ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on three areas that are central to understanding British cinema: the political economy of the film industry, especially the extent to which it is still appropriate to speak of a "British" film industry; the nature of British film culture, particularly the prominence of realism as the dominant aesthetic and how this has affected which films have been deemed culturally and artistically significant; and the role of British cinema as a vehicle of national projection in the construction—and latterly also the interrogation—of ideologies of "Britishness". America's presence in the British film industry extends back to the period before the First World War when US distributors embarked upon an expansionist strategy of overseas sales, and was consolidated by the 1920s when American films accounted for around 80 per cent of those shown in British cinemas. The principal ideological project of British cinema throughout much of its history has been the projection of national identity.
