neo-romantic landscapes an aesthetic approach to the films of powell and press burger

8/2/2019 Neo-Romantic Landscapes an Aesthetic Approach to the Films of Powell and Press Burger

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Neo-Romantic Landscapes


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Neo-Romantic Landscapes:

An Aesthetic Approach to the Filmsof Powell and Pressburger

By

Stella Hockenhull

Cambridge Scholars Publishing


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Neo-Romantic Landscapes: An Aesthetic Approach to the Films of Powell and Pressburger,

by Stella Hockenhull

This book first published 2008 by

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright 2008 by Stella Hockenhull

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or

otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-84718-744-7, ISBN (13): 9781847187444


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For Keith, Tom and Emily

and in memory of my Parents


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements .................................................................................... ix

List of Illustrations ..................................................................................... xi

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1

Neo-Romantic Landscapes: Pictorial Compositions, Convoluted Plots,and New Methodologies

Chapter One............................................................................................... 39

British Patriots or Fantastical Outsiders?

Chapter Two.............................................................................................. 65Strangeness and Splendour

Chapter Three .......................................................................................... 115Hebrides and Himalayas

Chapter Four............................................................................................ 147

Neo-Romantic Decline: Gone to Earth

Conclusion............................................................................................... 179

Bibliography............................................................................................ 189

Index........................................................................................................ 209


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks must go to friends and colleagues who have encouraged and

supported me in my research and the subsequent publication of this book.

In particular, I acknowledge Eleanor Andrews, Barbara Crowther, Ken

Page, Fran Pheasant-Kelly, and Pritpal Sembi, all close friends as well ascolleagues in the Film Studies team at the University of Wolverhampton. I

am grateful to the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciencesat the University of Wolverhampton for research time and conference

funding. I would like to thank my PhD supervisors, Professor Christine

Gledhill, Dr. Martin Shingler and Dr. Colin Cruise; without their academic

advice, patience and friendship this work would not exist. I am indebted to

my friend John Redman who introduced me to Neo-Romanticism and

Professor Robin Nelson who has provided constant advice throughout.I also acknowledge Sir Reresby and Lady Sitwell for permission to

reproduce John Pipers Renishaw Hall, the Imperial War Museum for

permission to reproduce Paul Nashs Battle of Britain, Alan SorrellsFIDO in Operation, and Graham SutherlandsMen in Quarry. I also thank

Thelma Schoonmaker for permission to research the Michael Powell

Special Collection at the British Film Institute.


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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1.A Canterbury Tale (1944)

Figure 2. Graham SutherlandMen in the Quarry (1943) Drawing

Figure 3. John PiperArch in the Ravine (1942-1945) Watercolour

Figure 4. Paul NashBattle of Britain (1941) Oil on CanvasFigure 5.I Know Where Im Going! (1945)

Figure 6. Alan SorrellFido in Operation (1945) DrawingFigure 7. Black Narcissus (1947)

Figure 8. Gone to Earth (1950)

Figure 9. Gone to Earth (1950)


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INTRODUCTION

NEO-ROMANTIC LANDSCAPES:

PICTORIAL COMPOSITIONS,CONVOLUTEDPLOTS, ANDNEW METHODOLOGIES

Towards the end of the film, A Canterbury Tale (Powell and

Pressburger, 1944), the central female character, Alison (Sheila Sim),

undergoesan extraordinary spiritual experience whilst walking through the

landscape on the old Pilgrims road. The sequence begins with a

panoramic view of the Kent countryside in summer. Gazing around her

and at the sky, Alison appears in the frame accompanied by soft, romantic

music. Through a series of dissolves, she enters a woodland area dappledin sunlight. At this point she seems unaware of the beautiful surrounding

Kent countryside, content to walk aimlessly on.However, as she emerges from the trees, a strange thing happens.

Alison pauses and starts almost imperceptibly, her face slightly turned as

she looks into the distance. At this point, the camera cuts to a distant view

of Canterbury Cathedral which is clearly the focus of Alisons attention,and the spectator becomes aware of her spiritual experience. Her face is

seen from a low angle in close-up; lit from the side, her lips are slightly

parted and she moves slowly around as she, and the audience, hear choral

singing. This is immediately followed by the noise of Chaucers figures

chattering and playing music which is the sound heard at the beginning ofthe film. Spinning around, Alison searches for the source but is greeted by

silence and is left alone on the hilltop. From Alisons stance, her facial

expressions, and the length of time the image remains on the screen, it

appears that she has undergone a spiritual experience motivated by thelandscape.

In this short sequence, aural imaginings are accompanied by

sumptuous visual images of the surrounding Kentish countryside. As

Alison stares in wonderment and awe, the spectator is also implicated in

the same views of the Cathedral spires set in the English landscape.Canterbury Cathedral appears mysterious; framed within the composition

by a group of trees and lit from the right, the spectators gaze is directed


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Introduction2

through the foliage and the landscape to the Gothic apparition in the

distance (Figure1).

