Whereas the 1940s has long been hailed as a 'golden age' for British cinema,
the preceding decade has been viewed largely with disdain; the likes of Alfred
Hitchcock and Alexander Korda have been seen to offer sporadic oases of
cinematic quality in a desert of mediocrity. This abiding image, however, is
neither complete nor accurate.
One major reason for prejudice is the perceived preponderance throughout the
greater part of the 1930s of the so-called 'quota quickie', films made with the
lowest possible budgets simply to fulfil the recently introduced quota
obligations imposed on distributors and exhibitors by the Cinematograph Films
Act of 1927. One of the aims of a replacement Act in 1938 was to eradicate such
films by the introduction of a minimum production cost requirement, but although
the term 'quota quickie' may have consequently disappeared from popular
discourse, the films themselves arguably prevailed.
Cheap and quickly shot these films may have been, but many still warrant
interest, among them Tod Slaughter's essays in lip-smacking villainy, beginning
with Maria Marten or Murder in the Red Barn (d. Milton Rosmer, 1935); the
heartfelt social dramas of John Baxter, such as Doss House (1933); and some
excellent thrillers from director Bernard Vorhaus, including the striking The
Last Journey (1936).
As well as providing valuable experience for young acting talent such as John
Mills, James Mason and Jack Hawkins, these low-budget films also offered
opportunities to behind-the-screen talent to perfect their craft. Directors
Michael Powell and Brian Desmond Hurst learned on quota films, as did David Lean
(as editor), cinematographers Oswald Morris and Guy Green, art director Michael
Relph and producer Anthony Havelock-Allan. Even Alexander Korda began his
British career working in quota production.
Meanwhile, in more ambitious productions, relatively established directors
cemented their reputations with critical and box office successes. Alfred
Hitchcock, after a period in the doldrums in the early 1930s at British
International Pictures, returned to Gaumont-British and hit form with a series
of top-class thrillers, including The 39 Steps (1935), which established Robert
Donat as a first rank international star, Sabotage (1936) and The Lady Vanishes
(1938).
Herbert Wilcox found popular success fashioning vehicles for his rising star
(and later wife), Anna Neagle, particularly with the costume dramas Victoria the
Great (1937) and Sixty Glorious Years (1938). Anthony Asquith began the decade
with the impressive anti-war film Tell England (1931) and ended it with two
superlative stage adaptations, Pygmalion (1938) and French Without Tears (1939).
Victor Saville also moved effortlessly between genres, being responsible for the
most successful of the Jessie Matthews musical vehicles and the sublime musical
comedy Love on Wheels (1932), as well as war drama I Was a Spy (1933) and social
drama South Riding (1938).
Whether low or big budget, the decade's most prolific (with approximately a
third of the features produced) and successful genre was comedy. The partnering
of music-hall veteran Will Hay with Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt produced
one of the greatest comedy teams ever to work in cinema, and while the fast
patter and risqué badinage of London-born comedian Max Miller could never
migrate entirely successfully to film (despite several attempts), the
Lancashire-born comedy performers George Formby and Gracie Fields took to the
medium with alacrity, becoming, in the process, the biggest British box office
attractions of the decade.
Hailed as the king and queen of comedy, Formby and Fields were also musical
royalty, even if it was Jessie Matthews who reigned supreme over the genre.
Variety films, beginning with Elstree Calling (d. Adrian Brunel, 1930), squeezed
in as many musical performers as possible and were produced throughout the
decade, while musical vehicles for the disparate likes of operatic tenors (Jan
Kiepura, Richard Tauber) and dance band leaders (Henry Hall, Jack Payne) also
met popular acclaim. Comedy was at the heart of the majority of musicals,
although Herbert Wilcox's adaptation of Noël Coward's Bitter Sweet (1933),
starring Anna Neagle, the Evelyn Laye vehicle Evensong (d. Victor Saville,
1934), and a version of Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci (d. Karl Grune, 1936) with
Richard Tauber were rare examples of musicals with dramatic themes.
