Books by Jonathan Stubbs
Drawing on new archival research into Hollywood production history and detailed analysis of indiv... more Drawing on new archival research into Hollywood production history and detailed analysis of individual films, Hollywood and the Invention of England examines the surprising affinity for the English past in Hollywood cinema. Stubbs asks why Hollywood filmmakers have so frequently drawn on images and narratives depicting English history, and why films of this type have resonated with audiences in America. Beginning with an overview of the cultural interaction between American film and English historical culture, the book proceeds to chart the major filmmaking cycles which characterise Hollywood's engagement with the English past from the 1930s to the present, assessing the value of English-themed films in the American film industry while also placing them in a broader historical context.
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Journal Articles by Jonathan Stubbs
Journal of British Cinema and Television, 2021
The negotiation of bilateral co-production agreements had a major impact on European film-making ... more The negotiation of bilateral co-production agreements had a major impact on European film-making from the 1950s to the 1970s. These agreements also provided the basis for the closer integration of Europe's film industries within what was then the European Economic Community (EEC). However, the British government was slow to adopt co-production arrangements and British film-makers tended to be more reticent about using them once they were made available. This article examines the British experience of European co-production during this period, focusing on the negotiation and implementation of the Franco-British co-production agreement of 1965 in the context of broader debates about film production and policy within the EEC. Particular attention is given to Someone Behind the Door (1971), a proposed Franco-British film which was ultimately made as a collaboration between French and Italian production companies after delays on the British side caused the French producer to withdraw from the UK. The correspondence collected by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) as the proposal for Someone Behind the Door was processed – including input from film union and producer associations – provides a unique insight into the bureaucratic policies and procedures which encumbered European co-production in Britain. While continental film-makers established comfortable habits of cooperation, British co-production was stymied from the outset by a misalignment between the interests of Britain's government, its film unions and its producers.
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International Journal of Cultural Policy, 2021
This article examines the formulation and impact of British film policy concerning the unificatio... more This article examines the formulation and impact of British film policy concerning the unification of European film industries from the immediate post-war era to the end of the 1970s. It focuses on the activities of the Board of Trade, which was instrumental in determining British policy responses to integrationist film movements in Europe as well as the broader process of European unification. Various schemes to pool filmmaking resources and remove trade barriers emerged on the continent, both within and outside the EEC. Some depended on intergovernmental cooperation while others called for the creation of supranational bodies, which would govern film production and trade. Concurrently, the proliferation of film co-production treaties bound the major filmmaking nations of Europe into close practices of cooperation. As this article shows, the UK government stood at the margins of Europe’s intergovernmental film diplomacy, assuming a defensive, protectionist position which reflected British resistance to supranational governance.
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Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies , 2020
This article examines the ways in which the British colonial government used cinema to represent ... more This article examines the ways in which the British colonial government used cinema to represent Cyprus to audiences in Britain during the 1920s and early 1930s. The primary focus is the troubled production and exhibition history of the 1929 film Cyprus, but the article also considers the earlier production Cyprus Cinematograph Film (1924), plus two later sound films derived from material in the Cyprus film: Almost Arcady (1930) and A Mediterranean Island (1932). I argue that these films reflect the Cyprus government’s filmmaking inexperience, as well as their difficulty in determining how best to showcase their colonial project to domestic audiences. As a result, the films reveal conflicting impulses in their representation of the island, soberly cataloguing the historical and geographical features of the island on the one hand, but also seeking to exoticise an unfamiliar environment and population for western consumption. The article concludes by comparing the filmmaking efforts of the Cyprus government with contemporaneous films produced by the Italian government in the nearby Dodecanese islands and by the British government through the Empire Marketing Board.
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Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2020
Drawing on oral history interviews, contemporary newspaper sources and the archives of the Britis... more Drawing on oral history interviews, contemporary newspaper sources and the archives of the British colonial administration, this article examines the experiences of the Turkish Cypriot cinema audience in Nicosia, the capital city of Cyprus, during the 1950s. This period was marked by rising anti-colonial and intercommunal conflict, but film exhibition nevertheless flourished and the cinema played a substantial role in the social, economic and political lives of many Turkish Cypriots. Memories of cinemagoing in Nicosia are marked by the experience of British colonial power, but they also reflect commercial interactions with the city’s more dominant Greek Cypriot community. The encounter with Turkish culture through the viewing of films imported from Turkey also contributed to the development of nationalist political aspirations. As Nicosia’s Turkish and Greek communities became increasingly polarised, cinemagoing experiences were influenced more and more by external political events. Nevertheless, the cinema of the 1950s is remembered as a communal, egalitarian and romantic space which provided the means to escape from everyday tensions.
