Reel Britannia : Melting Pot Cinema Part V
During the Winter of 1951, Britain would undergo significant political and constitutional changes. By the time October rolled around, the Labour government was seemingly diluted in it's power after hard years of hustling to establish its post-war reforms and was now replaced by the Conservatives who would continue in office throughout the decade, their majority rising with each successive General Election.
In February 1952, King George VI died and Britain would now have a new, young female monarch, crowned with all possible pomp the following year. Journalists of the day would now coin this the 'New Elizabethan Age' and anticipated the solid achievements in trade, industry and the arts to rival those in the sixteenth century. Stability and prosperity in many areas were now achieved, the last remnant of wartime rationing vanished in July 1954, the country grew towards full employment, and the newly affluent public found an increasing range of items to spend their wage packets on. There were television sets, washing machines, new and seemingly exciting American imports in the likes of the nylon shirt and do-it-yourself kits. There was also the phenomenon of hire-purchase to facilitate the consumer's life.
Another place people would spend their hard earned moolah was at their local Odeon or ABC cinema, where double bills of predominantly family entertainment were shown, sprinkled with the occasional X-certified pictures. But statistics show that fewer and fewer folk were choosing cinema as their choice for entertainment. Attendance figures for 1950 were 1,396 million - already a decline from the post-war peak, By 1959, this figure would deplete to a mere 600 million. As the years passed, there were also fewer cinemas available to visit. By 1959, over a thousand of the 4.500 cinemas proudly standing at the start of the decade had made way for supermarkets, office blocks, garages and new roads.
It is customary to point an accusing finger at television, which was undoubtedly culpable for the cause of this slump. The BBC's broadcast of the Coronation ceremony in June 1953 ( watched by an estimated 20,400,000 people - roughly half of the contemporaneous population) had given the new medium a colossal boost. In 1955, commercial television debuted and made it's appeal to a working class audience who likely were deterred by the establishment image of the BBC. And television not only acquired audiences from the cinema; it also acquired technicians, performers and whole studios ( both Gainsborough's Shepherd's Bush studios and Ealing were converted for television use by the BBC).
Then again, there were other reasons for the drift of regular customers away from the cinemas. Britain's relative prosperity did not remove the necessity for economy in the home, namely in a home financed through hire-purchase schemes. More and more people would flock to new suburban neighborhoods and estates that were situated away from circuit cinemas. The rigid disposition of the film industry and the booking policy of the cinemas also made the choice of available films disconcertingly limited.
More often than not, British cinema in the 1950s, gave the impression of an industry that was left all alone to it's own device, complacent and having no qualms in regards to re-working tried and true formulas and genres. In fact, the industry was given a fair amount of consideration from the government who were only too obliging to keep this medium of entertainment alive and well. The National Film Finance Corporation, began it's operations 1949 and also served as a support network for various film-making groups, one of which was Alexander Korda's London Films. Also there was British Film Production Film and they were solely financed by means of a levy on the sale of theater tickets. This levy was a product of the Eady Plan, also introduced in the year 1949, and this was a momentary measure to generate finance, but was operated by the film industry for the following four decades.
The Production Fund specifically assisted the work of the Children's Film Foundation ( aimed at Saturday-matinee crowds) and the usually tepid feature films of Group Three, the production company that was headed by John Grierson, Michael Balcon and producer John Baxter.
The industry was embraced and financially backed, but there was little, if any incentive to experiment; in the battle to combat floundering audiences and the expansion of television, only innocuous, reliable, and formulaic material found favor. Consequently, World War II would make its way back to screen Kenneth More, Jack Hawkins, John Mills, and Trevor Howard in what seemed to be half the decade spent parading with binoculars and gold braid on ships' bridges, contemplating the women they left behind as the faced up to the next clash with 'Jerry'.
There was The Cruel Sea (1953) and here we find Jack Hawkins braving the elements in an Atlantic corvette. There was The Dam Busters (1955), with the bombs that went bouncy-bouncy of Barnes Wallis obliterating the Ruhr circa 1943; then there was Reach for the Sky (1956) and here would be the amazing amputee ace fighter pilot Douglas Bader. portrayed by Kenneth More. Other films saluted the courage of The French Resistance (Carve Her Name With Pride, 1958) and the inmates of prisoner-of-war camps ( The Colditz Story, 1955).