Figure 1.A Canterbury Tale (1944)

Up until this point, a number of characters in the film, including

Alison, have been engaged in solving a mystery. At the beginning of thefilm Alison experiences a mysterious attack resulting in glue being poured

over her hair. The narrative revolves around the detective work of an

American sergeant, a British army officer and Alison who is a Land Army

girl. The local Squire and Justice of the Peace, Thomas Colpeper (Dennis

Portman), is thought to be responsible and the three set about proving his

guilt. However, in cinematic viewing, a rather convoluted plot is

dominated by intensely visual landscape images. These offer the spectator

a pictorial quality, a painterly aesthetic framed by Powell and Pressburger

as an arrested image, a frozen moment, whereby the formal composition

is arranged for spectator contemplation. This mobilises a Neo-Romantic

affect, located in the Sublime of eighteenth century aesthetic theory, and


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Neo-Romantic Landscapes 3

nineteenth-century Romanticism in painting and the other arts, with their

emphasis on the spiritual aspects of landscape and nature. Neo-Romantic

affect thus elicits a certain type of emotion from the viewer, who isinvited to experience an intuitive response on encountering the pictorial

compositions.

It is the richness of images such as these which provides a pictorial

Neo-Romantic affect, particularly evident in Powell and Pressburgers

films of the 1940s, inviting a new way of examining their work. The

analysis of four Powell and Pressburger films released between 1944 and

1950 are selected because of their extensive and painterly use of thelandscape, which demonstrates the pictorial nature of their films made

during and immediately following the Second World War. They are: A

Canterbury Tale (1944), I Know Where Im Going! (1945), Black

Narcissus (1947) and Gone to Earth (1950). The latter example may

appear out of context, its release date occurring five years after the war

had ended; however, it is included here because Powell and Pressburger

continued to follow the pictorial aesthetics and formal compositions

employed in their earlier three films.A number of other 1940s Powell and Pressburger films have been

excluded from this book because their use of landscape as a signifying

feature is not prominent, and this element is required for the analysis of

Neo-Romantic affect. The narrative of their 1943 film, The Life andDeath of Colonel Blimp, depicts the life of an army officer and traces his

career from the Boer War to the Second World War. The film, which

caused a great deal of controversy with intervention by Churchill who

made an attempt to prevent it being released, is devoid of any significant

landscape sequences. Powell and Pressburgers later film,A Matter of Life

and Death (1946), was instigated by the Ministry of Information (MoI)

who wanted to promote goodwill between Britain and America. The film

charts the near death experience of its central character, Peter Carter

(David Niven), and his fight for life following the shooting down of hisplane. His desire to live becomes stronger when he falls in love with the

voice of the ground operator, an American girl named June (Kim Hunter),

and the film follows his bid for survival. The Red Shoes (1948) is a ballet

based on a Hans Christian Andersen story and is modelled on therelationship between Diaghilev and Nijinsky. The film follows the central

character, Vicky (Moira Shearer), and her tutor/mentor Lermontov (Anton

Walbrook), and the complications which arise when she is forced to

choose between romance and ballet. These three films, along with a


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Introduction4

number of others 1 invite further analysis, but use mainly interior sets,

rather than shots of the landscape, and therefore the above are not here for

that reason.

2

Recent Scholarly Appraisal

One of the purposes of this book lies in the fact that recent film

historians and theorists3 have singled out the films of Powell and

Pressburger as other and different, suggesting that their work bears

little resemblance to that of their contemporary British film-makers,

relating rather more to their European counterparts. Landmark studies

began with the work of Ian Christie in 1978 in a British Film Institute publication entitled Notes from Powell, Pressburger and Others.Compiled as a handbook to accompany the National Film Theatre

retrospective of the same year, Christie charts the films of Powell and

Pressburgers company, the Archers. This introduction was shortly

followed by his second work entitledArrows of Desire published in 1985.

In the later work, he discusses the directors ensuing separate careers.

Christie begins the first chapter of his 1985 study by suggesting that the

Archers have yet to receive their full recognition From the outset, the

Archers signalled a distinctive new approach (1985: 1). He ends by

placing them as outsiders with predecessors in European cinema. KevinGough-Yatess entitles his chapter Exiles and British Cinema in The

British Cinema Bookwhere he acknowledges a Neo-Romantic sensibility

in A Canterbury Tale and I Know Where Im Going! but constructs

Pressburger as a stranger, confronted by an alien language and culture

(1999: 110).

Similarly, American film scholar, Scott Salwolke, claims that,

Powell was introduced to the cinema relatively late in life, and like many

Englishmen, he found little to appreciate in the British cinema. Hisinfluences would be the Americans and the Germans and he would gain his

experience with an American unit in France. Whereas Powell admired the

German film industry, Pressburger gained his education in it (Salwolke

1997: 3).

1 See McFarlane (ed.) (2003: 532) for full list.2 Although The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp does contain a limited number of

shots reminiscent of Paul Nashs First World War paintings and warrants furtherdiscussion.3 This is dealt with in more detail in Chapter One.


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Salwolke links Expressionism, in particular the work of Fritz Lang, with

the films of Powell and Pressburger, suggesting a transnational influence

in their work and struggles to position them within the context of Britishcinema.

