British Film British Film by Jim Leach Review by: Evan Lieberman Film Quarterly, Vol. 60, No.

2 (Winter 2006), pp. 56-57 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/fq.2006.60.2.56 . Accessed: 23/02/2012 16:59
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Film Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

THE WORLD
British Film
By Jim Leach. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. $70.00 cloth; $24.99 paper. 289 pages.

The day may arrive when a discussion of British cinema might proceed without rst rebutting the often-quoted scorn of Franois Truffaut who claimed that there was a certain incompatibility between the terms Britain and cinema. Such a discussion might also refrain both from introducing British lm as standing suspended between European artiness and American commerciality, and from questioning whether there is such a thing as a national cinema at all. That day is not at hand. Jim Leachs British Film, part of the National Film Traditions series, begins by making all of these gestures, but develops nonetheless into a worthy addition to the rapidly expanding literature on this once overlooked and muchmaligned national cinema. British Film is a general introduction to some of the major trends, gures, and themes in British cinema since the coming of sound. Its synthesis of the work of most of the important critics and historians of the past twenty years presents the reader with a broad range of thought on the subject, with frequently neglected works such as the Carry On series, the Hammer Studios horror lms, and the Gainsborough melodramas discussed side by side with more established topics (Carol Reed, David Lean, Ealing comedies). If the conclusions reached are rarely remarkable, Leachs methodology is solid and his arguments are for the most part well illustrated by his cinematic examples. In fact, one of the most provocative aspects of the book is its organizational structure, which rather than breaking down by chronology or personality is instead divided according to central thematic concern, cultural issue, or stylistic approach. The chapters vary widely in topic from British Expressionism, Ideology and the School Movie, and Realism, to British actors and the British sense of humor, but the structure within each is very consistent. There is some variation in the opening two chapters, the rst of which discusses The Captive Heart (Basil Dearden, 1946) and Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson, 1981) to argue persuasively for a cinematic national character capable of including all classes and regions, and the second that uses John Grierson, Alexander Korda, and Alfred Hitchcock to illustrate the perhaps reductive idea that there were three dominant strains of lmmaking in Britain in the 1930s: Griersons realist documentary, Kordas historical spectacle, and Hitchcocks genre lm. After these two chapters Leach settles into a regular pattern. Two or three lms and lmmakers from three time periods are contrasted and compared to illuminate dominant historical concerns and cultural developments. For example the section on British Expressionism begins by comparing two highly stylized lms from 1944, Michael Powell and

Emeric Pressburgers A Canterbury Tale and Gainsboroughs The Madonna of the Seven Moons (directed by Arthur Crabtree), in order to show how their blend of realism and formalism call into question then-dominant ideas of British national identity. The discussion moves on to the late 1960s and early 70s with the formally experimental work of Ken Russell, Nicolas Roeg, and John Boorman compared to that of D.H. Lawrence in the way that it challenged established standards of morality. The chapter concludes by setting Peter Greenaways The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989) against Derek Jarmans Jubilee (1977) to demonstrate the continuing inuence of the avant-garde on lms critical of British culture. A serious question arises though as to whom exactly this book is pitched. If it is designed to introduce the student or reader to the subject of British cinema, then there are simply too many signicant omissions. The most glaring of these is the amazingly inventive and vital period between 1896 and 1905 when the so-called Brighton School lead the cinematic world by inventing the rst panning head shots and the rst point-of-view shots, as well as pioneering early experiments in special effects, narrative construction, and dcoupage. While Leach explains the exclusion of early British cinema in his introduction, its absence still leaves a major gap in the picture presented to the uninitiated. Further hindering a comprehensive description is the fact that there is virtually nothing on the British silent period and no mention of the two extremely important Beatles lms, A Hard Days Night (Richard Lester, 1964) and Help! (Lester, 1965), which more than any other British export fueled the international demand for the Mod cinema that for a brief period turned London into the epicenter of world lm style. While Leach does discuss the prominent Mod lms, Darling (John Schlesinger, 1965) and Ale (Lewis Gilbert, 1966), it is only to illuminate the changing sexual mores of the 1960s. In terms of more contemporary lmmakers, British Film completely ignores the work of Michael Winterbottom, Terence Davies, Danny Boyle, Mike Figgis, Julien Temple, and Michael Radford. British Film, despite its many merits, does not serve as a viable introduction to the eld. If, on the other hand, the intended reader is someone who has already encountered Rescued by Rover (Lewin Fitzhamon, 1905), and Daviess Distant Voices, Still Lives (1989), then the book simply does not offer enough that is new. Most of Leachs critical discussion is drawn from other well-known sources, including the wide-ranging work of Charles Barr (Ealing Studios [1977]), John Hill (British Cinema in the 1980s [1999]), and Andrew Higson (Waving the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain [1995]). While Leach does not rely too heavily on any single work or author and his survey of the critical literature is fairly comprehensive, there is only a modicum of original analysis to link together the books fusion of other writers ideas. The organizational structure, though intriguing, allows little space for in-depth analysis of any single lm or gure. Even when Leach does discuss a single lm in some detail, it is often from a lmmaker like Powell, Lean, or Hitchcock

56

whose work spanned decades, yet there is no sense given of a larger career context. So we get one-and-a-half pages on A Canterbury Tale and a bit about The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), but no mention at all of the more essential Powell and Pressburger lms, Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948). In addition, the book rarely engages the lms on either the formal or industrial levels, ignoring specic cinematic articulations and the workings of the British motion-picture business in favor of a more general, literary style analysis of plot, character, and theme. As it seems aimed at neither specialist nor initiate, British Film stands as a sound work without a readily apparent audience.
EVAN LIEBERMAN teaches in the Film Studies department at Emory University. He is currently working with David Cook on a book entitled The Moving Image for Oxford University Press.
Evan Lieberman, 2006

EastWest Encounters: Franco-Asian Cinema and Literature

By Sylvie Blum-Reid. London: Wallower Press, 2003. $70.00 cloth; $20.00 paper. 148 pages.

