trading Company, which also produced early colour films.

The 1930s boom

By the mid-twenties the UK film industry losing out to heavy competition from Hollywood films, helped its much larger home market. In 1914 25% of films shown in the UK were British - by 1926 this had fallen to 5%. The Cinematograph Films Act 1927 was passed in order to boost local production, requiring that UK cinemas show a certain percentage of British films. The act was technically a success, with audiences for British films becoming larger than the quota required. But it had the effect of creating a market for 'quota quickies': poor quality, low cost films, made in order to satisfy the quota. Some critics have blamed the quickies for holding back the development of the industry. Many British film-makers learnt their craft making quota quickies, including Michael Powell and Alfred Hitchcock.

Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929) is regarded as the first British sound production. In the era of silent films audiences were receptive to movies from all nations. However, with the advent of sound films, many foreign actors or those with thick regional accents soon found themselves in less demand, and more 'formal' English (received pronunciation) became the norm. Sound also increased the influence of already popular American films.

Starting with John Grierson's Drifters, the 1930s saw the emergence of a new school of realist documentary films: The Documentary Film Movement. Other keys figures in this movement are Humphrey Jennings and Alberto Cavalcanti.

World War II

After the boom years of the late 1920s and early 1930s, rising expenditure and over-optimistic expansion into the American market caused the production bubble to burst in 1937. Of the 640 British production companies registered between 1925 and 1936, 20 were still going in 1937. Moreover, the 1927 Films Act was up for renewel. The replacement Cinematograph Films Act 1938 provided incentives for UK companies to make fewer films of higher quality and, influenced by world politics, encouraged American investment and imports.

British cinema during the World War II mainly served as a pro-Allied propaganda. But the constraints imposed by the war seemed to give new energy to the UK film industry. Founded in 1937 by J. Arthur Rank, the Rank Organisation soon became the major force behind British film-making. It acquired a number of British studios, and bank-rolled some of the great British film-makers which were emerging in this period, such as Powell and Pressburger and David Lean.

Post-war cinema

While British actors and directors had found great success in Hollywood, American financial investment in British cinema dominated production and distribution. In the 1960s British studios began to claw back some success by making striking genre films such as Hammer Horror, James Bond and Carry On comedies. Blacklisted in America Joseph Losey had a significant influence on UK Cinema in the 60s as did the voluntary emigres Stanley Kubrick and Richard Lester. Lester had a major hit with the Beatles film A Hard Days Night after which it became standard for each new pop group to have a veritee style feature film made about them.

The British New Wave

The British New Wave, or Free Cinema, describes a group of films made 1959 and 1963 which portray a more gritty realism. They were influenced by the Angry Young Men of the mid-50s along with the documentary films of everyday life commissioned by the Post Office during and after the Second World War and are often associated with kitchen sink drama. The group was established around the film magazine Sequence that was founded by Tony Richardson, Karel Riesz and Lindsay Anderson who together with Harry Saltzman established the company Woodfall films which produced their early films. These included film versions of Richardson's own stage productions of Look Back in Anger and The Entertainer. After Richardson's film of Tom Jones became a big hit the group broke up to pursue different interests. The Free Cinema films also made stars out of there leading actors Albert Finney, Alan Bates, Richard Burton, Rita Tushingham, Richard Harris and Tom Courtenay.

The 1980s

The 1980s began with the worst recession the British film industry had ever seen. In 1980 only 31 UK films were made, down 50% on the previous year, and the lowest output since 1914. Production was down again the following year, to 24 films. However, the 1980s soon saw a renewed optimism, led by companies such as Goldcrest (and producer David Puttnam), Channel 4, Handmade Films and Merchant Ivory Productions. Under producer Puttnam a generation of British directors emerged making popular films with international distribution, including: Bill Forsyth (Local Hero, 1983), Hugh Hudson (Chariots of Fire, 1981), Roland Joffe (The Killing Fields, 1984), Alan Parker and Ridley Scott. Handmade Films, part owned by George Harrison, had produced a series of modest budget comedies and gritty dramas such as The Long Good Friday (1980) that had proven popular internationally.

When the Putnam-produced Chariots of Fire (1981) won 4 Academy Awards in 1982, including best picture, its writer Colin Welland declared "the British are coming!" (quoting Paul Revere). When in 1983 Gandhi (also produced by Goldcrest) picked up best picture it looked as if he was right. It prompted a cycle of bigger budget period films, such as the Merchant Ivory adaptations of the works of E. M. Forster. However, further attempts to make 'big' productions for the US market ended in failure, with Goldcrest losing independence after a trio of commercial flops. By this stage the rest of the new talent had moved on to Hollywood.

