University of Warwick
Department of Film and Television Studies
rd
3 year option, BA Film and Literature, BA Film Studies
British Film and Television Fiction (fi318) Spring 2015
Professor Charlotte Brunsdon Room 1.18
Week by Week Module Outline
It will be helpful if you bring this handout with you to class as I will often want to comment on reading and arrangements listed
herein.
This course, which will introduce you to the study of British cinema, is organised in three
main parts. Finally, in the last part of the course, we will consider how the ‘place-image’
of the North of England is produced across film and television. As television fiction has
been significant within the British audio-visual landscape, we will also pay (very limited)
attention to some of the overlaps between film and television.
The course will be taught in a workshop/ seminar format with some lectures and student
presentations. Asterisked reading in the list below is the required reading for the week,
and you will often need to read this on Tuesday evening or early Wednesday morning, so
make your plans accordingly.
The planned timetable for this course is Tuesday afternoon (3-6) and Wednesday
morning, normally 10.30-1. You must be able to attend all of both these time slots, and
we will discuss exactly how we use the timetable after we have met, but there will always
be a screening on the Tuesday.
1. Formations of British Cinema
In this introductory part of the course we will study two films from the post-war period
which represent what are often characterised as the two opposing traditions of British
cinema, that of an everyday (documentary) realism and an expressive, fantastic tradition.
Week One: Dance Hall (d.Charles Crichton, Ealing Studios, 1950)
Unusually for Ealing Studios, this film focuses on the lives of four young women. If you
have never seen an ‘Ealing comedy’, I recommend looking at Charles Barr’s classic of
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British cinema history, Ealing Studios, and watching at least one of Passport to Pimlico, The
Lavender Hill Mob or Kind Hearts and Coronets. Another significant Ealing film focussing on
a female character is It Always Rains on Sunday is an important representation of the East
End of London and precursor to the 1960s ‘kitchen sink’ films.
*Christine Geraghty, chapter 5 of her British Cinema in the Fifties (2000).
Melanie Williams, chapter 17 of Ealing Revisited (eds: M Duguid et al), (BFI, 2012).
Charles Barr, Ealing Studios (1977, 1993) (use index)
Vincent Porter ‘The context of creativity: Ealing Studios and Hammer Films’ in Curran
and Porter, British Cinema History.
Week Two: Black Narcissus (directed, produced, screenplay (from the novel by Rumer
Godden), Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger) 1947
It is now fairly easy to find discussion of the work of Powell and Pressburger, (for
example, a special issue of Screen on Michael Powell in Spring 2005 [46.1]) but you
should look at the polemical article by Julian Petley to see that this has not always been
the case. Ian Christie has been particularly significant in their reappraisal. Sarah Street’s
monograph provides an excellent account and analysis of the film, and some of it can be
read in advance of the screening.
Julian Petley, ‘The Lost Continent’ in Barr (ed) All Our Yesterdays (1986)
Sarah Street, Black Narcissus (2005) (There is a short required extract available digitially.)
Priya Jaikumar, ‘”Place” and the modernist redemption of empire in Black Narcissus’
Cinema Journal (40.2, 2001)
John Orr, ‘The trauma film from romantic to modern’ in Romantics and Modernists in
British Cinema (2010)
Ian Christie (ed), Powell, Pressburger and Others (BFI, 1978)
Ian Christie, Arrows of Desire
Andrew Moor, Powell and Pressburger: A Cinema of Magic Spaces (2005)
2. British Art Cinema
In the second part, British Art Cinema, we will study four contrasted works which
exemplify the variety of small-scale British productions and engage with different media
inheritances (photography, fine art, television, CCTV).
