On the surface, 1911 looks like a year of business as usual for the
British monarchy and the stability of the Empire. George V, who succeeded his
father Edward VII in June 1910, was crowned in the traditional Coronation
ceremony on the 22nd June, and he and his queen travelled to India later in the
year for the awesomely lavish Imperial coronation - the Delhi Durbar - in
December. But below the surface things were less stable than they appeared.
The first full year of George V's reign opened with a pitched battle of
anarchists against the police on the 3rd January, later known as the Sidney
Street Siege - and still one of the most spectacular events ever captured on film -
and throughout the year there was continuing Suffragette protest and widespread
industrial unrest. August was particularly bad, with a long-running transport
strike culminating in violence in the middle of an unprecedented heat-wave.
All of these events were captured by the newsreels, now a fixture in
Britain's cinemas. Local events such as the terrible music hall fire in
Edinburgh and a freak cyclone which laid waste to a town in Wales were embraced
by the newsreels, whose numbers were augmented this year with the arrival of a
new major player: Topical Budget, which would be a fixture on the circuit
for two decades.
At the international level, poor relations between Germany and Britain
continued to escalate as the Kaiser tested his naval capacity with a gunboat
raid on Agadir, which had the unforeseen and counterproductive consequence of
strengthening the entente cordiale between Britain and France - ties that would
ultimately work against the Germans. Of course none of this tension showed in
the film record, with the exception of the continuing high profile given to
ships launches. Among these new arrivals was the light cruiser HMS Chatham,
launched in November 1911 and destined for the Mediterranean fleet and action
against German cruisers in the opening days of the Great War.
The film business underwent a radical change. The industry was no longer a playground for amateurs, and had been
developing over several years, but 1911 saw long-term structural changes coming
to a head and new business models solidify. Renting rather than outright sale of
prints from the producer to exhibitor was now established as normal practice,
while film companies became more highly capitalised and 'vertically-integrated',
drawing production, distribution and exhibition of films together within a
single company. Indeed, many have called 1911 'the second birth of cinema': the
year that cinema cut its ties to other media businesses, such as the fairground
circuits and the music halls, and came into its own not just as a technology but as a
standalone media industry in its own right. Cinema circuits began to form, and
1911 was notable for the establishment of the characterful Electric Cinemas,
many of which survive to this day.
The new business model was founded on two additions to the mixed cinema
programme - the regular newsreels, which gave solid social purpose to
cinemagoing, and the regular adventure series and serials which now became a
regular fixture on British screens. Lieutenant Rose was one doughty British
hero, fighting foreign anarchists for the security of King and Empire in several
episodes released in this year. He would be followed by many similarly intrepid
adventurers in subsequent years, and even if he and his followers lacked the
sophistication and lasting appeal of the French Fantômas or Zigomar serials they
were certainly popular in British cinemas in their day, and their exploits would
soon be serving up ripe material for Britain's emerging film comedians.
Bryony Dixon
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