The British Film Industry in the 1970s

Transcription

1 The British Film Industry in the 1970s

2 Also by Sian Barber CENSORING THE 1970s: The BBFC and the Decade That Taste Forgot

3 The British Film Industry in the 1970s Capital, Culture and Creativity Sian Barber Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

4 Sian Barber 2013 Foreword James Chapman 2013 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act First published 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number , of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

5 For Paul, for always being there

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7 Contents List of Illustrations Foreword Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations viii ix xi xii Introduction 1 1 Film and Cultural History 4 2 Understanding the 1970s 15 3 Film and Government 23 4 Funding Innovation 38 5 Movers and Shakers 46 6 Institutions and Organisations 59 7 Production, Genre and Popular Taste 68 8 Sunday Bloody Sunday: Authorship, Collaboration and Improvisation 77 9 The Go-Between: The Past, the Present and the 1970s Confessions of a Window Cleaner: Sex, Class and Popular Taste Stardust: Stardom, Performance and Masculinity Scum: Institutional Control and Patriarchy The Tempest: A Brave New World of Creative Endeavour? 160 Conclusion 177 Notes 184 Bibliography 205 Index 218 vii

8 Illustrations Figure 7.1 British films by genre, Tables 3.1 British film production and the NFFC The British box office, Local and national box office 73 viii

9 Foreword The 1970s are British cinema s most overlooked and least understood decade. In contrast to the vibrant and exciting film culture of the 1960s the decade that put British cinema back on the international map in a way that it had not enjoyed since the golden age of Rank, Cineguild, Lean, and Powell and Pressburger the 1970s seemed to mark the moment when British filmmaking ran out of residual cultural and economic energy. The 1970s have either been seen as a period of stagnation and decline, witnessing the fragmentation of British film culture, or been characterised as the decade that taste forgot due to the prevalence of lowbrow populism exemplified by the Confessions films and the seemingly ubiquitous television sitcom adaptations. In recent years, however, this picture has been challenged by the rise of a revisionist scholarship that has looked afresh at the decade and the distinctive cultural forms and practices to which it gave rise. Sian Barber s new study of the British film industry in the 1970s is a welcome addition to this growing body of work. It is also the first major single-authored monograph on the subject, following several edited collections and multiple-author volumes that, however valuable their insights, do not offer the same degree of intellectual rigour or analytical consistency. It will be useful to outline, briefly, the particular merits of Barber s work. First, she provides a comprehensive historical map of the economic and industrial structures of the film industry during this decade: no mean feat considering the chronic instability that beset the industry and the legislative uncertainty of the successive Conservative and Labour governments. This is the kind of nitty-gritty nuts-and-bolts film history that I like, but which is unfashionable for those who worship at the high temple of film theory. Yet, as Barber demonstrates throughout, an understanding of the economic framework is essential to make sense of the kind of films produced in the 1970s. For, as so often in the film and cultural industries, the instability of the production sector created the conditions in which both creativity and commerce could flourish. Barber argues persuasively that innovation in British cinema during this period was not merely a matter of creative auteur directors as varied as Joseph Losey and Ken Russell, but was also apparent in the strategies through which filmmakers found new entertainment forms ix

10 x Foreword and genre variations that would respond to the diverse and changing tastes of British audiences. The nexus of capital, culture and creativity, identified in the book s subtitle, is expertly analysed and documented. But there is much more to this book than a study of the industry. Barber really comes into her own in her close and nuanced readings of a range of British films of the 1970s. These range from traditional genres, such as the costume film (The Go-Between), to the zany world of the British pop musical (Stardust) and from high art (The Tempest) to the lowest of the lowbrow (Confessions of a Window Cleaner). What is refreshing here, however, is that the analysis is free from either the aesthetic snobbery of the traditional realist school of film criticism or the intellectual and ideological prejudices of high theory (and Barber reminds us that the 1970s was the heyday of Screen). The films are analysed as cultural artefacts in their own right, which, regardless of their quality good, bad or indifferent, offer insights into social values and cultural tastes. The recurring preoccupations class, gender, youth are expressed in different ways, often finding expression in the motifs of mobility and the crossing of boundaries that characterise this period in particular. This was not a film culture in decline but rather one in transition. And what emerges is a picture of a more diverse and varied film culture than has hitherto been acknowledged. The British Film Industry in the 1970s exemplifies the best kind of film studies today: solidly based in empirical research yet informed by cultural theory, nuanced rather than dogmatic in its textual analysis, alert to the nature of films as complex cultural and visual artefacts, and understanding the relationships between industrial processes and individual agency that brought them to the screen in the first place. It deserves to be afforded significant intellectual currency in the ongoing debate over the nature of British cinema both as an industrial practice and as an art form. James Chapman James Chapman is Professor of Film at the University of Leicester. His books include Past and Present: National Identity and the British Historical Film (2005) and Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films (2nd edn 2007).

11 Acknowledgements This work would never have evolved without the help and support of a large number of people. I would like to thank Sue Harper for her guidance and help throughout my PhD. Her knowledge of and enthusiasm for British cinema were matched only by her dedicated support. I would also like to thank Justin Smith for his creative ideas and meticulous attention to detail as well as the rest of the 1970s project team at the University of Portsmouth, particularly Sally Shaw and Patti Gaal- Holmes. Many thanks go to James Chapman for his contribution to this work and for providing the foreword. None of the archival research would have been possible without the help of the staff from the BFI Special Collections and Fiona Liddell and Ed Lamberti at the British Board of Film Classification. Thanks also go to Phil Wickham and the staff of the Bill Douglas Centre at the University of Exeter, and to Andrew Spicer for his kindness in letting me use the Michael Klinger material. I would like to thank Michael Winner, David Puttnam, Don Boyd, Ray Connolly and Glenda Jackson, who were all kind enough to share their memories of the 1970s with me. I am particularly grateful to Don Boyd for allowing me to use an image from his own collection for the cover image of this work. xi

12 Abbreviations ABC ACTT AIP BBFC BFI CFC FPA NFFC Associated British Picture Corporation, later EMI Association of Cinema and Television Technicians Association of Independent Producers British Board of Film Classification British Film Institute Cinematograph Films Council Film Production Association, later Film Producers Association National Film Finance Corporation Abbreviation of Archival Papers DB DJ JF JRS LPGB LPRE MKP PR TNA Don Boyd papers pertaining to Scum and The Tempest Derek Jarman papers pertaining to The Tempest James Ferman papers pertaining to film censorship John Schlesinger papers pertaining to Sunday Bloody Sunday Joseph Losey papers pertaining to The Go-Between Joseph Losey papers pertaining to The Romantic Englishwoman Michael Klinger papers pertaining to the Confessions series Peter Rogers papers pertaining to the Carry On series The National Archives Note: 1. When I used the Michael Klinger papers they had yet to be catalogued. They have now been catalogued and a comprehensive catalogue is available at catalogue.htm. 2. The BBFC changed its name 1984 from the British Board of Film Censors to the British Board of Film Classification. xii