ABSTRACT
As an assiduous young movie-goer trying to grasp the intellectual approach to movies, I would often read about the importance of British national cinema. In a recent formulation national cinema is ‘the realist project that … would reflect the times, the lives and the culture of a country’s population’ (Anon., Sight and Sound 1999:3). National cinema talk always struck me as vaguely threatening. Lauding the positive qualities of the national product was one thing (although a steady diet of realism seemed unlikely to be satisfying); effectively slighting the pleasures of the films one paid for, was another. British films, one learned, enjoyed a quota of screen time-though its workings scarcely affected my 1950s cinema-going. In the provincial British town where I grew up there were four cinemas, three showing weekly double-bills, the fourth showing bi-weekly double-bills: ten first-run movies a week. On Sundays all four cinemas would show double bills of older films, adding another eight to the week’s total. Almost all of these movies were American. One escaped from the drabness and boredom of provincial Britain to the magic kingdom of Hollywood movies. Occasionally an entertaining British movie, war subject or Baling comedy perhaps, would come along. More likely a British film was an Edgar Lustgarten semi-documentary, or a low budget comedy starring the likes of Norman Wisdom.
