ABSTRACT
This topic area focuses not only on the films made by British filmmakers and British studios during the Second World War (controlled and shaped by the British government through the Ministry of Information), but also on those films made in the immediate postwar period (up to the end of the 1940s) which reflected on the wartime experience and on ‘the peace’. This exciting and vibrant period of British filmmaking reflects a number of issues that can be studied in terms of messages and values including:
■ national identity – how the diversity of the British as a nation is portrayed as a unifying strength;
■ class, rank, and gender representation – how groups within society are depicted during and after the war;
In this chapter we look at:
■ the content and contexts of the focus films; ■ the key issues which underpin the study of the films of this period; ■ the wider historical and production context of filmmaking in this period.
