Table Of ContentPROPAGANDA, POLITICS AND FILM, 1918-45
PROPAGANDA, POLITICS
AND FILM, 1918-45
Edited by
Nicholas Pronay
and
D.W. Spring
© Nicholas Pronay and D.W. Spring 1982
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1 st edition 2891
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted. in any form or yb any means.
without permission
tsriF published 1982 yb
THE MACMILLAN PRESS L TD
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ISBN 978-1-349-05895-2 ISBN 978-1-349-05893-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-05893-8
01 9 8 7 6 5
04 30 02 10 00 99
Contents
Notes on the Contributors vii
Introduction 1
Nicholas Pronay
PART I: THE PROJECTION OF BRITAIN
1 British official attitudes towards propaganda
abroad, 1918-39
PhiUp M. Taylor 23
2 'Showing the world what it owed to Britain':
foreign policy and 'cultural propaganda',
1935-45
D. W. Ellwood 50
PART 11: FILM PROPAGANDA IN BRITAIN AND FRANCE
BETWEEN THE WORLD WARS
3 The people and the pictures. The British
working dass and film in the 1930s
PeterStead 77
4 The political censorship of films in Britain
between the wars
Nicholas Pronay 98
5 Baldwin and film
J. A. Ramsden 126
6 The workers' film movement in Britain,
1929-39
BeTt Hogenkamp 144
Contents
VI
7 Political polarisation and French cinema,
1934-39
Elizabeth Grottle Strebel 157
PART III: FILM PROPAGANDA IN BRITAIN
IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR
8 The news media at war
Nicholas Pronay 173
9 The Crown Film Unit, 1940-43
Ian Dalrymple 209
10 The non-theatrical distribution of films by
the Ministry of Information
Helen Forman 221
11 Films and the Horne Front - the evaluation
of their effectiveness by 'Mass-Observation'
Tom Harnsson 234
PART IV: THE PROJECTION OF THE SOVIET
UNION
12 Soviet documentary film, 1917-40
Sergei Drobashenko 249
13 Soviet newsreel and the Great Patriotic War
D. W. Spring 270
Index 293
Notes on the Contributors
Nicholas Pronay is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the
University of Leeds. His publications include (with Frances
Thorpe) British Official Films in the Second World War. A
Descriptive Gatalogue (Clio Press, 1980) and articles and a
BBC Further Education television series on various aspects of
the political impact of the cinema in the 1930s and 1940s and
on the problems of teaching and research in this area. He is
currently Chairman of the InterUniversity History Film Con
sortium and Director of Television and Film for the Historical
Association.
Philip M. Taylor is Lecturer in International History at the
University of Leeds. He is the author of The Projection of
Britain: British Overseas Publicity and Propaganda 1919-39
(Cambridge University Press, 1981), of several articles on
British propaganda and (with M_ L Sanders) of British
propaganda in the First World War (Macmillan, 1982).
D. W. Ellwood is Lecturer in Contemporary British and Interna
tional History at the University of Bologna. His publications
include Europe and A merica in Gultural Dtplomacy (1973) and
L 'alleato nemico: la politica dell'occupazione anglo-americana
dell'Italia, 1943-6 ( Milan, 1977)_
Peter Stead is Lecturer in History at the University College of
Swansea and has been Visiting Lecturer at Wellesley College,
Mass. His publications include a history of Goleg Harlech
(University of Wales Press, 1978) and 'Hollywood's message to
the world: the British response to the 1930s' in the Historical
journalfor Film, Radio and Television (1981). He is currently
Executive Secretary of the InterUniversity History Film
Consortium for whom he made The Great Depression,
Historical Studies in Film, No. 5.
vii
viii Notes on the Contributors
J. A. Ramsden is Lecturer in the Department of History at
Queen Mary College, University of London. His publications
include The Age oJ BaLJour and Baldwin 1902-40 (Longman,
1978) and The Making oJConservative Party Policy (Longman,
1980) and he has produced the film, Stanley Baldwin, in the
Archive Series of the InterUniversity History Film Consortium.
Bert Hogenkamp studied at the University of Amsterdam and is
a freelance journalist and historian. He has published several
articles on film and the labour movement in Sight and Sound
and the Dutch film journal, Skrien.
