10. British cinema

Modern cinema is generally regarded as descending from the work of the French Lumière brothers in 1895, and their show first came to London in 1896 (see 1896 in film). However, the first moving pictures developed on celluloid film were made in Hyde Park, London in 1889 (see 1889 in film) by William Friese Greene, a British inventor, who patented the process in 1890 (see 1890 in film). The film is the first known instance of a projected moving image. From 1898 American producer Charles Urban expanded the London-based Warwick Trading Company to produce British films, mostly documentary and news. He later formed his own Charles Urban Trading Company, which also produced early colour films. Although the earliest British films were of everyday events, the early 20th century saw the appearance of narrative shorts, mainly comedies and melodramas. The 1930s boom By the mid-twenties the British film industry was losing out to heavy competition from Hollywood, the latter helped by having a much larger home market. in 1914 (see 1914 in film), 25% of films shown in the UK were British — by 1926 this had fallen to 5%. The Cinematograph Films Act 1927 was passed in order to boost local production, requiring that cinemas show a certain percentage of British films. The act was technically a success, with audiences for British films becoming larger than the quota required. But it had the effect of creating a market for 'quota quickies': poor quality, low cost films, made in order to satisfy the quota. The constraints imposed by World War II seemed to give new energy to the British film industry. After a faltering start, British films began to make increasing use of documentary techniques and former documentary film-makers to make more realistic films, many of which helped to shape the popular image of the nation at war. Building on the success British cinema had enjoyed during World War II, the industry hit new heights of creativity in the immediate post-war years. Among the most significant films produced during this period were David Lean's Brief Encounter (1945) and his Dickens adaptations Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), Carol Reed's thrillers Odd Man Out (1947) and The Third Man (1949), and Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1946) and The Red Shoes (1948). British cinema's growing international reputation was enhanced by the success of The Red Shoes, the most commercially successful film of its year in the U.S. British films began to concentrate on popular comedies and World War II dramas. The term British New Wave, or "Kitchen Sink Realism", is used to describe a group of commercial feature films made between 1955 and 1963 which portrayed a more gritty form of social realism than had been seen in British cinema previously. The British New Wave feature films are often associated with a new openness about working class life. The films were personal, poetic, imaginative in their use of sound and narration, and featured ordinary working-class people with sympathy and respect. The 1970s With the film industry in both the United Kingdom and the United States entering into recession, American studios cut back on domestic production, and in many cases withdrew from financing British films altogether. From the 1980s to the present Films focused on many questions around identity in Britain.