PROPAGANDA, POLITICS AND FILM,

Transcription

1 PROPAGANDA, POLITICS AND FILM,

2 PROPAGANDA, POLITICS AND FILM, Edited by Nicholas Pronay and D.W. Spring

3 Nicholas Pronay and D.W. Spring 1982 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1 st edition 1982 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted. in any form or by any means. without permission First published 1982 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS L TD London and Basingstoke Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI /

4 Contents Notes on the Contributors Introduction Nicholas Pronay vii 1 PART I: THE PROJECTION OF BRITAIN 1 2 British official attitudes towards propaganda abroad, PhiUp M. Taylor 'Showing the world what it owed to Britain': foreign policy and 'cultural propaganda', D. W. Ellwood PART 11: FILM PROPAGANDA IN BRITAIN AND FRANCE BETWEEN THE WORLD WARS The people and the pictures. The British working dass and film in the 1930s PeterStead The political censorship of films in Britain between the wars Nicholas Pronay Baldwin and film J. A. Ramsden The workers' film movement in Britain, BeTt Hogenkamp 144

5 VI Contents 7 Political polarisation and French cinema, Elizabeth Grottle Strebel 157 PART III: FILM PROPAGANDA IN BRITAIN IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR The news media at war Nicholas Pronay The Crown Film Unit, Ian Dalrymple The non-theatrical distribution of films by the Ministry of Information Helen Forman Films and the Horne Front - the evaluation of their effectiveness by 'Mass-Observation' Tom Harnsson 234 PART IV: THE PROJECTION OF THE SOVIET UNION Index Soviet documentary film, Sergei Drobashenko Soviet newsreel and the Great Patriotic War D. W. Spring

6 Notes on the Contributors Nicholas Pronay is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Leeds. His publications include (with Frances Thorpe) British Official Films in the Second World War. A Descriptive Gatalogue (Clio Press, 1980) and articles and a BBC Further Education television series on various aspects of the political impact of the cinema in the 1930s and 1940s and on the problems of teaching and research in this area. He is currently Chairman of the InterUniversity History Film Consortium and Director of Television and Film for the Historical Association. Philip M. Taylor is Lecturer in International History at the University of Leeds. He is the author of The Projection of Britain: British Overseas Publicity and Propaganda (Cambridge University Press, 1981), of several articles on British propaganda and (with M_ L Sanders) of British propaganda in the First World War (Macmillan, 1982). D. W. Ellwood is Lecturer in Contemporary British and International History at the University of Bologna. His publications include Europe and A merica in Gultural Dtplomacy (1973) and L 'alleato nemico: la politica dell'occupazione anglo-americana dell'italia, ( Milan, 1977)_ Peter Stead is Lecturer in History at the University College of Swansea and has been Visiting Lecturer at Wellesley College, Mass. His publications include a history of Goleg Harlech (University of Wales Press, 1978) and 'Hollywood's message to the world: the British response to the 1930s' in the Historical journalfor Film, Radio and Television (1981). He is currently Executive Secretary of the InterUniversity History Film Consortium for whom he made The Great Depression, Historical Studies in Film, No. 5. vii

7 viii Notes on the Contributors J. A. Ramsden is Lecturer in the Department of History at Queen Mary College, University of London. His publications include The Age oj BaLJour and Baldwin (Longman, 1978) and The Making ojconservative Party Policy (Longman, 1980) and he has produced the film, Stanley Baldwin, in the Archive Series of the InterUniversity History Film Consortium. Bert Hogenkamp studied at the University of Amsterdam and is a freelance journalist and historian. He has published several articles on film and the labour movement in Sight and Sound and the Dutch film journal, Skrien. Elizabeth Grottle Strebel is a Lecturer in the Cinema Department of the State University of New York. Her publications include French Social Cinerna oj the Nineteen Thirtz'es (New York: Arno Press, 1980) and several articles on French film and politics in the historical and film journals, including the Journal oj Conternporary Hz'story, lan Dalrymple was head of the Crown Film Unit, and was responsible for the inception of many wartime propaganda classics such as Fires Were Started, Western Approaches, London Can Take It etc. His post-war films include The Royal Heritage, A Hz'll in Korea and the series, The Changzng Face oj Europe, He was Chairman ofthe British Film Academy, Helen Forman (nee de Mouilpied) worked in the noh-theatrical distribution organisation of the Documentary Movement at the Imperial Institute before the Second World War. She transferred to the Ministry of Information where she became deputy director of the non-theatrical distribution seetion of the Films Division and later Chief Film Production Officer. After the war she was active as a governor of the British Film Institute. Tom Harrisson (d. 1975), anthropologist and co-founder of Mass-Observation. He served in the Ministry of Information, and as a parachute officer behind thejapanese lines in Borneo and Sarawak. Visiting professor at several universities, his publications include Savage Civz'lisatz'on (1937), Brz'taz'n by Mass-Observatz'on (1939), Horne Propaganda (1941) and 22 other books. He produced with Hugh Gibbs the award winning film series The Borneo Story,

8 Notes on the Contributors IX Sergei Drobashenko is Deputy Direetor of the Film Art Institute of the State Film Archive of the USSR. He has written extensively about Soviet film, in partieular doeumentary film, including an introduction to his edition of Dziga Vertov, Stat'z: dnevnz'ki, zamysly (Articles, diaries, thoughts), (Moseow, 1966), Fenomen dostovernostz. Ocherki teor# dokumental' nogo fz'l'ma (The phenomenon of truth. Studies in the theory of doeumentary film), (Moseow, 1972) and Istorz'ya sovetskogo dokumental'nogo fz'l'ma (The History of Soviet doeumentary film), (Moseow, 1980). D. W. Spring is Senior Leeturer in Russian and East European History at the University of Nottingham. He has been Exeeutive Seeretary of the InterUniversity History Film Consortium for whom he produeed The Wz'nter War and its European Context, Historical Studies in Film, No. 4. He has published articles on various aspeets of Russian foreign poliey before 1917, and with his wife on the Finnish Communist Party, and is eurrently eompleting a book on Russian foreign poliey,