Moody, Paul
(2013)
The lion had wings: the invention of British Cinema, 1895-1939.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
Studies of the relationship between British cinema and national identity have tended
to focus on the subjects and themes of a select number of films, part of a canon
generally agreed to represent the qualities of the British ‘character’. Yet several
authors have identified limitations to this approach, and presented a range of
theoretical and empirical obstacles to the concept of ‘British cinema’. This problem of
provenance has been the mainstay of critical debate about the British film industry
since its inception, but in prioritising textual analysis, this interpretation often ignores
the additional factors involved in the development of notions of ‘Britishness’.
In contrast, this thesis focuses on how the concept of what became known as ‘British
cinema’, was created during the early twentieth century, addressing the contextual
elements of the cinema experience, and arguing that they were extremely important
in determining what ‘British cinema’ would come to represent. Using a range of
private papers, government records and marketing materials, I chart the
development of the link between ‘British’ cinema and national identity, and the
various ways that this concept was presented to the public both in Britain and across
the globe. Rather than conceive of this as a definitive form ab initio, I argue that it
was a complex process of invention, a myth augmented over time and which was so
potent it could accommodate a divergent range of films and filmmakers. Thus, this
thesis is not a critique of what British cinema represented, but how it came to
represent it.
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