British Cinema as Performance Art

For some time I have been concerned that it is not enough to write about historic films from seeing them on video, or even in the context of screenings under contemporary cinema conditions. They were made for a different kind of cinema, whose practices are only just being rescued from historical oblivion by today's oral historians. ¹ This chapter sets out the case for cinema as a performance art rather than a textual art: for an integration between the examination of film texts and the mode and conditions of their performance. The classic narrative film requires a relatively quiescent audience, paying attention to the screen rather than participating in the activity of the performance space. My interest is in how cinema as an institution persuades this audience to sit down quietly, without interacting with their neighbours, when this is not perhaps the first thing most people would do in a crowd out for fun.