Brian McFarlane (ed),
The Encyclopedia of British Film (Third Edition).
Methuen, London, 2008
ISBN: 9780413776600
UK £24.99 (pb)
816pp
(Review copy supplied by Methuen)
Twenty years ago in a television series titled Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future a character defined ‘book’ as ‘a non-volatile database’. The ‘non-volatility’ of such a database means that if the creator wants to add/subtract/amend or in any other way change a single piece of information in that database, then the whole thing has to be changed. So we have to hand the third edition of Methuen’s Encyclopedia of British Film, edited by Brian McFarlane, just five years after the first edition. The first edition, Professor McFarlane advised us, was designed to ‘fill a gap’. The ‘gap’ in question was a standard reference on all things British in the cinema. Its success was immediate and we all cheered and applauded the existence of such a necessary work. It was necessary because, as those of us who work in the field know only too well, and as McFarlane noted in his original introduction, British film is either ‘skimpily treated’ or ‘marginalised’ in general reference works.
This particular database has taken up a position on my bookshelf within reach of my desk. It is indeed, ‘the first port of call’ whenever I need a memory prompt. Needless to say as a compendium of facts it is astonishingly comprehensive and a source of the most recondite information on British film. As a ‘go-to’ it has indeed become indispensable. However its worth goes far beyond being a mere source of dates and names, studios and bureaucracies. Because the study of film has been dominated by French and American theorists for far too long, there has been a tendency not to look down on the Paris-New York flight path. If a person of British birth is ever considered it is because of an established Hollywood career. This relates to more than the inevitable Hitchcock and Chaplin; it also means Stanley Kubrick making ‘American’ film in ‘British’ studios, David Lean’s late career epics, and a director like John Schlesinger who is recognised for Marathon Man (USA 1976) rather than Sunday, Bloody Sunday (UK 1971). It means that for most of the twentieth century a steady stream of films emanated from the British Isles and that the best of those films are the world’s best and the worst of them are probably among the world’s worst even if the rest of the world was, for the most part, ignorant of their existence. A film culture there is, and always has been, in Britain; and it is as different from that of the European mainland, as it is different from Hollywood. Unfortunately it shares a spoken language with Hollywood which means that the best of British too often becomes confused with the best of Hollywood. The existence of this book reinforces the idea of British in cinema. British means Carry On and James Bond, Dickens and Shakespeare, Graham Greene and Agatha Christie, and a myriad other ideas, and all of them are in this book.
The question then arises, why the need to revise it every couple of years? In this age of extensive ‘volatile’ databases on the Internet, current information is readily available. This book is valuable for its non-volatility. Perhaps if the publishers had added the words ‘in the 20th Century’ to the title the book’s value would be more explicit. It is an essential, comprehensive, opinionated and above all entertaining reference of all things British in the cinema of the last century. Take a rest Professor, let others run after the latest. Your work stands as a monument to your career. Without your career and the knowledge you have imparted in this book, British cinema would still be in the shadow of that Paris-New York flight path. Now if anyone asks me ‘why British cinema?’ I simply hand them your book and ask ‘why not?’
Mike Fleming,
Australia.
Created on: Tuesday, 1 December 2009