The Big Show looks at the role played by cinema in British cultural life during World War One.
In writing the definitive account of film exhibition and reception in Britain in the years 1914 to 1918, Michael Hammond shows how the British film industry and British audiences responded to the traumatic effects of the Great War.
The author contends that the War’s significant effect was to expedite the cultural acceptance of cinema into the fabric of British social life. As a result, by 1918, cinema had emerged as the predominant leisure form in British social life. Through a consideration of the films, the audience, the industry and the various regulating and censoring bodies, the book explores the impact of the war on the newly established cinema culture. It also studies the contribution of the new medium to the public’s perception of the war.
Innehållsförteckning
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Local Tracks: Exhibition Culture in Southampton
2. The Crisis of Total War and New Audiences
3. Anonymity and Recognition: The Roll of Honour Films
4. Education or Entertainment? Public and Private Interpretations of Battle of the Somme
5. Artful and Instructive: Respectability and The Birth of a Nation
6. Civilization: A Super-film at the Palladium, 1917
7. Chaplin: A Transatlantic Vernacular
8. 1918: Anguished Voices and Comic Slackers
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Filmography
Index
Om författaren
Michael Hammond is a lecturer in Film in the Department of English at the University of Southampton. He has written extensively in the area of reception of early cinema in Britain, including a contribution to Young and Innocent? The Cinema in Britain, 1896-1930, edited by Andrew Higson (UEP, 2002).