The British Film Industry in the 1970s

Also by Sian Barber

CENSORING THE 1970s: The BBFC and the Decade That Taste Forgot

The British Film Industryin the 1970sCapital, Culture and Creativity

Sian BarberRoyal Holloway, University of London, UK

© Sian Barber 2013Foreword © James Chapman 2013

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For Paul, for always being there

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Contents

List of Illustrations viii

Foreword ix

Acknowledgements xi

List of Abbreviations xii

Introduction 1

1 Film and Cultural History 4

2 Understanding the 1970s 15

3 Film and Government 23

4 Funding Innovation 38

5 Movers and Shakers 46

6 Institutions and Organisations 59

7 Production, Genre and Popular Taste 68

8 Sunday Bloody Sunday: Authorship, Collaboration andImprovisation 77

9 The Go-Between: The Past, the Present and the 1970s 94

10 Confessions of a Window Cleaner: Sex, Class andPopular Taste 110

11 Stardust: Stardom, Performance and Masculinity 125

12 Scum: Institutional Control and Patriarchy 142

13 The Tempest: A Brave New World of Creative Endeavour? 160

Conclusion 177

Notes 184

Bibliography 205

Index 218

vii

Illustrations

Figure

7.1 British films by genre, 1970–1979 68

Tables

3.1 British film production and the NFFC 297.1 The British box office, 1970–1980 727.2 Local and national box office 73

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Foreword

The 1970s are British cinema’s most overlooked and least understooddecade. In contrast to the vibrant and exciting film culture of the1960s – the decade that put British cinema back on the internationalmap in a way that it had not enjoyed since the golden age of Rank,Cineguild, Lean, and Powell and Pressburger – the 1970s seemed to markthe moment when British filmmaking ran out of residual cultural andeconomic energy. The 1970s have either been seen as a period of stagna-tion and decline, witnessing the fragmentation of British film culture, orbeen characterised as ‘the decade that taste forgot’ due to the prevalenceof lowbrow populism exemplified by the Confessions films and the seem-ingly ubiquitous television sitcom adaptations. In recent years, however,this picture has been challenged by the rise of a revisionist scholarshipthat has looked afresh at the decade and the distinctive cultural formsand practices to which it gave rise.

Sian Barber’s new study of the British film industry in the 1970s is awelcome addition to this growing body of work. It is also the first majorsingle-authored monograph on the subject, following several editedcollections and multiple-author volumes that, however valuable theirinsights, do not offer the same degree of intellectual rigour or analyti-cal consistency. It will be useful to outline, briefly, the particular meritsof Barber’s work. First, she provides a comprehensive historical map ofthe economic and industrial structures of the film industry during thisdecade: no mean feat considering the chronic instability that beset theindustry and the legislative uncertainty of the successive Conservativeand Labour governments. This is the kind of nitty-gritty nuts-and-boltsfilm history that I like, but which is unfashionable for those who wor-ship at the high temple of film theory. Yet, as Barber demonstratesthroughout, an understanding of the economic framework is essential tomake sense of the kind of films produced in the 1970s. For, as so often inthe film and cultural industries, the instability of the production sectorcreated the conditions in which both creativity and commerce couldflourish. Barber argues persuasively that innovation in British cinemaduring this period was not merely a matter of creative auteur directorsas varied as Joseph Losey and Ken Russell, but was also apparent in thestrategies through which filmmakers found new entertainment forms

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x Foreword

and genre variations that would respond to the diverse and changingtastes of British audiences. The nexus of capital, culture and creativity,identified in the book’s subtitle, is expertly analysed and documented.

But there is much more to this book than a study of the industry.Barber really comes into her own in her close and nuanced readingsof a range of British films of the 1970s. These range from traditionalgenres, such as the costume film (The Go-Between), to the zany worldof the British pop musical (Stardust) and from high art (The Tempest)to the lowest of the lowbrow (Confessions of a Window Cleaner). Whatis refreshing here, however, is that the analysis is free from either theaesthetic snobbery of the traditional realist school of film criticism orthe intellectual and ideological prejudices of high theory (and Barberreminds us that the 1970s was the heyday of Screen). The films are anal-ysed as cultural artefacts in their own right, which, regardless of theirquality – good, bad or indifferent, offer insights into social values andcultural tastes. The recurring preoccupations – class, gender, youth – areexpressed in different ways, often finding expression in the motifs ofmobility and the crossing of boundaries that characterise this period inparticular. This was not a film culture in decline but rather one in tran-sition. And what emerges is a picture of a more diverse and varied filmculture than has hitherto been acknowledged.

The British Film Industry in the 1970s exemplifies the best kind offilm studies today: solidly based in empirical research yet informed bycultural theory, nuanced rather than dogmatic in its textual analysis,alert to the nature of films as complex cultural and visual artefacts,and understanding the relationships between industrial processes andindividual agency that brought them to the screen in the first place.It deserves to be afforded significant intellectual currency in the ongoingdebate over the nature of British cinema both as an industrial practiceand as an art form.

James ChapmanJames Chapman is Professor of Film at the University of

Leicester. His books include Past and Present: National Identityand the British Historical Film (2005) and Licence to Thrill: A Cultural

History of the James Bond Films (2nd edn 2007).

Acknowledgements

This work would never have evolved without the help and support ofa large number of people. I would like to thank Sue Harper for herguidance and help throughout my PhD. Her knowledge of and enthu-siasm for British cinema were matched only by her dedicated support.I would also like to thank Justin Smith for his creative ideas and metic-ulous attention to detail as well as the rest of the 1970s project teamat the University of Portsmouth, particularly Sally Shaw and Patti Gaal-Holmes. Many thanks go to James Chapman for his contribution to thiswork and for providing the foreword.

None of the archival research would have been possible without thehelp of the staff from the BFI Special Collections and Fiona Liddell andEd Lamberti at the British Board of Film Classification. Thanks also go toPhil Wickham and the staff of the Bill Douglas Centre at the Universityof Exeter, and to Andrew Spicer for his kindness in letting me use theMichael Klinger material.

I would like to thank Michael Winner, David Puttnam, Don Boyd, RayConnolly and Glenda Jackson, who were all kind enough to share theirmemories of the 1970s with me. I am particularly grateful to Don Boydfor allowing me to use an image from his own collection for the coverimage of this work.

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Abbreviations

ABC Associated British Picture Corporation, later EMIACTT Association of Cinema and Television TechniciansAIP Association of Independent ProducersBBFC British Board of Film ClassificationBFI British Film InstituteCFC Cinematograph Films CouncilFPA Film Production Association, later Film Producers

AssociationNFFC National Film Finance Corporation

Abbreviation of Archival Papers

DB Don Boyd papers pertaining to Scum and The TempestDJ Derek Jarman papers pertaining to The TempestJF James Ferman papers pertaining to film censorshipJRS John Schlesinger papers pertaining to Sunday Bloody SundayLPGB Joseph Losey papers pertaining to The Go-BetweenLPRE Joseph Losey papers pertaining to The Romantic

EnglishwomanMKP Michael Klinger papers pertaining to the Confessions seriesPR Peter Rogers papers pertaining to the Carry On seriesTNA The National Archives

Note:

1. When I used the Michael Klinger papers they had yet to becatalogued. They have now been catalogued and a comprehen-sive catalogue is available at http://michaelklingerpapers.uwe.ac.uk/catalogue.htm.

2. The BBFC changed its name 1984 from the British Board of FilmCensors to the British Board of Film Classification.

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