With the continued support of Channel 4 a number of new talents were developed in Stephen Frears, Mike Newell and Neil Jordan while John Boorman who had been working in the US was encouraged back to Britain to make Hope and Glory (1987). Following the final winding up of the Rank Organisation, a series of company consolidations in UK cinema distribution meant that it became ever harder for British productions. Another blow was the elimination of the Eady tax concession by the Conservative Government in 1984. The concession had made it possible for a foreign film company to write off a large amount of its production costs by filming in the UK — this was what attracted a succession of blockbuster productions to UK studios in the 1970s. With Eady gone many studios closed or focused on television work.

Art Cinema

The release of Derek Jarman's Jubilee (1978) marked the beginning of a successful period of UK art cinema, continuing in the 1980s with film-makers like Peter Greenaway and Sally Potter. Unlike the previous generation of British film makers who had broken into directing and production after careers in the theatre or on television the Art Cinema Directors were mostly the products of Art Schools. Many of these film-makers were championed in their early career by the London Film Makers Cooperative and their work was the subject of detailed theoretical analysis in the journal Screen Education. Peter Greenaway was an early pioneer of the use of computer generated imagery blended with filmed footage and was also one of the first directors to film entirely on high definition video for a cinema release.

With the launch of Channel 4 and its Film on Four commissioning strand Art Cinema was promoted to a wider audience. However the Channel had a sharp change in its commissioning policy in the early nineties and the likes of Jarman and Greenaway were forced to seek European co-production financing. Ken Russell and Nicolas Roeg were two other directors whose highly personal visual styles and narrative themes might class them as 'Art Cinema' directors who also struggled during the nineties to finance their productions.

Another account for the decline of 'Art Cinema' is that with the spread of music video there is steady demand for emerging talent without the requirements of seeking feature film funding. Julien Temple and John Maybury are two examples of this. Also the widespread acceptance of video art as a form has made it possible for British artists such as Sam Taylor-Wood and Isaac Julian to make film works outside of the demands of cinema exhibition.

Film technology

In the 1970s and 1980s British studios established a reputation for great special effects in films such as Superman, Alien, Star Wars and Batman. Some of this reputation was founded on the core of talent brought together for the filming of 2001: A Space Odyssey who subsequently worked together on series and feature films for Gerry Anderson. Thanks to the Bristol-based Aardman Animation the UK is still recognised as a world leader in the use of stopmotion animation.

British special effects technicians and production designers are known for creating visual effects at a far lower cost than their counterparts in the US, as seen in Time Bandits (1981) and Brazil (1985). This reputation has continued through the 1990s and into the 21st century with films such as the James Bond series, Gladiator and Harry Potter.

Throughout to the 1990s to the present day, there has been a progressive movement from traditional film opticals to an integrated digital film environment, with special effects, cutting, colour grading, and other post-production tasks all sharing the same all-digital infrastructure. The availability of high-speed Internet Protocol networks has made the British film industry capable of working closely with U.S studios as part of globally distributed productions. As of 2005, this trend is expected to continue with moves towards (currently experimental) digital distribution and projection as mainstream technologies.

The UK film This is Not a Love Song (2003) was the first to be streamed live on the Internet at the same time as its cinema premiere.

Black and Asian film

Until the 1980s Black British and Asian British culture was significantly under-represented in mainstream British cinema, as they were in many areas of British life. Pioneers such as Horace Ové has been working in 1970s (Pressure, 1975), but the 1980s saw a wave of new talent, with films like Burning an Illusion (1981), Majdhar (1985) and Ping Pong (1986). Many of these films were assisted by the newly formed Channel 4, which had an official remit to provide for "minority audiences." Commercial success was first achieved with My Beautiful Laundrette (1985). Dealing with racial and gay issues, it started the career of its writer Hanif Kureishi.

1980s mainstream British cinema also reflected a change in attitudes, with Heat and Dust (1982), Gandhi (1982) and Cry Freedom (1987), although it rarely directly addressed the experiences of Black or Asian British people. However, the mainstream continued to be criticised, as it does today, for lack of minority representation. The hit film Notting Hill (1999) was noted for not featuring any significant black characters in its ensemble cast, despite the eponymous area of London being home to many British Afro-Caribbeans.

The turn of the century saw a more commercial Asian British cinema develop, starting with East is East (1999) and continuing with Bend It Like Beckham (2002). Some argue it has brought more flexible attitudes towards casting Black and Asian British actors, with Robbie Gee and Naomi Harris take leading roles in Underworld and 28 Days Later respectively.

References

The British Cinema Book (2nd edition), Robert Murphy (ed.), BFI Publishing, 2001.

External links

The British Film Institute, including some data on UK films
screenonline, a large collection of British film articles and clips.
The UK Film Council
UK film funding
Search British titles at the Internet Movie Database
Black Filmmaker Magazine
BBC News In Depth: British Film Industry