Comunicare la contemporaneità: cinema e società in Gran Bretagna (1929-1991)

Sergio Guerra

Comunicare la contemporaneità: cinema e società in Gran Bretagna (1929-1991)

Sergio Guerra

Abstract

Through a series of case studies, this long essay seeks to demonstrate the fruitfulness of using film as evidence for studying history and culture. Taking under consideration films as diverse as the chart-toppers The Wicked Lady (1945) and A Hard Day’s Night (1964), the documentary Drifters (1929), imperial adventures like The Four Feathers (1939), and ‘auteur’ films like Pressure (1975), High Hopes (1988) and Riff-Raff (1991), this work aims to establish their relation to the society and culture in which they were produced and to extrapolate the meanings and identities, in short the ideology they put forward. From a cultural studies perspective, via the medium of film, the present essay therefore elucidates cultural discourses current in the six decades considered – from the 1930s to the 1980s – and means to be as much a historical mini-survey as a contribution to the hitherto neglected study of British film in Italian universities.

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References

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- FILMOGRAFIA PRIMARIA (Tutti i film sono reperibili in DVD)

Drifters (1929), di John Grierson.

Industrial Britain (1931), di Robert Flaherty.

BBC Voice of Britain (1934), di Arthur Elton.

A Song of Ceylon (1934), di Basil Wright.

Coal Face (1935), di Alberto Cavalcanti.

Sanders of the River (1935), di Zoltan Korda.

Night Mail (1936), di Basil Wright e Harry Watt.

The Drum (1938), di Zoltan Korda.

The Four Feathers (1939), di Zoltan Korda.

Spare Time (1939), di Humphrey Jennings.

Listen to Britain (1941), di Humphrey Jennings.

Fires Were Started (1943), di Humphrey Jennings.

Millions Like Us (1943), di Sidney Gilliat e Frank Launder.

A Diary for Timothy (1945), di Humphrey Jennings.

The Wicked Lady (1945), di Leslie Arliss.

Animal Farm (1954), di Joy Batchelor e John Halas.

The Ladykillers (1955), di Alexander Mackendrick.

(1956), di Michael Anderson.

A Hard Day’s Night (1964), di Richard Lester.

Pressure (1975), di Horace Ové.

High Hopes (1988), di Mike Leigh.

Riff-raff (1991), di Ken Loach.

- ALTRI FILM MENZIONATI

Nanook of the North (1921), di Robert Flaherty.

Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age (1926), di Robert Flaherty.

The Private Life of Henry VIIII (1933), di Alexander Korda.

Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), di Henry Hathaway.

Clive of India (1935), di Richard Boleslawski.

Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), di Michael Curtiz.

Elephant Boy (1937), di Robert Flaherty e Zoltan Korda.

The Thief of Bagdad (1940), di Ludwig Berger e Michael Powell.

The Jungle Book (1942), di Zoltan Korda.

The Gentle Sex (1943), di Leslie Howard.

The Demi-Paradise (1943), di Anthony Asquith.

The Man in Grey (1943), di Leslie Arliss.

Madonna of the Seven Moons (1944), di Arthur Crabtree.

The Third Man (1949), di Carol Reed.

Passport to Pimlico (1949), di Henry Cornelius.

Whisky Galore (1949), di Alexander Mackendrick.

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), di Robert Hamer.

Highly Dangerous (1950), di Roy Ward Baker.

State Secret (1950), di Sidney Gilliat.

Seven Days to Noon (1950), di John Boulting e Roy Boulting.

The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), di Charles Crichton.

The Man in The White Suit (1951), di Alexander Mackendrick.

High Treason (1952), di Roy Boulting.

The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), di Val Guest.

Rock Around the Clock (1956), di Fred Sears.

Quatermass II (1957), di Val Guest.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), di Karel Reisz.

A Taste of Honey (1961), di Tony Richardson.

The Damned (1961), di Joseph Losey.

A Kind of Loving (1962), di John Schlesinger.

If (1968), di Lindsay Anderson.

Britannia Hospital (1982), di Lindsay Anderson.

The Ploughman’s Lunch (1983), di Richard Eyre.

The Last of England (1987), di Derek Jarman.

Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1988), di Stephen Frears.

The Cook, The Thief, The Wife and her Lover (1989), di Peter Greenaway.

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Dipartimento di Scienze della Comunicazione, Studi Umanistici e Internazionali: Storia, Culture, Lingue, Letterature, Arti, Media
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