The other significant genre of the decade was comedy. Comedy would offer a disparate kind of reassurance to the war film's memories of Britain's heroic past. In a country progressively becoming more uniform in demeanor and taste, British comedy looked fondly on all things traditional and quaintly eccentric - the old railways ( The Titfield Thunderbolt, 1953) auld Scottish boats ( The Maggie, 1954) dilapidated old flea pit cinemas ( The Smallest Show on Earth, 1957) old landladies and lodging houses ( The Lady Killers, 1955) One of this period's truest successes came with Genevieve in 1953 which centered on the rivalry between Kenneth More ( less is usually more, but there was always more of the ubiquitous More) and John Gregson in the annual veteran motor race from London all the way to Brighton. The director Henry Cornelius, came by way of Ealing Studios, the writer William Rose, jobbed at the studio afterwards. To say Ealing's influence was all pervasive would be quite an understatement, it was as if they were the very pioneers of the genre. But when all was said and done, even the mighty Ealing would eventually run out of steam during the decade and closed up shop for good in 1959. Although in films such as Alexander Mackendrick's The Man in the White Suit (1951) and The Ladykillers. Michael Balcon's bunch would prove they could produce the most peppered and original comedy.
Writer-producer-director team Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat also turned out a plethora of funnyfilms that veered from convention and formula. The Belles of St Trinian's (1954) ushered in a series of farces, all based on Ronald Searle's animations of schoolgirl nightmares. Subsequent releases would offer slight whimsy ( Geordie, 1955) , higher brow comedy would be the call of the day with 1955's The Constant Husband and high jinks in the realm of politics with 1959's Left, Right and Centre.
Other film-makers gratefully fell back on the current successes of the West End stage and the past library of English literature for source material. Laurence Olivier would follow his Shakespeare films of the Forties with boldly theatrical but satiating Richard III (1956). On a less grandiose level, Anthony Asquith would consolidate his reputation as a careful translator of stage plays. Oscar Wilde's most earnest The Importance of Being Earnest (1952) offered sublime comic performances and the visual candy of Technicolor display of Victorian bric-a-brac, whilst the film adaptation of Terrence Rattigan's play, 1951's The Browning Version (1951) and Carrington VC (1954) - adapted from a courtroom drama, courtesy of Dorothy and Campbell Christie - examined the English characteristics of moral and emotional reticence.
Some stable commodities of British cinema were considerably less respectable , such as the achingly routine crime-dramas that were produced by lesser known studios like Merton Park and intended purely to propel the main attraction of the double bill. The clues would be in the titles, which piqued a collective interest in their seduction of the exotic and the bizarre. The Strange Case of Blondie (1954 for example , and Night Plane to Amsterdam (1955) - but they usually contained little to write home about, other than Scotland Yard sleuths in gaberdines and Wolsely motors in hot pursuit of jewel thieves, keeping the speedometer at 30 miles per hour, mind. The films would at last offer a resting place for imported American male leads, bereft of charisma, as well as a training opportunity for budding directors. Both of the aforementioned releases were helmed by Ken Hughes who finally matriculated to more ambitious and serious edged projects in the Sixties.
Yet even those directors that were firmly rooted in the industry at the start of the Fifties would have mixed fortunes. Attempts by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger to repeat the mind-blowing success of 1948's The Red Shoes, would result in subsequent films that were top-heavy with classical music, ballet and exasperatingly lavish decor. Without a simple plot to attach itself to, audiences would find themselves lost and gasping for air in the shambolic artistic clutter of The Tales of Hoffman (1951) adapted from the Offenbach operetta and Oh Rosalinda! (1955) an interpretation of Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus. The Powell and Pressburger duet returned to conventions in The Battle fo the River Plate (1956) where they reinvigorated the British war film with their signature eye for color and optical design.
David Lean put his craftsman skills to proper use on some bewildering varied subjects. The Sound Barrier (1952) chronicled a scientist's dogged determination to perfect the jet plane; in Hobson's Choice (1954), he abandoned RAF types for local Lancashire folk in a standout version of Harold Brighouses' venerable comedy, in which Charles Laughton delivered one of his most impeccable performances. Then, after Summer Madness (1955), a diluted story of an American spinster's Venetian love affair, Lean would ascend into the realm of the blockbuster. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) would be yet another war film but one of high tension and some moral ambiguity; Alec Guinness finally escaped his Ealing comedy niche with his inspired performance as the captured British officer who became gradually obsessed with the bridge he is ordered to build for the Japanese.