Crime films constituted at least a fifth of all features produced in the
1930s. The many popular adaptations throughout the decade of Edgar Wallace's
blood and thunder yarns (he even directed two films himself, albeit one in 1929)
helped to make him the most adapted author of the decade. Other examples from
the genre include whodunits solved by Agatha Christie's detective creation
Hercule Poirot (played by Austin Trevor in three films), the thick-ear
adventures of Bulldog Drummond (Ralph Richardson and John Lodge in two films),
tales of low life criminality in the works of author James Curtis (whose novel
They Drive by Night became one of the finest British films of the period (d.
Arthur Woods, 1939)), and spy dramas, which proliferated towards the end of the
decade, including the lively Q Planes (d. Tim Whelan, 1939).
But profits from the home market could be small, so overseas success was much
sought after. The biggest market, of course, was the United States, and the
phenomenal success there of Alexander Korda's partly American-financed The
Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), not only established Korda as a major force
within the British industry, but led to the wider misguided conviction that
American doors were now permanently open to British product.
Korda subsequently pitched his studio's films simultaneously at American and
domestic markets, with big budget productions such as the ambitious science
fiction spectacle Things to Come (d. William Cameron Menzies, 1936); spy drama
Knight Without Armour (d. Jacques Feyder, 1937), teaming Robert Donat with
Hollywood import Marlene Dietrich; and his series of patriotic films of Empire,
including Sanders of the River (d. Zoltan Korda, 1935) and The Four Feathers (d.
Zoltan Korda, 1939).
But Korda was not alone in his ambitions. Michael Balcon, head of production
at both Gaumont-British and Gainsborough Studios, had an internationalist
outlook during this period (rather more than in his later Ealing years) and
eagerly targeted the American market with big budget productions, many
showcasing American stars. Among these was Balcon's own Empire film, Rhodes of
Africa (d. Berthold Viertel, 1936), starring Walter Huston. Others examples
included the Canadian-set western The Great Barrier (d. Milton Rosmer, 1937),
featuring Richard Arlen, and, reputedly the company's most expensive film,
science fiction drama The Tunnel (d. Maurice Elvey, 1935), with Richard Dix.
One of the main contemporary criticisms levelled against the commercial
British cinema, principally by a burgeoning intelligentsia (the critical journal
Close Up had been launched in 1927), but also by some of the more mainstream
critics, is that the films, whether big or low budget, failed to reflect social
reality, depict ordinary British life or venture beyond the confines of a
studio. A number of John Baxter's productions may have focused on working-class
communities (albeit in studio recreations), and location work was a notable
feature of some films with working-class themes, from the Lancashire cotton
mills in Sing as We Go! (d. Basil Dean, 1934) and Cotton Queen (d. Bernard
Vorhaus, 1937) to the fishing fleets of Grimsby in The Last Adventurers (d. Roy
Kellino, 1937). But such productions were, admittedly, in the minority.
The depiction of the lives of ordinary British people was generally left to
the documentary movement, whose films, emerging from such bodies as the Empire
Marketing Board Film Unit, the GPO Film Unit (both overseen by the movement's
figurehead, John Grierson) and the Realist Film Unit, are today widely hailed as
the peak achievement of 1930s British cinema. Certainly, documentary blossomed
in the 1930s, and the reputation of films like Night Mail (d. Harry Watt/Basil
Wright, 1936) and Housing Problems (d. Arthur Elton/E.H. Anstey, 1935) survives
to this day.
The 1940s were to witness a convergence, in terms of personnel, style and
content, between the commercial and documentary sectors of the industry. The
contribution of the latter, however, has generally been praised at the expense
of the former. Yet despite the accusations of mediocrity levelled at the feature
industry, there had been a clear improvement in the quality of British cinema
during the 1930s, technically, artistically and commercially. While producers during the war years enjoyed an abeyance of Hollywood imports, the industry in the 1930s faced full-blooded competition while still adjusting to sound and, later, absorbing the emergence of Technicolor. Without such expertise, the triumphant achievements of British cinema in its 'golden age' would have been all the more
difficult, perhaps impossible.
John Oliver
|
