British Silent Cinema and the Great War (Hammond, M. & Williams, M (eds), Palgrave Macmillan, 2011 ISBN: 978-1-349-33237-3)

[TGM]

British Silent Cinema and the Great War (Hammond, M. &  Williams, M (eds),  Palgrave Macmillan, 2011 ISBN: 978-1-349-33237-3)

 

Introduction: This innovative book presents for the first time detailed histories of the impact of the Great War on British cinema in the silent period, from actual war footage to fiction filmmaking. In doing so it explores how cinema helped to shape the public memory of the war during the 1920s.

 

Contents:

 

Goodbye to All That or Business as Usual? History and Memory of the Great War in British Cinema

Michael Hammond, Michael Williams

Pages 1-16

The War

Front Matter

Pages 17-17

 

The Battle of the Somme (1916): An Industrial Process Film that ‘Wounds the Heart’

Michael Hammond

Pages 19-38

British and Colonial: What the Company Did in the Great War

Gerry Turvey

Pages 39-48

‘Improper Practices’ in Great War British Cinemas

Paul Moody

Pages 49-63

‘Shells, Shots and Shrapnel’: Picturegoer Goes to War

Jane Bryan

Pages 64-76

Aftermath: Memory and Memorial

Front Matter

Pages 77-77

 

‘A Victory and a Defeat as Glorious as a Victory’: The Battles of the Coronel and Falkland Islands(Walter Summers, 1927)

Amy Sargeant

Pages 79-93

Remembering the War in 1920s British Cinema

Christine Gledhill

Pages 94-108

Remembrance, Re-membering and Recollection: Walter Summers and the British War Film of the 1920s

Lawrence Napper

Pages 109-117

‘Fire, Blood and Steel’: Memory and Spectacle in The Guns of Loos (Sinclair Hill, 1928)

Michael Williams

Pages 118-133

Notes from the Archive

Front Matter

Pages 135-135

 

Hello to All This: Music, Memory and Revisiting the Great War

Neil Brand

Pages 137-144

The Dead, Battlefield Burials and the Unveiling of War Memorials in Films of the Great War Era

Toby Haggith

Pages 145-159

Anticipating the Blitz Spirit in First World War Propaganda Film: Evidence in the Imperial War Museum Archive

Roger Smither

Pages 160-169

‘How Shall We Look Again’? Revisiting the Archive in British Silent Film and the Great War

Bryony Dixon, Laraine Porter

Pages 170-185

Back Matter

Pages 186-197

 

Source: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9780230321663#toc

 

references and index.pdf

Edited 14 October , 2017 by TGM

[simond9x]

I bought this book because of my interest in the films produced during, and immediately after, the Great War - in particular those of Geoffrey Malins and Walter Summers. I'm writing this comment purely so that others don't make the same mistake that I did. I wrongly assumed that it would give a more detailed look into the production of those sorts of films...... it doesn't. What it does do is exactly what it says on the tin.....it provides "detailed histories of the impact of the Great War on British cinema in the silent period ............In doing so it explores how cinema helped to shape the public memory of the war during the 1920s". It's a series of short academic essays into exactly that. It's very well written and well structured and I'm sure that for those with an interest in the social impact of cinema during that period, it will add to their understanding. But, caveat emptor, it doesn't provide any new information about the actual films themselves.