Reading for module section on British art cinema as a whole:
Christopher Williams, ‘The Social Art Cinema’ in C.Williams (ed) Cinema: the Beginnings
and the Future (Univ of Westminster Press, 1996)
Week Three: Distant Voices Still Lives (Terence Davies, 1988 BFI, Ch4, ZDF) 84 mins
Additional viewing: other Terence Davies films; Ratcatcher, Lynne Ramsay, 1999
Reading:
Paul Farley, Distant Voices, Still Lives (BFI, 2006)
Wendy Everett, Terence Davies (2004), ch. 3
Geoff Eley, ‘The family is a dangerous place: memory, gender and the image of the
working class’, in Robert Rosenstone (ed), Film and the Construction of the Past (1995)
Nigel Floyd/ Terence Davies, ‘A pebble in the pool and ships like magic’, Monthly Film
Bulletin (October 1988)
John Orr, ‘Terence Davies and Bill Douglas: the poetics of memory.’ In: Romantics and
Modernists in British Cinema (2010)
Week Four: Hunger (d.Steve McQueen, UK/Ireland, 2008) and Elephant (d. Alan Clarke,
p. Danny Boyle, no wr. credit, BBC N.Ireland, tx 1989)
Additional viewing on Ireland and British cinema: H3 (d. Les Blair, 2003), Five Minutes of
Heaven (d. Guy Hibbert, 2009) and 71 (d. Yann Demange, 2014)
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Reading for this week can be divided between scholarship on Steve McQueen (who has a
substantial career as an artist before his Oscar winning Twelve Years a Slave), on Alan
Clarke (who is best known for Scum, which the BBC would not broadcast in its first, tv
version in 1979) and on Ireland and the troubles in British cinema and television. You
should aim for something in each category.
Michael Walsh, ‘Thinking the unthinkable: coming to terms with Northern Ireland in the
1980s and 1990s’ in Ashby and Higson (eds.), British Cinema Past and Present (2000) (on
Elephant and The Long Good Friday)
Kevin Rockett, Luke Gibbons, John Hill, Cinema and Ireland, ch 6
Dave Rolinson, Alan Clarke, pps 119-135
Gary Crowdus, ‘The human body as political weapon: an interview with Steve
McQueen’, Cineaste (XXXIV: 2, Spring 2009)
Graham Fuller, ‘By any means necessary’, Film Comment (March-April 2009) (review)
John Orr, Conclusion to Romantics and Modernists in British Cinema (2010)
Week Five: Red Road (d. Andrea Arnold Red Road GB/ Dk, 2006)
Additional viewing: Wasp (2003 short), Fish Tank (2009) & Wuthering Heights (week 10)
Required reading: Michael Stewart, ‘Falling, looking, caring: Red Road as melodrama’
Journal of British Cinema and Television
(Do not read this before the first screening if you have not seen this film. This means
you need to plan to read the article between Tuesday screening and Wednesday class.)
Additional reading:
Mette Hjort, ‘Affinitive and milieu-building transnationalism: The Advance Party initiative’
in Dina Iordanova et al (eds.) Cinema at the Periphery (Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 2010)
Hannah McGill, ‘Mean Streets’, Sight and Sound (November 2006, pp 26-28).
Jonathan Murray, ‘Blurring boundaries: Scottish cinema in the 21st century’ Journal of
British Cinema and Television (9.3, 2012, pp. 400-418).
Nicholas R.Fyfe and Jon Bannister, ‘“ The eyes upon the street”: closed-circuit television
and the city’ in N.R Fyfe (ed) Images of the Street (1998) (E)
David Martin-Jones, Scotland: The Movie (Edinburgh University Press, 2009) the whole book
is of interest, but the last chapter compares Red Road and Young Adam.
Week Six: Reading and Viewing week
3. The North
The third part of the course is organised in relation to the ‘place-image’ of the North of
England. This place image has been produced historically across a wide range of texts
and practices, and was recently deployed, in one of its most familiar forms, by Danny
Boyle in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games through imagery of factory
chimneys and industrial labour. The premise in the module is that there are many
different audio-visual ‘Norths’, and to understand them, we need to pay attention to a
complex range of factors which include industry, genre, history as well as each individual
film or television programme. We will start this part of the course with one of the classic
origins of images of the North of England, the British New Wave films and the idea of
the ‘angry young man’, and we will then consider some of the significant televisual norths
before returning to more recent British art cinema to continue our discussion from the
earlier part of the term.
All students will be required to do short presentations during these weeks. You will be
asked to work in groups of two or three.
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There are some books and articles which will be useful for the whole of this part of the
module. Of these, you must read Marris and Russell, and should at least sample Hoggart:
Paul Marris, ‘Northern realism: an exhausted tradition’ Cineaste (XXVI: 4, 1981, pp. 4750)
Dave Russell Looking North: Northern England and the national imagination (2004), especially
the Introduction, chapter 1 and chapter 6
Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy (1957) (particularly chapter 2)
Stuart Maconie Pies and Prejudice (2007) is a popular and readable account of ideas about
Northern Britain which would be good for people who don’t come from Britain.