Sylvie Blum-Reids book makes a valuable contribution to the important emerging eld of Franco-Asian cinema and literature studies. In light of the potential ambiguity of the hyphenated terrain of her subtitle (and even vaster title), Blum-Reid does well to dene her parameters at the outset, as France on the Western side and mostly Vietnam and Cambodia on the Eastern, with a few extraterritorial incursions (2). Although Vietnam and Cambodia do not come close to equaling Asia, Blum-Reids reduction of the continent to the countries constituting the former Indochina (along with Laos) is logical in light of colonial history and lends her work coherence. Her focus on Vietnam makes her topic more manageable, as does her emphasis on lms and literary works from the 1990s, a historical moment which she identies as the beginning of Frances renewed interest in its forgotten (or repressed) colony. Blum-Reid also enriches her work by engaging in the abovementioned extraterritorial incursions through repeated references to Wong Kar-wai and mention of Yasujiro Ozu as well as through brief analyses of lms about francophone Africa such as Claire Deniss Chocolat (1988) and Brigitte Rouans Outre-Mer (1990). In so doing, she touches upon areas for further research, either implicitly, as in the case of Franco-Chinese and Franco-Japanese lm, or explicitly, as when she invokes Vietnamese lmmaker Trin T. Minh-has work on the connections between Franco-Asian lm and Francophone African lm. EastWest Encounters constitutes a much-needed addition to the underrepresented scholarship on Franco-Asian literature, including Jack Yeagers books on Vietnamese literature in French and, closer to her work, Panivong Norindrs Phantasmatic Indochina (1996). Indeed, Blum-Reid might have foregrounded Norindrs book bit more in her

own study, for example when she refers to a mental Vietnam (83), a concept quite similar to Norindrs eponymous (and more eloquent) one. Both Norindrs and Blum-Reids books examine Vietnam/Indochina, but Norindrs emphasis is colonial while Blum-Reids is postcolonial. Blum-Reid posits that France and Europe more generally have learned from the East and can continue to do so (6), an argument that seems self-evident today, in the wake of Roland Barthess The Empire of Signs (1970) and Edward Saids groundbreaking work, Orientalism (1978). Still, BlumReid does well supporting the claim through close analysis of lms and literary texts. Her examination crisscrosses different elds and does not follow a singular path (8), although her literary studies, primarily in the concluding chapters analyses of works by Linda L and Kim Lefvre, are overshadowed by her attention to lm. At the core of EastWest Encounters is the important concept of hybridity, or the in-betweenness of Franco-Asian directors and writers from Lam L to Lefvre, as epitomized by what Blum-Reid calls their cultural mtissage (134). This concept extends beyond racial hybridity, but she discusses it with respect to Eurasians such as Lefvre in her autobiographical Mtisse Blanche (1989) and vis--vis the characters of Eliane (played by Catherine Deneuve) and her daughter Camille in Indochine (1992). Blum-Reid suggests compellingly in chapter 7 that lm-makers placed in a diasporic situation perform a balancing act between their community and country of adoption (130). This balancing act results from the foreignness experienced by exiled lmmakers when expressing themselves in either their native or second language and when in either birth or adopted nation, the latter resulting in a sense of homelessness or nomadism. A lm such as Tran Anh Hungs Scent of Green Papaya (1993) has been criticized both for being too French on the one hand, or (more aptly, according to Blum-Reid) Japanese, on the other hand (70, 75). Given that conicting accusations of being too Eastern and too Western have cursed directors such as Akira Kurosawa, who was purely Japanese, one might ask whether it is only mtis directors who suffer from this problem, or whether it is a more general East/West problem. In any case, it is an interesting and difficult issue that Blum-Reid addresses, along with the question which she asks via Carrie Tarr and with reference to Tran and Panh of whether diasporic Asian lmmakers have a responsibility to address the issue of Empire in their lms (71). Some of the strongest and most memorable moments in EastWest Encounters lie in Blum-Reids use of historical, cultural, linguistic, and even socio-economic material, resulting from extensive research, to inform her readings of lms. For instance, she discusses the Chinese painter Tchang Tchong Jens inuence on Herg, the Belgian creator of the cartoon Tintin, who in turn inuenced Lam L. In her study of The Scent of Green Papaya, Blum-Reid points out nicely that the title conjures up Baudelaireian or Proustian synesthia and, even more importantly, she translates the name of the female protagonist Mui as scent for the reader not versed in Vietnamese (63). Prefacing her analysis of Trans 1995 lm Cyclo,

57