To describe the films of Powell and Pressburger as foreign and un-

British is understandable as the film-makers employed a number of

European, mainly German, technicians to work on their films. The 1930s

had seen a number of inter European exchanges and co-operation. This

was not only the situation between Britain and Europe, but also between

Hollywood and Europe resulting in, what Tim Bergfelder terms, anincreasingly mobile work force and the emergence of a new type of film

professional, the mobile freelancer (in Higson (ed.) 1996: 21). AndrewMoor also identifies stylistic and thematic similarities between the spy

films of Powell and Pressburger and German cinema. As he points out,

The Spy in Blacks allusions to Expressionist cinema within the conventions

of the spy story are not so improbable. The spy thriller derives from

popular entertainment fiction and deals with disguise, misinformation and

paranoia (Moor 2005: 29).4

As suggested, much scholarly activity and critical attention has centred

upon the European connections of the film-makers and the technical teamemployed. This is based on the fact that Pressburger was a Hungarian

migr and Powell spent much of his early years and career in France.

Also, these Europeans brought with them their own skills, expertise and

knowledge. Figures such as Hein Heckroth, Alfred Junge and Erwin

Hillier were all German migrs, working as either camera operators or

production design technicians. However, Powell and Pressburger also usedJack Cardiff and Christopher Challis, both of British nationality.

Undoubtedly each technician developed a particular style and it would be

unfair to discount their individual aesthetic contribution. Rather, it is possible to argue that the Powell and Pressburger combination was the

dominant force behind the films, as articulated in the extensive and

descriptive screenplay notes which both were deeply involved in, and are

alluded to in the ensuing chapters of this book. This control of Powell and

Pressburger suggests a responsibility for the completed look of the filmand, as noted above, the film-makers did not rely on the same

cinematographer, or indeed technicians, throughout their four films, yet

4 Moor discusses four Powell and Pressburger films in all including Contraband(1940), The Spy in Black(1939), 49th Parallel(1941), and one of our aircraft is

missing(1942).


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Introduction6

the landscapes demonstrate remarkably similar aesthetic qualities. Thus,

although Powell and Pressburger acknowledge the skills and expertise of

their workforce (see Chapter Two for a more extensive account), it is theirauthorial control which determines the aesthetic compositions of their

films, and the film-makers made considered judgements in their choice of

craftsmen, selecting cinematographers and production designers for their

appropriate qualities irrespective of their nationality.5 This is not to

dismiss the notion that the Neo-Romantic affect perceived in the wartime

films of Powell and Pressburger contains an Expressionist aesthetic; as

Bergfelder points out,

[m]ost Continental art directors adhered in their British period to a

classical organization of space and most of the rare aberrations fromthese principles can be explained as highlighting markers for isolated

dramatic effect. But this does not amount to a German aesthetic

(Bergfelder in Higson (ed.) 1996: 36).6

What Bergfelder does suggest is that many of the German technicianswere responsible for the unified aesthetic experience, the reorganisation of

the concept of mise-en-scne a total work of art orGesamtkunstwerk,

designed and composed by the artist (in Higson (ed.) 1996: 36).

That Powell and Pressburger were un-British and outsiders areassumptions which are based primarily on narrative readings of their films.

Indeed, Film Studies has been mainly preoccupied with narrative theorysince the 1970s to the neglect of the aesthetic dimension of a film. The

contention here is that if the films of Powell and Pressburger are analysed

foregrounding an aesthetic approach in conjunction with Reception

Studies, then arguably their films need not be perceived as un-British, nor

the film-makers themselves as outsiders. Instead, they can be analysed

within their contemporary cultural climate and located within a specific art

movement of the period, British Neo-Romanticism.

As a result of the centenary of Powells birth in 2005, there has been

renewed scholarly interest in their films. A number of recent publications

have offered a variety of differing approaches and perspectives on their

work. Ian Christie and Andrew Moors publication entitled The Cinema of

Michael Powelland sub-titled International Perspectives on an English

Film-Maker, offers a number of contributions from a variety of film

scholars. Christie and Moor admit that,

5 Moor (2005) discusses the links between German Expressionism and threePowell and Pressburger films in some depth.6 For a more extensive discussion see Bergfelder in Higson (ed.) (1996).


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during the last decade, critical discussion and research have not kept pace.

Despite a number of biographically based monographs, this collection

represents the first gathering of critical and interpretive essays devoted to

its subject (Christie and Moor 2005: 3).

