Tom Ryall

Sheffield Hallam University | SHU · Humanities Research Centre

This chapter considers the ways in which British/English films about the Second World War, especially those focused on the home front, have deployed the landscape imagery as an iconographic element of a discourse invariably bound up with issues of national identity. The Lion Has Wings, In Which We Serve, Millions Like Us, A Canterbury Tale, The Dem...

This chapter comprises scattered comments made on film noir by many writers and art and photographic historians. These comments along with other examples from illustration, painting, and photography, focus on the semiotic parallels, the affinities of mood and tone between Hopper and noir images, and the prowling observations of the Ashcan artists a...

Studio ContrastsPre-Gaumont Hitchcock FilmsThe Sextet: Gaumont BritishThe Sextet: Narrative StructuresThe Sextet: Visual StyleThe Sextet: Heroes and CouplesGeneric Contexts: Literature and Cinema“Gaumont Hitchcock” and HitchcockWorks Cited

This chapter charts the topography of the British film industry in the 1920s, when Anthony Asquith began his film career. Asquith entered the film industry in the mid-1920s, towards the end of the troubled silent period when the production industry in Britain was in decline in the face of competition from the American film. The industry struggled t...

This chapter explores the films directed by Asquith during the Second World War. French Without Tears was released late in 1939, a few months after the outbreak of the war, but the film showed no trace of the turbulent context into which it was released. However, it was not long before Asquith threw himself into the war effort and started making fi...

This chapter looks into the problems faced by Anthony Asquith during the 1930s. He joined Gainsborough Pictures, merged with the Gaumont-British, which, during the decade recruited an impressive array of stars, directors and technicians. However, things did not quite work out for the director, and Asquith effectively got lost in the array. He spent...

This chapter scrutinizes the final phase of Anthony Asquith's career and the internationalising of the scope of his films. Since the late 1940s, the major Hollywood companies and the new breed of independent American producers had been making films in Britain and other European countries, generating a more international approach to the business of...

This chapter examines the directorial image of Anthony Asquith that was built upon ‘filmed theatre’ during the late 1940s and through the 1950s. For him the theatre played a major role, with eight of the seventeen feature films he directed between 1947 and his final film in 1964 based on stage plays of various kinds. It was this kind of film that p...

This chapter shows Asquith's contribution to the British film industry. In a career lasting from the 1920s to the 1960s, Asquith directed thirty-five feature films and also worked in a variety of capacities on other films: foreign-version direction, screenwriting, and second unit work. He made a number of short films; some were documentary drama fi...

This chapter sheds light on the post-war British film industry and the turn Asquith's career took during these times. He was well established as one of the British cinema's leading directors on the basis of a diverse output: the middlebrow drama adaptations of Shaw and Rattigan, lowbrow genre films including a comedy thriller and a costume melodram...

This is a comprehensive critical study of Anthony Asquith. The author sets the director's work in the context of British cinema from the silent period to the 1960s, and examines the artistic and cultural influences within which his films can be understood. Asquith's silent films were compared favourably to those of his eminent contemporary Alfred H...

This collection of essays offers the first comprehensive treatment of British and American films adapted from modern British plays. Offering insights into the mutually profitable relationship between the newest performance medium and the most ancient. With each chapter written by an expert in the field, Modern British Drama on Screen focuses on key...

Journeys of Desire offers for the first time, a comprehensive critical guide to European actors in American film, bringing together 15 overview chapters with A-Z entries on over 900 individuals in one accessible and scholarly volume. Since the early days of the US film industry, European actors have consistently been a major force in Hollywood. Scr...

Journeys of Desire offers for the first time, a comprehensive critical guide to European actors in American film, bringing together 15 overview chapters with A-Z entries on over 900 individuals in one accessible and scholarly volume. Since the early days of the US film industry, European actors have consistently been a major force in Hollywood. Scr...

Journeys of Desire offers for the first time, a comprehensive critical guide to European actors in American film, bringing together 15 overview chapters with A-Z entries on over 900 individuals in one accessible and scholarly volume. Since the early days of the US film industry, European actors have consistently been a major force in Hollywood. Scr...

Journeys of Desire offers for the first time, a comprehensive critical guide to European actors in American film, bringing together 15 overview chapters with A-Z entries on over 900 individuals in one accessible and scholarly volume. Since the early days of the US film industry, European actors have consistently been a major force in Hollywood. Scr...