Before exploring relationship between cinema and society in the War-time period important to get sense of the economic, aesthetic and cultural context of the pre-War period. The period was notable for a number of features:
(i) The emergence of cinema as a form of mass entertainment. Prevalence of cinemas and cinema-going in the period, and the reactions to this from Government and authority. By 1939 "the cinema was easily the most important form of mass entertainment with 20m tickets being sold and 3 new cinemas being opened each weak, admission cost only a few pence, and provided probably the cheapest form of mass entertainment in most towns and cities". Compared with radio and the press. which failed to make headway with w/c listeners and readers. See results of Social Survey of Merseyside (1934), (Dream Palace, p.12, 13, 15), but also expansion of suburban Odeons after 1936 led to growth in middle class viewing (Dream Palace, 16)
Reactions: 1927 Cinematograph Films Act (1927), President of the Board of Trade, "should we be content if we depended upon foreign literature or upon a foreign press in this country'" Home Secretary, "The position of the cinema in our national life is becoming more and more important .. [It] may have a very profound effect upon the national character". By 1936 the Moyne Committee more emphatic: "film is undoubtedly a most important factor in the education of all classes of the community, in the spread of national culture and in presenting national ideas and customs to the world ... the propaganda value of the film cannot be over-emphasized. Concern from teachers/headmasters (Dream Palaces, 48), and churches (Dream Palace, 51-4, esp. on Sunday showings). Conservative responses, Sir Samuel Hoare, later Home Secretary, writing in his This Our Country (1935) on the insidious influence of cinema (Dream Palaces, p57). Debates on negative effect of cinema, especially links with crime, anticipate modern debates on same issues.
(ii) British cinema or Hollywood? Throughout the period cinema is dominated by impact of American film, and it was not until the War period that a truly national cinema emerged; American films far more popular than British cinema, leading to fears of American cultural colonialism: early as 1927 Col. R.V.K. Applin (Conservative, Enfield), expressed these fears (Dream Palaces, 63). Sir Stephen Tallents, Secretary of the Empire Marketing Board, (Dream Palace, 248-9). Britain produced home-grown stars (Donat, Formby, Askey, Gracie Fields), but cinema dominated by popularity of Cagney, Garbo, Mickey Mouse, Marx Brothers, Busby Berkely, Boris Karloff and King Kong. etc.
Financing and the lack of consolidated home-grown film industry in the period partly accounts for this, and British films often perceived as being inferior (stagey, or quota-quickies). Industry experienced a boom between 1933-7, but slump until 1940. Expansion of film exhibition business, the ABCs, the Gaumonts and especially the Odeons. But production companies, due to unstable city financing, faced considerable difficulties. Since 1927 Government attempts to protect native film industry, mainly through demands for quotas, (20% of exhibited films1933-8), but the system had not been entirely successful: "quota quickies" held little attraction for audiences, and some "quickies" had to be shown when cinemas were closed for cleaning!.
Another issue was censorship, and the restrictions it imposed on the depiction of of socially and politically sensitive subjects. it was easier for producers to stick to a diet of musicals, detective stories and historical epics. Censorship not the direct task of the state, semi-autonomous state of the British Board of Film Censors (see OU, p12), and on censorship in action (OU, p14). Natural feelings of censors, the wish to see the projection of universal content, "Everybody is content", mixed with concerned paternalism 'The Times', (Dream Palaces, p.90).
(iii) British Film within the period. "Thrillers from Hitchcock, Victor Saville's musicals, spy melodramas, historical costume drams, adaptations of literary works by Cronin, Priestly, Buchan, Conrad, Wells and Winfrid Holtby: and the broad comedies of Gracie Fields, George Formby and Will Hay. This was best described as a "pale imitation of Hollywood". Bulk of 1930s films come from existing sources - books and plays; high preponderance also of standard genre pieces, especially comedy and crime and musicals. Extremely popular, Gracie Fields/George Formby. Some attempt to deal with social issues (The Citadel, 1938, medicine & NHS), and The Stars Look Down (1939, miners and nationalisation). Issues of Unemployment were dodged, whether through straightforward censorship (withholding of filming of Love on the Dole until 1943, or sentimentalised Gracie Fields, Sing As We Go. See the account of George Formby's Off the Dole (1935), (OU, p. 22). Parallels with account of Sing As we Go, (1935), (OU, p. 19). Comment of Observer's film critic in 1934, "we have an industrial north that is bigger than Gracie Fields running round a Blackpool funfair"
(iv) Images of the Nation Distinct sense of competing images of the nation within the period, the displacement of older pastoral/rural (Georgian) images of cricket, the village green and Gray's Elegy, to newer, more industrial and modernist images of the nation outside the rural shires. This movement partly seen in literature within the period (new documentary realist techniques of Priestly, Orwell, Isherwood, etc), and the attempt to deal with northern industrial life is sympathetic (but not sentimentalised) ways. See comments by Russell Ferguson (Dream Palace, p. 255), editorial from World Film News (Dream Palace, 245), and Observer's film critic, 1931 (Dream Palace, 246)
(v) Emergence of the Documentary Film movement (associated with John Grierson), partly to counter-act impact of American films, and present a more realistic and panoramic view of northern, working and middle class life. Grierson's comments in 1932 (Dream Palace, 245). Documentary movement used techniques from East European and Russian cinema, montage and auteur, whilst also making some use of traditional Hollywood narrative techniques. Emphasis was on realistic, gritty, factually-based depiction of urban industrial north, eschewing sentimentalism, melodrama and, where possible, conservative paternalism.