The subject refers to Powell and Pressburger and, as Christie and

Moor claim, most of the research undertaken has involved either a short

chapter contribution to a British cinema text,7 or a variety of biographies

and filmographies. It has been limited in scope and underdeveloped in

terms of the introduction of new dimensions to their work. In this recent

publication, Christies contribution analyses the ideological stance of filmssuch as A Canterbury Tale, studying the ways in which the film attempts

to promote the relationship between America and Britain. A variety ofcontemporary reviews of the film form part of his analysis where he notes

the films poor reception, suggesting that this may have been due to its

release date. The film had received a trade showing in May, but was

withheld from general release until August which was after the D-Day

landings. Christie highlights the importance of Reception Studies for his

work, and in doing so he acknowledges the puzzlement experienced by

the critics, believing that this was because [t]here was no critical

framework to recognise such aesthetic aims in 1944 (in Christie and

Moor (eds.) 2005: 90). I argue that, although this may be the case, the filmenabled many reviewers to experience an affect through its visual

presentation of the landscape. Christie also invites further work to be done

in terms of the films use of landscape. Comparing it to a number of other

releases of the 1970s such as Days of Heaven (Malick 1978), Tree of the

Wooden Clogs (Olmi 1978) and Jarmans Jubilee of the same year, he

describes it as, a film bearing witness to its time, yet seeminglyremarkably modern in its handling of landscape, time and mysteries of the

human heart (in Christie and Moor (eds.) 2005: 90).

A number of studies of Powell and Pressburger have been undertaken,many seeking a comparison between their work and that of their

contemporary film-makers. This is not the intention here. Rather, this

study offers an analysis of their 1940s films as part of a broader British

cultural and aesthetic climate, that of Neo-Romanticism. This adopts a

new methodology of applying aesthetics to the study of film, thusdeveloping a cross-disciplinary approach by drawing analogies between

the media of painting and film. This involves a conceptual engagement

with the aesthetic theories of Romanticism and the Sublime, drawing

parallels between the use of landscape in the work of the Neo-Romantic

7 See Murphy (ed.) (1999).


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Introduction8

artists and in the films of Powell and Pressburger, ultimately contributing

to a better understanding of their films in context and establishing a

vocabulary for discussion.

Reception Studies

The use of an aesthetic approach as a mode of study involves a variety

of methodologies. The context in which both film and painting are

produced is important. This involves Reception Studies which entails an

analysis of the critical reception at the time of a films release, in this case,

the 1940s. The analysis of representative cultural and critical documents is

considered for the spread of ideas, values and motifs arising from theSublime and Romantic into general circulation; this informs, in particular,the context for the work of Powell and Pressburger, the debates they

provoked, and the approaches that have been taken to their work since.

Writing in 1992, Janet Staiger develops the idea of Reception

Studies.8 Staiger debates the idea that the reader of a text and the producer

are both as important in providing meanings and pleasures. As she

suggests, [t]he use-value of reception studies, it seems to me, is not to

overthrow the author in favour of the reader (Staiger 1992: 4). The

importance for Staiger is to understand the interaction between the two

and the cultural, social and political context of the period. She provides herown definition of Reception Studies arguing that,

[f]irst of all, reception studies has as its object researching the history of

the interactions between real readers and texts, actual spectators and films

As history reception studies is interested in what has actually

occurred in the material world. Reception studies might speculate about

what did happen, and why that was; in fact, part of its project is to explain

the appearance, and disappearance of various forms of interaction. But,

overall, reception studies does not attempt to construct a generalized,systematic explanation of how individuals might have comprehended texts,

and possibly someday will, but rather how they actually have understood

them Consequently, reception studies is not textual interpretation.

Instead, it seeks to understand textual interpretations as they are produced

historically (Staiger 1992: 8-9).

In other words, to use Staigers approach is to demonstrate an

understanding of the ways in which the contemporary reader interprets the

text in the context of the period. Staigers work engages with the critical

8 There have been a number of studies undertaken in Reception Theory. For further

reading see Barthes, (1968), Campbell (2005).


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reader rather than the general film-going public. For her, a product exists

as an art object only because of the fact there is an audience for that work.

For Staiger, to understand an object as art is to understand that art withinits historical context. This is not to suggest that it is possible to understand

precisely the internal workings of the minds of the spectators, nor to

conduct a sociological study or sample study of the population. This

would prove impossible when dealing with past events, in this case, the

Second World War. Instead, it is to interpret the language used in the

reviews and critical reception of both films and paintings. Staiger is

interested in what an art work implies about a particular period in history.Her argument centres on the notion that the film text is not a container of

meanings; rather it requires a comparative historical analysis asexplanation. As Staiger asserts, it is dangerous to assume that all

spectators are the same. She suggests the type of questions which might be

asked using Reception Studies as an approach. These include,

[w]hat types of interpretive and emotional strategies are mobilized by

various spectators? How did these strategies get in place? How might other

strategies, perhaps of a progressive nature, replace them? How can radical

scholars participate in encouraging what Judith Fetterley calls resisting

readers (Staiger 1992: 13).

Thus, emphasis has been placed on the critical reception of Powell and

Pressburgers films and the context in which they were released,9 and Ihave combined Staigers work in Reception Studies with a reading of the

film texts to elucidate meanings.

Some analysis of audience response through the work of the

sociological study by J.P. Mayer of Second World War audiences, later

published in British Cinema and their Audiences, also offers an

interpretation of the films and allows for a historical analysis of the period.