Elizabeth Grottle Strebel is a Lecturer in the Cinema Depart
ment of the State University of New York. Her publications
include French Social Cinerna oJ the Nineteen Thirtz'es (New
York: Arno Press, 1980) and several articles on French film and
politics in the historical and film journals, including the
Journal oJ Conternporary Hz'story,
lan Dalrymple was head of the Crown Film Unit, 1940-3 and
was responsible for the inception of many wartime propaganda
classics such as Fires Were Started, Western Approaches,
London Can Take It etc. His post-war films include The Royal
Heritage, A Hz'll in Korea and the series, The Changzng Face oJ
Europe, He was Chairman ofthe British Film Academy, 1957-8.
Helen Forman (nee de Mouilpied) worked in the noh-theatrical
distribution organisation of the Documentary Movement at the
Imperial Institute before the Second World War. She trans
ferred to the Ministry of Information where she became deputy
director of the non-theatrical distribution seetion of the Films
Division and later Chief Film Production Officer . After the war
she was active as a governor of the British Film Institute.
Tom Harrisson (d. 1975), anthropologist and co-founder of
Mass-Observation. He served in the Ministry of Information,
1940-2 and as a parachute officer behind theJapanese lines in
Borneo and Sarawak. Visiting professor at several universities,
his publications include Savage Civz'lisatz'on (1937), Brz'taz'n by
Mass-Observatz'on (1939), Horne Propaganda (1941) and 22
other books. He produced with Hugh Gibbs the award winning
film series The Borneo Story,
Notes on the Contributors
IX
Sergei Drobashenko is Deputy Direetor of the Film Art Institute
of the State Film Archive of the USSR. He has written
extensively about Soviet film, in partieular doeumentary film,
including an introduction to his edition of Dziga Vertov, Stat'z:
dnevnz'ki, zamysly (Articles, diaries, thoughts), (Moseow,
1966), Fenomen dostovernostz·. Ocherki teor# dokumental'
nogo fz'l'ma (The phenomenon of truth. Studies in the theory of
doeumentary film), (Moseow, 1972) and Istorz'ya sovetskogo
dokumental'nogo fz'l'ma (The History of Soviet doeumentary
film), (Moseow, 1980).
D. W. Spring is Senior Leeturer in Russian and East European
History at the University of Nottingham. He has been Exeeu
tive Seeretary of the InterUniversity History Film Consortium
for whom he produeed The Wz'nter War and its European Con
text, Historical Studies in Film, No. 4. He has published
articles on various aspeets of Russian foreign poliey before
1917, and with his wife on the Finnish Communist Party,
and is eurrently eompleting a book on Russian foreign poliey,
1870-1917.
Introduction
NICHOLAS PRONAY
The articles comprising this volume have been prepared at the
invitation of the InterUniversity History Film Consortium for
delivery at two conferences held at the Imperial War Museum.
With one exception they have been revised or extended in the
light of subsequent discussions. The majority of the articles are
the work of historians, based upon the record material whic:h has
become increasingly available in recent years. They thus
represent the perspectives of current historical thinkingo By con
trast the contributions by Mr lan DalrympleO and Lady (Helen)
Forman, dealing respectively with the Crown Film Unit and the
non-theatrical film distribution scheme of the Ministry of Infor
mation, are based on the personal experiences of two
contemporaries who served, in a distinguished capacity, in the
departments which they discuss. Tom Harrisson's contribution is
in a category of its own. He founded and directed Mass
Observation wh ich provided the Ministry of Information with
independent assessments of the impact of its film propaganda.
His contribution printed here was, however, based on research
which he and his assistants carried out 25 years later in the
archives of Mass-Observation and which led to his important
book on British attitudes during the Blitz.
Tom Harrisson's contribution to this volume is also the only one
which is printed here in the form in which he actually delivered
it: he died in tragic circumstances before he could prepare the
paper for publication.
The InterUniversity History Film Consortium comprises, at the
time of writing, the history departments of the Universities of
Leeds, Nottingham, Reading, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Sussex,
Wales, Queen Mary College, London, and the London School of
Economics and Political Science. Its formation was proposed by
I