Paul Morley’s (rather long) The North is rich, but best for dipping into. These follow a
long tradition of writing which includes George Orwell The Road to Wigan Pier and
J.B.Priestley’s English Journey, as well as novels such as Mrs Gaskell’s North and South and
Charles Dickens’s Hard Times.
Week Seven: The British New Wave: the Industrial North: Saturday Night and Sunday
Morning (d. Karel Reisz sc Alan Sillitoe p Tony Richardson, 1960)
We are likely to start the Red Riding viewing this week, and thus the Wednesday class will
have a 10.00 start.
Additional viewing: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, A Taste of Honey, and A Kind
of Loving. The Robert Murphy commentary on the SNSM BFI DVD is excellent.
Reading:
John Hill, Sex, Class and Realism British Cinema 1956-63 (chapter 6 in particular)
B.F.Taylor The British New Wave, chapter 6
Terry Lovell ‘Landscapes and stories in 60s British cinema’ in Andrew Higson (ed)
Dissolving Views (1996)
Andrew Higson, ‘Space, place, spectacle’ in Higson (ed) Dissolving Views (1996)
Week Eight Northern Noir The Red Riding Trilogy (written by Tony Grisoni, based on
the novels by David Peace, Ch.4, Revolution Films): 1. 1974 (d.Julian Jarrold); 2.1980
(d.James Marsh); 3.1984 (d.Anand Packer).
I will confirm the pattern of viewing after discussion with you in week 7.
Nick James, ‘Bloody Yorkshire’, Sight and Sound, (19:3, March 2009, pp. 30-33.
Week Nine: Post-industrial Britain and art cinema: Control (d. Anton Corbijn, 2008)
Additional viewing: 24 Hour Party People (D. M. Winterbottom, 2002):
Factory: Manchester from Joy Division to Happy Mondays (BBC4, 2007, in library); or biopics
such as Nowhere Boy (2009); Radio On (1979) - see Tom Whittaker, ‘Frozen soundscapes in
Control and Radio On’ Journal of British Cinema and Television, vol 6.3 (2009)
Dave Haslam Manchester England. (there is a huge literature on the Hacienda, Joy Division,
etc.)
[Simon Frith and Howard Horne, Art into Pop chapters 1 & 5]
Paul Dave, ‘Choosing Death: Working-Class Coming of Age in Contemporary British
Cinema’, Journal of British Cinema and Television 10:4.
Week Ten The romantic North Wuthering Heights (d. Andrea Arnold, 2011)
Viewing: Other films directed by Andrea Arnold (Red Road and Fish Tank); other
adaptations of Wuthering Heights, such as, in particular, the 1939 William Wyler film with
Laurence Olivier. There are also several TV adaptations. The most useful reading for
this week would probably be Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, and if you are considering
an essay, you need to look at the work on adaptation which includes:
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Sarah Cardwell, Adaptation Revisited: Television and the Classic Novel (Manchester: MUP,
2002)
Kamilla Elliott, Rethinking the Novel/Film Debate (2003)
Christine Geraghty, Now a Major Motion Picture: Film Adaptations of Literature and Drama
(2008)
For more general reading, you may consult the titles below, and also check the Journal of
British Cinema and Television which is available through the library
Ashby, Justine and Andrew Higson (eds), British Cinema, Past and Present (2000)
Leggott, James, Contemporary British Cinema (2008) (a bit of a skim, but ok)
Murphy, Robert (ed.) The British Cinema Book (BFI, several editions)
Sargeant, Amy, British Cinema (BFI, 2005)
Street, Sarah, British National Cinema 2nd ed. (2009), especially ch. 5.
Paul Dave Visions of England (2006)
Cooke, Lez, British Television Drama (BFI, 2003)
Vitali, Valentina and Paul Willemen (eds), Theorising National Cinema (BFI, 2006),
particularly Part 1 and ch. 7.
Street, Sarah, ‘The British film debate: introduction’, Screen (46:1, Spring 2005, pp. 85-86)
Charlotte Brunsdon
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