Mayer asked the readers of the magazinePicturegoerto submit a responseabout their favourite films, and it was noted that, by 1945, there was an

adverse reaction to war films. Indeed, the majority of the respondents

suggested that their preference lay, in the main, with American films.

However, many were positively receptive to British cinema, and A

Canterbury Tale was frequently mentioned for its spiritual qualities and

landscape, along with similar attitudes articulated in other letters outlined

9 Whilst acknowledging the work of other film theorists and their work in

Reception Studies, I use only Staiger in order to study the critical reception of thefilms. Also, only certain facets of her work are pursued in relation to British

cinema. I do not take into account race or gender.


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Introduction10

later in this book. Indeed, there are a number of surveys in existence which

account for the popularity of films exhibited during the period. The trade

paperKinematograph Weeklyproduced a summary of box office successesat the end of each year, while Julian Pooles 1987 article entitled British

Cinema Attendance in Wartime: audience preference at the Majestic,

Macclesfield, 1939-1946 provides a useful survey regarding film

attendance in a Cheshire town during the Second World War. Whilst I

acknowledge these sources, they do rely, to some extent, on box office

figures and film popularity, and neither of them detail specific audience

responses to the films mentioned. The popularity of Powell andPressburgers films are not the subject of discussion here, rather, as noted

above, the emphasis of this book remains with the critical reception of thefilms.10

The Second World War provided an appropriate cultural climate for

Powell and Pressburgers films to operate, in a similar way to a number of

paintings executed by a group of artists later labelled Neo-Romantics

(see below for a lengthier discussion of their work). Given that both

painting and film are visual media, and that it is through perception thatthey are evaluated (although perception is not only a visual process), an

analysis of the presentation of the landscape within the frame in both the

film and painting texts is included to create an analogy between the films

of Powell and Pressburger and the paintings of the Neo-Romantic artists.Clearly, paintings and films belong to different media. One is a moving

image, although it consists of a series of still photographic frames which,

when pieced together, appears to create motion. The common ground

between these two media lies in the fact that they are both framed. Both

also contain elements which can be analogous, such as similarities in tone,space, colour, line, mass, scale and their use of light and shade.

These elements have been outlined by artist and art historian, Roger

Fry, who suggests that their various combinations possess a number of

emotional potentials. In an essay written for The New Statesman entitledAn Essay in Aesthetics in 1909, later published in Vision and Design in

1920, he explores the psychology of aesthetics and draws a correlation

between different framed visual arts. Denying that art is mere imitation, he

suggests that the framing device employed in painting, film and even themirror, acts as a process of selection for the spectator. He argues that,

10 Of the four films examined in detail here, Pooles survey produces statistics forI

Know Where Im Going! only. (Admittedly, two of the films discussed were not

released during wartime). This was shown in Macclesfield with admission figuresof 8,073. In the same year, admissions forThe Wicked Lady almost doubled those

of the Archers film with figures of 13,520.


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[a] similar effect to that of the cinematograph can be obtained by watching

a mirror in which a street scene is reflected it then, at once, takes on the

visionary quality, and we become true spectators, not selecting what we

will see, but seeing everything equally, and thereby we come to notice anumber of appearances and relations of appearances, which would have

escaped our notice before, owing to that perceptual economizing by

selection of what impressions we will assimilate, which in life we perform

by unconscious processes. The frame of the mirror, then, does to some

extent turn the reflected scene from one that belongs to our actual life into

one that belongs rather to the imaginative life (Fry 1961: 25).

Frys essay relates more to the separation of actual reality and, what he

refers to as, the imaginative life. Crucial to his argument is the presence

of the frame, a feature common to film and painting. Thus, the framedefines the spectators image and also, more importantly for this work, the

composition within the frame. The same principles apply to both film and

painting and, as John Berger states, [t]he compositional unity of a

painting contributed fundamentally to the power of its image (1985: 13).

Other compositional equivalents between painting and film lie in the

use of setting. The British landscape has long been used as an appropriate

subject matter in painting, either as a result of nostalgic impulses or for

patriotic purposes. As Frances Spalding points out, [m]uch Victorian

landscape painting is either the result of intense looking or myopicnostalgia (1983: 9). By the 1940s, the Neo-Romantics were realising the

potential of the landscape as a means of expressing an inner vision. As

Spalding asserts,

[i]n Sutherlands Welsh paintings, and often in the landscapes of thoseartists he inspired, Minton, Ayrton, Craxton and Vaughan, the concern is

less with the countryside itself than with the emotive landscape in the mind

of the artist (Spalding 1983: 19).

Neo-Romantic settings consist of mountainous landscapes, wild seas,

angry skies and lone figures dwarfed by their surroundings. These all

allude to Edmund Burkes various eighteenth-century literary and

philosophical discussions on notions of the Sublime, (this is discussed in

more detail later in this chapter) and it is these settings, and the ways inwhich they appear common to both painting and film which are explored

here.

