Tony Shaw,
British Cinema and the Cold War: The State, Propaganda and Consensus.
London: I.B. Tauris, 2001.
ISBN 1 86064 371-X (hb)
281pp
£39.50
(Review copy supplied by I.B. Tauris)

Uploaded 1 December 2001

A great deal has been written about the propagandist role of the American film industry during the Cold War; from studies of individual films such as Iron Curtain (USA 1948),and I Married a Communist (USA 1949), to the hysterical reaction of the industry itself to accusations that the studios had been infiltrated by communists and fellow-travellers, but British cinema’s response to the ideological struggle between East and West has been virtually ignored. Thus, Tony Shaw’s meticulously researched British Cinema and the Cold War is a most welcome contribution to the rapidly expanding literature on British cinema history, and to Cold War studies.

Shaw corrects the often repeated view of film historians that British filmmakers all but ignored the Cold War, and convincingly demonstrates that, in fact, British cinema tackled most of the major themes of the struggle, albeit in a far more low key way than their American counterparts. As the author points out in this highly readable and persuasively argued book, British cinema was remarkably consistent in reflecting official attitudes to Soviet Russia and the fear of communist subversion at home. In the years following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution British filmmakers ridiculed socialism and, in films like Land of Mystery (UK 1920) and Forbidden Territory (USA 1934), painted a grim picture of the realities of life under the “red” tyranny. Even after the 1941 wartime alliance against Hitler, filmmakers still exercised caution in filmic representations of their Russian allies.

Consequently, a film like Anthony Asquith’s The Demi-Paradise (UK 1943), turned out to be more a celebration of middle-class English tolerance and consensual wartime politics, than a tribute to Anglo-Soviet solidarity. Thus, after 1945, when the short-lived alliance with the USSR collapsed under the strains of a new East-West alignment, British cinema had little trouble in reverting to an anti-Soviet perspective for this highly volatile phase of the Cold War.

The major focus of British Cinema and the Cold War is the twenty year period beginning in 1945, the period when East-West tensions were at their most dangerous, and when cinema-going was the main leisure activity in Britain. The public passion for going to the pictures in the 1940s and 1950s made the medium a valuable tool for projecting the establishment point of view, and in that twenty year period, successive governments made determined efforts to integrate cinema into their anti-Soviet, anti-Communist propaganda campaign. This was largely achieved through initiatives devised by Whitehall’s semi-secret, anti-Communist agency, the Information Research Department (IRD) which worked closely with the industry. Considering that the two most influential figures in the industry at the time were Alexander Korda, whose involvement in working for the national interest has been well-documented, and the staunchly conservative J.Arthur Rank, there was little opposition. A major strength of the book is that here Shaw firmly locates the films that followed in their political and social context and explores at length the motives that lay behind their production – a fascinating story that unravels the connections between foreign policy, filmmaking and the shaping of public opinion.

The most revealing examples of this relationship was the filming of George Orwell’s novels Animal Farm (UK 1955) and 1984 (UK 1956). Particularly the extraordinary story behind the filming of the former. In June 1948, the American National Security Council created a new agency (the innocuously named Office of Policy Coordination) to counter the covert activities of the USSR. Out of this grew the Psychological Warfare Workshop which launched a far more aggressive propaganda campaign aimed at destabilising the USSR while promoting faith in the “Free World”. Cinema was considered to be a vital agent in the campaign, and in 1950 the Workshop brokered the purchase of the film rights to Animal Farm by Louis de Rochement Associates. De Rochement, who had already made several anti-communist movies in Hollywood, secured the British animation team John Halas and Joy Batchelor, and the film was finally released in 1954. According to Shaw, de Rochement chose a British production company because costs were lower than in Hollywood and because he was dubious about the loyalty of American animators. Despite aggressive marketing by various official agencies, the film was not a great success, yet it remains a fascinating example of the manner in which officialdom attempted to take control of what was seen on the screen.

The author, however, does not just confine his analysis to the more well-known features of Cold War cinema such a High Treason (UK 1952), Ring of Spies (UK 1963) and The Prisoner (UK 1955), but explores those almost forgotten films of the period such as Carol Reed’s The Man Between (UK 1953) as well as B features like Master Spy (UK 1964), Beyond the Curtain (UK 1960) and Highly Dangerous (UK 1950), in which feisty scientist Margaret Lockwood teams up with journalist Dane Clark for an Anglo-American assault on the Balkans.

Nevertheless, despite a certain shared commonality with American films of the period, the author persuasively argues that British Cold War films were distinctive, and did not slavishly follow Hollywood’s examples but queried, questioned and offered mild dissent to the dominant official view. This can be explained, as Shaw points out, because British film-makers suffered far less political coercion than their American or Eastern European, and because the industry was never subjected to an American-style HUAC investigation; indeed, a handful of communists and fellow travellers even continued to work in the industry – Ivor Montagu, Ralph Bond, Sidney Cole and Anthony Asquith, for example, as well as blacklisted Americans like Joseph Losey.

The British film industry never became an instrument of the state, nor was the industry infiltrated as deeply as Fleet Street. Consequently despite, the controls on British film production, there was room for dissent and this can clearly be seen in Asquith’s 1954 production The Young Lovers (UK), or George Parry’s 1959 comedy Friends and Neighbours (1959), and particularly those films which reflected a growing unease over the nuclear arms race and the ever-increasing interference in peoples’ lives in the cause of state security – The Day the Earth Caught Fire (UK 1961) and Peter Watkins’ The War Game (UK 1965).

British Cinema and the Cold War throws considerable light on a hitherto dark corner of the screen and is compulsive reading for anyone interested in the interaction of film and politics.

Michael Paris