Film England, 1990-2008: (Trans)National Cinema, English Literature and Narratives of the Past and Present
Lead Research Organisation:
University of York
Department Name: Theatre Film and TV
Abstract
This project examines filmic representations of England and Englishness produced since 1990. Contemporary cinema rarely respects national boundaries, whether at the level of production, distribution or reception. Films about England and Englishness may be made in a foreign country, or by foreign filmmakers, or with foreign capital. Yet the concept of national cinema still has currency - although critical debate usually refers to British, not English, cinema, while the official body for cinema in England and the other home nations is the UK Film Council. Historically too, England and Britain have named the same territory at different times and in different ways.
The project adopts the perspectives of cultural history, drawing on research on the production, distribution, marketing, exhibition, box-office performance and critical reception of a range of 'English' and other films. I also undertake thematic, stylistic and ideological analyses of those films. The project expands on ideas, arguments and histories developed in my previous work, including publications on the concept of national cinema, on heritage film and on recent British/English cinema.
The project has three strands. The first examines the idea of national cinema as it relates to English cinema in the contemporary period. The issues I explore here are: the relationship between the local, the national and the global, and the emergence of the concepts of 'transnational' and 'post-national' cinema in critical debate; the articulation of a sense of national community in recent English films (especially the work of Richard Curtis [''Notting Hill', 'Love Actually']); iconographies of Englishness in the landscape and architecture of films; and the ways in which recent 'post-national' films (such as the work of Gurinder Chadha ['Bend It Like Beckham', 'Bride and Prejudice') challenge and re-work traditional expectations. I also develop a case study of the most important English production company of the last two decades, Working Title, using industrial and cultural concerns to address the difficulty of using the concept 'a British film'.
The second strand of the project examines the relationship between English cinema and English literature, in terms of the adaptation of prose fiction to film, the writing of self-consciously cinematic literature, and the role that the literary plays in debates about film, cultural competence and taste. The three case studies in this strand look respectively at Jane Austen adaptations, and related films such as the bio-pic 'Becoming Jane'; the adaptation of English novels, both populist and canonical, published in recent decades; and the critical concept of the 'literate film' as it has been wielded in reviews of films, from 'Persuasion' to 'Shakespeare in Love' to 'The Hours' and beyond.
The third strand of the project examines the ways in which different filmic versions of the past construct different visions of England and English identity, and address different audiences. I move beyond my previous work on heritage films by considering historical epics, the representation of pre-modern periods, and recent developments. I contrast films about the more 'refined' and 'civilized' modern (post-1800) past with films about the dirty, dangerous and distant past of the medieval and early modern periods. I contrast big-budget, epic versions of the distant past (e.g. 'King Arthur'), designed to address young males, with more intimate costume dramas that foreground the pleasures of romance fiction (e.g. 'Ladies in Lavender'), designed with female spectators in mind. And I explore the ways in which more picturesque visions of heritage England are challenged by a dirty realism that infects the world of Austen as much as medieval or industrial England/Britain. I explore similar tensions in a case study of heritage cinema's niche stardom and modes of performance, in the work of Helena Bonham Carter, Keira Knightly and others.
The project adopts the perspectives of cultural history, drawing on research on the production, distribution, marketing, exhibition, box-office performance and critical reception of a range of 'English' and other films. I also undertake thematic, stylistic and ideological analyses of those films. The project expands on ideas, arguments and histories developed in my previous work, including publications on the concept of national cinema, on heritage film and on recent British/English cinema.
The project has three strands. The first examines the idea of national cinema as it relates to English cinema in the contemporary period. The issues I explore here are: the relationship between the local, the national and the global, and the emergence of the concepts of 'transnational' and 'post-national' cinema in critical debate; the articulation of a sense of national community in recent English films (especially the work of Richard Curtis [''Notting Hill', 'Love Actually']); iconographies of Englishness in the landscape and architecture of films; and the ways in which recent 'post-national' films (such as the work of Gurinder Chadha ['Bend It Like Beckham', 'Bride and Prejudice') challenge and re-work traditional expectations. I also develop a case study of the most important English production company of the last two decades, Working Title, using industrial and cultural concerns to address the difficulty of using the concept 'a British film'.
The second strand of the project examines the relationship between English cinema and English literature, in terms of the adaptation of prose fiction to film, the writing of self-consciously cinematic literature, and the role that the literary plays in debates about film, cultural competence and taste. The three case studies in this strand look respectively at Jane Austen adaptations, and related films such as the bio-pic 'Becoming Jane'; the adaptation of English novels, both populist and canonical, published in recent decades; and the critical concept of the 'literate film' as it has been wielded in reviews of films, from 'Persuasion' to 'Shakespeare in Love' to 'The Hours' and beyond.
The third strand of the project examines the ways in which different filmic versions of the past construct different visions of England and English identity, and address different audiences. I move beyond my previous work on heritage films by considering historical epics, the representation of pre-modern periods, and recent developments. I contrast films about the more 'refined' and 'civilized' modern (post-1800) past with films about the dirty, dangerous and distant past of the medieval and early modern periods. I contrast big-budget, epic versions of the distant past (e.g. 'King Arthur'), designed to address young males, with more intimate costume dramas that foreground the pleasures of romance fiction (e.g. 'Ladies in Lavender'), designed with female spectators in mind. And I explore the ways in which more picturesque visions of heritage England are challenged by a dirty realism that infects the world of Austen as much as medieval or industrial England/Britain. I explore similar tensions in a case study of heritage cinema's niche stardom and modes of performance, in the work of Helena Bonham Carter, Keira Knightly and others.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Andrew Higson (Principal Investigator) |