Similarly, analogies between the compositions of both painting and

film can be found in the use of light and shade. Both media use carefullyarranged light to produce an effect, and this study concentrates on the use

of light and shade to create a Neo-Romantic sensibility within the


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Introduction12

compositions discussed. Lighting can create mood, emotion and

atmosphere which are relevant; the juxtaposition between light and shade

creates chiaroscuro and this can emphasise solidity and form, therebyguiding an audience response. Film uses lighting set-ups to manipulate the

image on the screen, and, in a similar way, an artist uses colour to create

light and shade which has a corresponding effect. Lighting in both film

and painting provides a basis for observation, investigation and analysis

which relies on the senses and emotion rather than emphasising narrative

significance.

This book finds ways of exploring the formal devices employed by the Neo-Romantic artists and film-makers which enable Neo-Romantic

affect, and the ways in which these affects were given criticalinterpretation and circulation during, and immediately after, the Second

World War. Albeit released five years after the war, Gone to Earth is

included in this study as it offers similar pictorial devices to the three

earlier films, yet a contrast and comparison through its poor reception,

thus highlighting the importance of Reception Studies.

Film Studies and Aesthetic Approaches

Writing in 2000, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith discusses the notion of

aesthetics in relation to the study of film. His concern is that, from the1970s, as a result of the political situation in 1968, film analysis shifted

away from aesthetics and towards narrative theory as a political mode of

study. For Nowell-Smith, the political trajectory has now lost its impetus

and narrative theory is no longer an appropriate method for studying film.

As he suggests,

[f]inding meaning has become an academic exercise, in both good and bad

senses of the phrase. It is useful to set students to carry out but is in danger

of being routinised. Films mean. But they do not just mean. Because theycan be described with the aid of language we can be led to think that

description can substitute for the film. This is the perennial temptation of

what I have called the linguistic analogy. But films also work in less

describable ways. They work as painting and music do, partly through

meaning but partly in other ways; partly in ways that have linguistic

equivalents and partly in ways that do not. The move in the direction of

semiotics in the 1970s was indeterminate and could not be brought within

a rational schema. But the need for such a rational schema has become

questionable. Too many of the things that films do evade attempts to

subsume them under the heading of meaning (Nowell-Smith in Gledhilland Williams (eds.) 2000: 16).


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What Nowell-Smith is proposing is that films operate on a visual and aural

level as do painting and music, and established film theory does not

provide a full means of analysis because it neglects the aestheticdimension. Nowell-Smiths work is thought-provoking, but he leaves his

chapter open-ended and does not suggest a way forward.

To find an appropriate means by which to describe an emotional

response to a film presents a challenge. Recent Anglo-American film

study has been largely preoccupied with narrative theory, drawing on

psychoanalysis, linguistics and semiotics. However, these methodologies

tend to focus on meaning and ideology at the expense of aestheticaffect.11 Narrative study focuses on the construction of the films story as

a set of cause and effect relationships occurring in time. This is based onthe use of characters, causal agents, who in turn enable the story to

progress. As Richard Neupert points out, a [s]tory is understood as a

series of interrelated events, characters, and actions out of which the

audience creates a diegesis, or larger fictional world (in Cook and

Berninck (eds.) 1999: 322). The story and its fictional world are

reconstructed in time and space. Thus, whereas narrative theory offers amode of analysis which is temporally structured, an aesthetic approach is

linked, in contrast, to visual (and aural) perception, and hence to

sensibility and emotion.

To address this shortcoming, this book adopts the vocabulary of anaesthetic approach, traditionally used in the analysis of painting, and

implements it for the analysis of film. It is thus helpful to offer a brief

definition of these methods used here, and to introduce some key terms

devised to make this transition and correlative process possible.

The term aesthetic has historically been used as an expression appliedto the theory of taste. Derived from Greek and Latin usage, it was

introduced to Britain through the work of the German philosopher,

Alexander Baumgarten (1714-1762). Baumgarten was a follower of

Christian Wolff, the rationalist philosopher, and he included the term inhis title for two volumes entitled Aestheticapublished between 1750 and

1758. For Baumgarten, the importance of aesthetics as a branch of the arts

was its relationship with the senses, a point clarified by Raymond

Williams. Williams notes that Baumgartens new use was part of anemphasis on subjective sense activity, and on the specialized human

creativity of art (1988: 31).

11 For a key work offering these approaches see Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson

in Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (eds.) (1985), and Bordwell (1997).


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Introduction14

Prior to the nineteenth century, the Enlightenment trajectory had

witnessed a greater freedom of expression in the arts, along with an

interest in the mechanics of the natural world, resulting in debates aroundlandscapes and aesthetics. The notion of the aesthetic in landscape is

usually explored under the discourse of the Sublime and such debates

around landscape and aesthetics afford a context for the later analysis of

the films examined in this book.

In their compilation of texts on the Sublime, Andrew Ashfield and

Peter de Bolla address the question of aesthetic pleasure suggesting that,

the British tradition insists that the affective is based on humanexperience and human nature, and that by necessity the aesthetic cannot,

therefore, be understood as a separate realm (1998: 4).As noted, the question of aesthetic pleasure and human experience was

partly explored around the notion of the Sublime which is a complex

concept and has no single definition; it is largely based on a group of

writings derived from a number of disciplines such as literary criticism,

psychology, landscape design, fine art and philosophy. These discourses

do not necessarily correspond with one another but contain a number ofcommon themes and ideas.