Despite the decade's debilitating passion for tradition of past and habits, some new blood was pumped into cinema's mainstream veins. In the case of Hammer films, that blood was clearly visible upon the screen, often at times gleaming and dripping in full unadulterated color. The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), the first of the studio's revivals of the Universal horror entries, appalled critics, but were much to the delight of the audience, for Hammer films not only contained violence, perpetrated by such icy menfolk as Christopher Lee (Count Dracula) and Peter Cushing (Dr Frankenstein), they would also offer a smidgen of sex, with their succession of sweet vulnerable maidens struggling to avoid the blandishments of the marauding monsters.
In 1954, husband and wife team John Halas and Joy Batchelor would create a virtual masterpiece in the field of animation. They would produce and direct the first full length animated film in Britain, and it would additionally be the first animated feature that was based on an adult theme - Animal Farm. which was straight from the pages of George Orwell's satirical novel.
There were also new dawns rising in the medium of comedy. The Boulting brothers previously associated in the public eye with worthy entertainments on serious subjects, embarked on a series of sardonic comedies, starring Ian Carmichael, that explored and now and again expose British Institutions. Privates' Progress (1956) examined the army, Brothers In Law (1957) would take a look at the legal profession and Lucky Jim in 1957, a watered down version of the Kingsley Amis novel - would take the bumbling Carmichael character all the way to university, while I'm All Right Jack (1959) clearly the most pungent of them all, dealt with factory life and the wonderful world of trade unions. Comparatively with the satirical product of the Sixties, the Boultings' approach played on quite conventional, but the broadness of their comedy brand, their keen and acute observations and their ability to lampoon every angle of an issue would give their series substantial popular appeal.
The decade would also be treated to the very first film vehicles of Norman Wisdom, (1915-2010) who garnered his fair share of notoriety from his television days, and would now provide a thread of comedies that were each a balancing act of slapstick and sentimentality. The Carry on series, officially commenced with 1958's Carry on Sargent, which also examined British institutions - the hospitals, the police, schools - and would be in defiance, from a low-brow perspective. And Doctor in the House (1954) introduced audiences to a clutch of ebullient medical students, donning brightly checked shirts and V-neck pullovers, which were then considered the official uniform of youth. Dirk Bogarde, the best and brightest of Rank's contract artists, found a new audience when he stepped into the role of Simon Sparrow.
But soon film producers would realize that there were also other kinds of youth in Britain - the people who frequented the new rage of popular espresso coffee bars and jazz venues, who either formed skiffle groups or stormed the cinemas that had ample bottle to exhibit the rebel-rousing American film Rock Around the Clock (1956) with Bill Haley and his Comets. In the latter half of the 1950s, the smooth pattern of British life was at last receiving a few jolts to the system. The youngins now had enough buying power to demand their own breed of entertainment. Film and television, and even record producers would begin to fall over themselves, in attempts to provide it and meet the demands of these persniketty hipsters. Television's 6.5 Special was harried to the screen in 1958 with its modern delights in the likes of Lonnie Donnegan and Don Lang and his Frantic Five. The pop-star Tommy Steel found himself the subject of a screen biography aptly called The Tommy Steel Story (1957) at the time he wasn't even twenty-one, and then bubblegum rock-n-roller Cliff Richard would embark on his long and illustrious career starring in 1959's Serious Charge.
In other areas, Britain was being stirred up for the better, In 1956 occurred the political debacle of the Suez crisis. There was also the first performance at London's Royal Court theatre of John Osbourne's Look Back in Anger, which garnered instant notice through the passionate diatribes of its main character Jimmy Porter. Journos would dub Osbourne and other suddenly popular authors ' Angry Young Men'
But whatever label one cared to affiliate it with, there was irrefutably a new critical spirit abroad, an impetus to veer far away from the madding crowd of tradition, thus slowly shape-shifting itself unto feature films. A new school of performers too, would come running, not walking to these films, replete with their respective regional accents, which would remain untouched by the classical diction of the Rank Charm School of the Old Vic Theatre. Alas, the reawakening of the British Cinema would now just begin...
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