The world of the cinema in your home: The film programme on British television 1952-62
The world of the cinema in your home: The film programme on British television 1952-62
The thesis investigates the development of programmes about the cinema on British television during the period 1952-62. Tracing this development through Current Release (1952-3), Picture Parade (1956-62) and Film Fanfare (1956-7), it explores the institutional and cultural emergence of a key genre on 1950s British television, and situates the film programme within the context of formative relations between television and British film culture at that time. This is crucial to the academic intervention of the thesis as the film programme enables a critical reassessment of the early relations between the media. Conventional histories suggest that the dialogue between British cinema and television in these years was hostile and defensive, with the implication that they remained separate, autonomous structures throughout the decade The film programme insists that this is not the case as it kept television and cinema in constant interaction, dialogue and debate throughout the 1950s.
My argument is that television was crucial in understanding the construction and circulation of 1950s film culture, and that this took on a particular resonance within the context of the changing cultural significance of both media at this time. The film programme emerges when television is seeking to build its mass audience and thus when television was one of the factors which was hastening the cinema's decline. Yet the genre offers a contradictory insight into these shifts: the film programme was a key site upon which television forged the domestication of film culture, but it simultaneously thrived upon, and promoted the public world of the cinema, enticing the viewer to frequent the 'big screen'. My argument will be that the particular institutional and cultural contexts of cinema and television in the 1950s are crucial in understanding the historical specificity of the early film programme - a specificity which accounts for much of its critical and theoretical appeal.
University of Southampton
Holmes, Susan
014b59d2-0a11-4cbb-9636-f993814335ae
2001
Holmes, Susan
014b59d2-0a11-4cbb-9636-f993814335ae
Holmes, Susan
(2001)
The world of the cinema in your home: The film programme on British television 1952-62.
University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.
Record type:
Thesis
(Doctoral)
Abstract
The thesis investigates the development of programmes about the cinema on British television during the period 1952-62. Tracing this development through Current Release (1952-3), Picture Parade (1956-62) and Film Fanfare (1956-7), it explores the institutional and cultural emergence of a key genre on 1950s British television, and situates the film programme within the context of formative relations between television and British film culture at that time. This is crucial to the academic intervention of the thesis as the film programme enables a critical reassessment of the early relations between the media. Conventional histories suggest that the dialogue between British cinema and television in these years was hostile and defensive, with the implication that they remained separate, autonomous structures throughout the decade The film programme insists that this is not the case as it kept television and cinema in constant interaction, dialogue and debate throughout the 1950s.
My argument is that television was crucial in understanding the construction and circulation of 1950s film culture, and that this took on a particular resonance within the context of the changing cultural significance of both media at this time. The film programme emerges when television is seeking to build its mass audience and thus when television was one of the factors which was hastening the cinema's decline. Yet the genre offers a contradictory insight into these shifts: the film programme was a key site upon which television forged the domestication of film culture, but it simultaneously thrived upon, and promoted the public world of the cinema, enticing the viewer to frequent the 'big screen'. My argument will be that the particular institutional and cultural contexts of cinema and television in the 1950s are crucial in understanding the historical specificity of the early film programme - a specificity which accounts for much of its critical and theoretical appeal.
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Published date: 2001
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Local EPrints ID: 464515
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/464515
PURE UUID: 6d58c86b-0b6e-4279-b185-13d8fef396c4
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Date deposited: 04 Jul 2022 23:43
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 19:34
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Author:
Susan Holmes
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