One such discourse was established by Anthony Ashley Cooper, the

Earl of Shaftesbury in 1709. He wrote of the wild, remote aspects of

nature whereby, The Wildness pleases. Shaftesburys position here iscentral to the concept of the Sublime arguing for the appeal of remote,

inaccessible landscapes suggesting that,

[w]e seem to live alone with Nature. We view her in her inmost recesses,

and contemplate her with more delight in these original wilds than in the

artificial labyrinths and feigned wildernesses of the palace (Shaftesbury in

Thacker 1983:12).

Shaftesburys ideas propose a number of attributes such as inaccessibility,and untamed remote places to be key instigators of Sublime experiences.

The question of aesthetic pleasure was further explored in the work of

British philosopher, Sir Edmund Burke, in his Philosophical Enquiry into

the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautifulpublished in 1757 and

republished in 1759. Burkes treatise provides various scenarios which aresaid to be causes of the Sublime, such as the experience of fear and awe at

the forces of nature. Burke, a scholar at Trinity College, Dublin was to

further develop these ideas, leading him to indicate that one reaction to

nature which he believed made an impression on the mind was that of self- preservation. This reaction was deemed an emotion associated with the

concept of the Sublime which Burke links to the emotions of pain and


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terror. This, according to Burke, may be experienced through an encounter

with splendour. The Sublime object, for Burke, should possess certain

qualities such as vastness, infinity, magnitude and magnificence.One theme which had originally emerged from Shaftesburys writings was

the claim that nature is akin to the Creator. Nature and the divine are

inextricably linked in Burkes view. For Burke, aesthetic affect is

stimulated through natural phenomena, and may be experienced through

the encounter of grandeur and dramatic light transitions. A result of the

Sublime in nature, for Burke, is that of astonishment. As he puts forward,

astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are

suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case, the mind is so entirely

filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequencereason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of the

sublime that far from being produced by them, it anticipates our

reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force (Burke in Ashfield

and De Bolla (eds.) 1996: 132).

This dramatic use of lighting was noted by Burke, and many of his

concepts can be interpreted and used for aesthetic analysis when

examining the films of Powell and Pressburger. One such concept, and its

associations with light, is discussed by Burke as the notion of obscurity.This, for Burke, resulted in a depravation of the senses, culminating in a

sense of fear and terror for the participant or spectator. He suggests that

obscurity, darkness, solitude and silence are circumstances which

contribute to a sense of fear and terror, all stimulating a Sublime

experience which stirs up the imagination. With reference to obscurity he

states,

[t]o make any thing very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be

necessary. When we know the full extent of any danger, when we can

accustom our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension vanishes (Burke inAshfield and De Bolla (eds.) 1996: 133).

Burkes concept of obscurity also relates to darkness. This, he

argues, is associated with danger which is found in dark places, often

associated with paganism. For Burke,

[a]lmost all the heathen temples were dark. Even in the barbarous temples

of the Americans at this day, they keep their idol in a dark part of the hut,

which is consecrated to his worship the druids performed all theirceremonies in the bosom of the darkest woods, and in the shade of the


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Introduction16

oldest and most spreading oaks (Burke in Ashfield and de Bolla (eds.)

1998: 133-134).

Burke cites Miltons description of death which, for him, is linked to

darkness, uncertainty, confusion, terror which is sublime to the last

degree (Burke 1759 in Ashfield and de Bolla (eds.) 1998: 134). Darkness,for Burke, is also linked with suddenness, in other words, stark contrasts

in scale or contrasts between darkness and light. Burke links light with the

Deity and cites Milton when he states, Darkwith excessive light thy skirts

appear (misquoted) (in Bolton 1987: 80). Burke associates light with

expressions of divinity, although this can be traced back to the twelfth

century where the Gothic Cathedrals were built to maximise the use of

light through their stained glass windows. Similarly, he also linksarchitecture to the Sublime experience and suggests that, a perpendicular

has more force in forming the sublime, than an inclined plane; and the

effects of a rugged and broken surface seem stronger than where it is

smooth and polished (Burke 1759 in Boulton 1987: 72).

For Burke, large buildings have the necessary characteristics for the

Sublime as they are linked to emotion, the emotion caused by

astonishment where the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it

cannot entertain any other ... Hence arises the power of the sublime

(Burke 1759 in Boulton 1987: 57).Thus far, for the Sublime to operate, certain situations and features

must occur, giving rise to a particular kind of spectator involvement. For

Sublime affect to be experienced, the spectator must undergo the

sensations of fear and terror without being in actual danger; as Malcolm

Andrews suggests, [i]t is a matter of being taken as close to disaster as is

compatible with still retaining the sense that one is not actually in danger

(the brink of Destruction) (1999: 134-135).

