Great Expectations
British Postwar Cinema, 1945-1960
Published to coincide with the retrospective at the
78th Locarno Film Festival (2025)
order the book here
It is not an inflated statement to say that among Western European national cinemas, British cinema of the studio era remains one of the least explored internationally. A cinema that was once critically celebrated, consistently presented at international film festivals, and widely distributed – from the best cinemas in Paris to Tehran – epitomised a “golden age” that weakened and fell out of fashion with the arrival of later movements, such as the British New Wave. While recent academic studies of the period in question have been astonishingly rich, the actual act of screening these films has been rare and far between.
This book, accompanying a British postwar cinema retrospective at the Locarno Film Festival, features nearly forty essays on the distinctive voices of British cinema, mapping the phoenix-like rise of a nation from the ashes of the Second World War and following its bumpy road to national reconstruction and cinematic innovation.
Great Expectations focuses on British cinema’s studio years, its major classics, as well as the rich tradition of genre films. In addition to essays on the role of women behind the camera, children in front of it, the critical reception of the films, and British cinema’s exchanges with Hollywood, this book features vivid critical profiles of thirty major directors from a period whose diversity and range of styles, subjects, and talents remain unmatched in British cinema history.
Content:
Introduction by Ehsan Khoshbakht
visions
Identification of a Nation: A View into British Postwar Cinema
— Ehsan Khoshbakht
Breaking Rank: The British Film Industry, 1945–1960
— James Bell
“It’s a Woman’s World at Pinewood”: The Truth About Women in Postwar British Cinema
— Pamela Hutchinson
Quick, Eager, Delicate: Children in Postwar British films
— Charles Barr
Climate of Fatalism: Postwar British Noir
— Imogen Sara Smith
“In Between Addresses Now”: American Exiles in British Cinema
— Chris Fujiwara
Snobbery with Violence: Why British Film Critics Disdained Their Own Cinema
— Nick James
filmmakers
Anthony Asquith by Neil Sinyard
Roy Ward Baker by Haden Guest
Compton Bennett by Jo Comino
Daniel Birt by Geoffrey O’Brien
John and Roy Boulting by Josephine Botting
Muriel Box by Melanie Williams
Alberto Cavalcanti by Farran Smith Nehme
Lance Comfort by Ehsan Khoshbakht
Jill Craigie by Lillian Crawford
Charles Crichton by Lillian Crawford
Basil Dearden by Philip Concannon
Terence Fisher by Phuong Le
Lewis Gilbert by Pamela Hutchinson
Val Guest by David Cairns
John Guillermin by Kim Newman
Robert Hamer by Christopher Small
John Harlow by Jonathan Rigby
Seth Holt by David Thompson
Lawrence Huntington by Farran Smith Nehme
George King by Phuong Le
Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat by Elena Lazic
David Lean by David Thompson
Jack Lee by Melanie Williams
Alexander Mackendrick by Adrian Martin
Ronald Neame by Neil Sinyard
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger by Ian Christie
Carol Reed by Adrian Martin
Francis Searle by Josephine Botting
Ralph Thomas by Neil Sinyard
J. Lee Thompson by Kim Newman
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