Cinema and Society in Great-Britain (2005)

Résumé du document

The opposition between the French and the British is famous in many fields. It is also true between French and British film directors. When Truffaut, maybe the most famous French director said that the British are not able to shoot movies it resulted partly of this historical opposition but it also reflects without any doubts of a real observation: the British cinema have had always big troubles to exist. Anyway is it possible to say that the British cinema completely does not exist and that "British and cinema are an oxymoron"? We will try to see in what way the British cinema firstly really exist, and then it has its own features very different from the ones that French film directors usually admit.

Extraits

[...] were very active and produced very popular and high quality movies. Then during the seventies and eighties the British cinema passed through an important crisis and most of these studios closed. Today the British cinema market is completely dominated by the American companies. Some films are still shot in Great Britain, but they are absolutely not numerous and usually they are produced and then distributed by American studios as . American companies influence obviously the British cinema. They impose it their ideas (the movie has to please not only to the British audience but also to the American one) and the British cinema losses obviously some part of it identity. [...]

[...] Obviously some governmental and some non-governmental organizations help movie directors but they strongly depend of the politician party which is in power: during the Labour party mandate the cinema is helped a little bit more, during the Conservative one little bit less; but anyway it is very few money in comparison of the needs of film industry and even in comparison of the French help. This lack of subsidizations results in a bigger implication of some private investors. Producers and film makers turn to TV channels to fund their movies. TV channels are almost the ones which are interested to invest because with funding movies they can earn the rights of broadcasting. Often directors are also obliged to begin by shooting films for TV. [...]

[...] but it survives and even also some art films are produced. To broadcast a film seems today to be a real struggle in Great Britain, much more difficult than in France for example, but it does not mean that it is impossible. During the last decade some British movies obtained very great successes: Full Monthy, East is East, Bend it like Beckham, Trainspotting, Four weddings and a funeral and a very engaged British cinema also was recognized on the international scene: as movies of Ken Loach or Mike Leigh. [...]

[...] The identity of the British cinema was built in early sixties and mostly in seventies and eighties. This was the time of the raise of directors as Ken Loach or Mike Leigh who represent probably today in the best way the identity of the British art cinema. These directors give a huge place to the reality. They directly deal with the social problems of the United Kingdom: poverty (almost all the movies of Loach), homosexuality (My beautiful laundrette), racism (many of the Stephen Frears' movies for instance) . [...]

[...] Cinema and Society in Great-Britain (2005) Escp-eap INTRODUCTION 2 I. Structural problems of the British cinema 2 II. Main artistic features of the British cinema 3 Introduction The opposition between the French and the British is famous in many fields. It is also true between French and British film directors. When Truffaut, maybe the most famous French director said that the British are not able to shoot movies it resulted partly of this historical opposition but it also reflects without any doubts of a real observation: the British cinema have had always big troubles to exist. [...]