To sum up, for Shaftesbury, the paradoxical pleasure the spectator

takes in being overawed or terrorised by natural forces occurs throughencounters with untamed nature, and, for Burke, they are invariably

instigated by natural features in the landscape, large objects and darkness

and light. Frequent mention is made of nature, its size, vastness and its

effect on the spectator, who is positioned as both victim and participant.

Nature was also perceived by some as a route to divinity, and for Burke,

the ultimate source of the Sublime is divine power. Burke equates the

feelings caused by the Sublime with the subjective inner feelings based on

the object, usually nature. The Sublime is largely bound up with

experience and sensation, and Burke attempts to explain the concept as psychological and physiological in a coherent theoretical way. His

terminology adopts description which enables a transformation of the


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Sublime into a visual concept rather than just an ethical or verbal

consideration. He, along with other British philosophers and writers, can

be seen as one of the forerunners of Romantic concepts of the subject whobrought these theories and ideas to the fore and later provided a basis for

the transformation of the Sublime into Romantic theory.12

As suggested, many of these ideas and concepts figured visually a

century later through the work of the Romantic artists, though

Romanticism at first emerged as vocabulary in the eighteenth century.13

The term is notoriously difficult to define and cannot be used to describe a

specific movement with a coherent manifesto. It might be characterisedmore as an attitude which saw its development in the nineteenth-century

work of a variety of artists of different nationalities. Romantic painting,like the namesake poetry, frequently demonstrated a preoccupation with

the pastoral and landscape, and in particular the wild aspects of nature

which culminated in the Sublime. The Romantics linked art to feeling and

the notion of the individual sensibility of the artist. They were fascinated

by the concept of the Sublime because it represented the human

experience in conjunction with nature, highlighting the fact that the latterhas its own rules despite human intervention.Artists did not observe the

established rules of perspective, often accentuating their images for greater

emotional impact, using figures to mediate the composition and to

disorientate: in short, to create a Sublime effect.Seen as a revolt against the order of the classical painters, the

Romantics frequently looked to the wild, less formal aspects of nature for

inspiration. These they found in remote mountainous regions, avalanches,

violent storms and severe weather conditions. The turbulent sea provided

appropriate subject matter with its unpredictability, as did the pastorallandscape. Romanticism emphasised the individual artists imagination

and response to their environment, and an appreciation of nature which

they frequently saw as imbued with spiritual properties. The Romantics

had a fascination with medieval culture, their work nostalgic, frequentlyharking back to the past. Similarly, and following on from Burke, the

Romantic artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries continued to

use light as an expression of the numinous. For example, landscape artists

such as James Ward painted Gordale Scar in 1811-13, a dramaticcomposition consisting of vertical cliff faces illuminated by a bright light

12 The aim here is to demonstrate the importance of the work of Burke and various

philosophers to the notion of the Sublime rather than to attempt a comprehensive

account of Burkes work, nor that of the philosophers and theorists since the topicis well documented. For a summary account see Ashfield and de Bolla (1998).13 Also in literature, although this study does not pursue this aspect.


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Introduction18

in the sky which breaks through angry clouds. In his description of the

painting Hugh Honour points out its emotional impact, allowing that,

[t]his vast canvas, with its mysteriously dark focal point, its overwhelming

forms and lowering thunder-charged clouds is, indeed, an apocalyptic

celebration of the sublimity of nature and an expression of [his] ecstatic

religious beliefs (Honour 1979: 113).

A more dramatic work by the nineteenth-century painter, John Martin,

is taken from Revelation VI.17 entitled The Great Day of His Wrath

(1852). Consisting of a bright light which illuminates the sky, casting a redglow over an otherwise darkened image, Martin presents a city set in a

landscape in the process of being struck by lightning. The biblicalimplications are apparent in the title, and the emphasis on light can be

perceived as an expression of the numinous through its interpretation of

the Sublime.

Similarly, artist J.W.M. Turner (17751851) used landscape imagery

in conjunction with light to convey a divine message, and frequently this

was translated into the symbolic use of the sun and the moon as

representative, respectively, of the givers of life and death. This was also a

continuing theme in the work of British artist, John Constable (1776

1837). His painting Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishops Grounds(1823) depicts the Cathedral spire bathed in light in an image not

dissimilar to the one in A Canterbury Tale discussed earlier in this work.

Early British Romantic, Samuel Palmer (18051881), continued this

interpretation of the spiritual in nature expressed through the sun and

moon. He incorporated the spectacle of a moon casting light on the

landscape in a number of his paintings, including Coming from EveningChurch (1830), where he depicts a group of worshippers in front of a

Gothic church spire set in a rural landscape. The figures and the church

spire are lit by the moon which is in its complete phase, and appears as anomnipresent force. Palmers use of light in conjunction with the images,

relates to specific emotional experiences associated with a Theistic God.

Many of the Romantic artists, poets and writers were working during a

period of vast economic growth. The nineteenth century saw a move from

an agrarian society to urban expansion with the Industrial Revolution, andit was this period of uncertainty and horror at the changing face of the

landscape which prompted the artistic response.14

14 For a comprehensive account on Romanticism and for further reading see

neo-romantic landscapes an aesthetic approach to the films of powell and press burger

Documents