A seminal decade in British Cinema.

British Cinema of the 1950s: The Decline of Deference. Sue Harper and Vincent Porter. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]65.00. 409 + ix. ISBN 0-19-815934-X.

Professors Harper and Porter give a detailed analysis of a seminal decade in our national cinema heritage. Their in-depth research will enhance the knowledge of any reader of this book. They include valuable insights into the film industry of that era, from the reality behind production financing to contemporary audience reactions. Chapter One explores the politics governing film finance, such as entertainment rates and early distributor power play, and explains the role of important bodies influencing the shape and style of British Cinema for the ensuing decades. These 'movers and shakers' included the National Film Finance Corporation and the British Film Producers' Association. The authors document the restructuring of the early British film industry through quota stipulations and loans which enabled filmmakers to compete with America.

The following six chapters study the dealings of the major commercial film production companies of the era such as Rank, Ealing Studios, British Lion and Hammer Films, with analysis of their rise and/or fall over the course of the decade. This series of critiques begins with an exploration of 'saviour of the British Film Industry' J. Arthur Rank and his financial troubles and how his reliance on Rank Managing Director John Davis' astute financial acumen led to a golden partnership. Rank provided the vision whilst Davis acquired cinemas worldwide and made the distribution arrangements. The authors then summarize the Rank filmography under genre headings such as 'The "Colonial War" Films', 'The Comedies' and 'The Contemporary Dramas'. They conclude the Rank chapter with a summary of the company's falling film profits at the tail end of the decade, surmising that 'the backbone of the British film industry had crumbled'.

The chapter on Ealing Studios attempts to answer its introductory question 'Why did most of Ealing's 1950s films fail at the box office?' and documents its failures and shortfalls over the decade, with reference to the Studio films' quintessential Englishness. They give a plausible reading of social comment in Ealing Studio films such as Mandy (1952) and The Man in the White Suit (1951), and propose the intrigues and convoluted plots of, for example, The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955) as a device to counteract the popular notion that 'unless an actor is in some kind of a clinch with a female, it is all rather unexciting and dull'.

The following four chapters similarly explore the twisting fates of the Associated British Picture Corporation, British Lion, American-British Productions and Hammer Films through the 1950s, each finishing with a neat summary. British Lion is accredited with demonstrating that 'deference to the traditional social certainties could no longer command any loyalty in the market by the end of the decade'; British-American Productions with showcasing the contrasts in British versus American character traits and attitudes to gender; and Hammer with exposing the tension between 'the audience's imagination and its rational expectations'--a dichotomy the authors usefully explore as a key central issue in the society of the day.

The authors look at the largely limited options for independent production companies and, focusing on the more successful ones, contrast their production and distribution methods with those of the commercial companies. They then discuss visual style over the decade in greater detail, providing necessary explanations of earlier allusions to 'film style', whilst the penultimate chapter explores the effects of censorship on the creative output of the 1950s. In their final chapter the authors give a very generalised analysis of audience response, presenting their arguments in terms of mass-audiences rather than the individual viewer, with for example one section entitled 'working-class taste'. They discuss the crisis arising from television, cinema closures and industry bosses' subsequent manufacture of stables of 'stars' to entice audiences back. This was a tool to manipulate the public's desire for wish fulfilment through the vicarious appeal of the specifically constructed, custom-built, star.

The authors conclude that the 1950s cinema was a reflection of the battle between capitalist and creative forces, predictably deciding that the latter are quashed by the former. However the reader is able to draw his own conclusions given that the decade gave us such notable productions as The Beggar's Opera (1953), Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), An Inspector Calls (1954) and Look Back in Anger (1959), as well as less intellectual offerings such as the sentimental It's A Wonderful World (1956), and the vulgar yet humorous Carry On films. Neither can one forget that the 1950s brought us several wonderful Ealing Comedies. As Professors Harper and Porter include these, as well as more commercially orientated productions, it is hard to agree with their theory that the luminosity of creative and independent film production was extinguished by the decade.