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Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Aug 2016
The final years of British rule in Cyprus were marked by the colonial government’s use of authori... more The final years of British rule in Cyprus were marked by the colonial government’s use of authoritarian measures to impose control over the local press. The most problematic publication during the 1955–60 period was the Times of Cyprus, an English-language newspaper edited and owned by experienced British journalist Charles Foley. This article examines the fraught relationship between Foley’s newspaper and the colonial government against a backdrop of social instability and political violence. In particular, it focuses on the role the newspaper played as a conduit of information between Cyprus and Britain, conveying the experience of colonial rule to influential readers in London and reporting British support for self-determination to a Cypriot reading public. This ability to undermine official control over the flow of intelligence between the colonial periphery and its metropolitan centre unsettled the British administration, leading to repeated but ultimately unsuccessful efforts to proscribe the newspaper.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03086534.2016.1210254
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Journal of European Popular Culture, Oct 2015
This article examines the representation of Cyprus in post-imperial British popular culture with ... more This article examines the representation of Cyprus in post-imperial British popular culture with particular reference to the film The High Bright Sun (1965), a mainstream British production depicting the decline of British imperial authority during the ‘Cyprus Emergency’. The film is contextualized first in relation to contemporaneous cycles of British television dramas and novels representing Cyprus, and second in relation to ongoing political events as they intruded on the film’s production history. The article proceeds to examine the ways in which The High Bright Sun was marketed to audiences in Britain and its reception in the British press. It argues that while the marketing campaign attempted to detach the film from its immediate political context, British reviewers were eager to make unfavourable associations between events shown on-screen and the ongoing conflict in Cyprus.
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Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Mar 2015
This article examines British documentary films about Cyprus during the British colonial era, pri... more This article examines British documentary films about Cyprus during the British colonial era, primarily the post-war period. Produced against a background of political upheaval, these documentaries reflect a highly fluid relationship between colony and metropolis. An initial sequence of travelogues was followed by several documentaries which promoted the apparent success of British development projects on the island, positioning it as a showcase for the benefits of enlightened imperial power. The subsequent militarisation of Cyprus in the mid-1950s led to films which endorsed Cyprus as a strategic outpost of the British Empire but which also acknowledged the emergence of local resistance to British rule. Tracing the production and reception of these films, this article considers the ways in which documentary representations of Cyprus shaped perceptions of the island and its relationship to Britain. More generally, the article addresses the diffusion of documentary practices in the British Empire and the perceived educational value of documentary films among both colonial and British domestic audiences.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01439685.2015.1027561#abstract
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Media History, Jun 17, 2014
This article examines the development of an indigenous Turkish language press in Cyprus during th... more This article examines the development of an indigenous Turkish language press in Cyprus during the British colonial period (1878–1960). It argues that Turkish Cypriot newspapers were highly influential in the propagation of ethno-nationalist ideology, endorsing separate Greek and Turkish communal identities on the island and promoting ethnic attachments to the neighbouring Turkish Republic. The development of Turkish Cypriot newspapers was also shaped by the strict anti-nationalist censorship of the British colonial government and by the intensification of the Greek Cypriot campaign for unification with Greece. Finally, this article traces the conflicts between three rival newspapers in the immediate aftermath of the British colonial period as battle lines were drawn in the new nation.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13688804.2014.926081#.U6E8z_mSySo
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Journal of Popular Culture, 2014
This article examines the development of the ‘swinging London’ discourse in American culture duri... more This article examines the development of the ‘swinging London’ discourse in American culture during the early 1960s. The critical reception of the film Tom Jones (1963) demonstrates that while this discourse ostensibly celebrated youth and modernity, challenging dominant perceptions about Britain, it also characterized contemporary Britain in terms of a dynamic co-existence of old and new.
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Journal of American Studies of Turkey, Oct 2013
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Exemplaria: Medieval, Early Modern, Theory , 2009
This article examines the development of Hollywood representations of medieval Britain in Ivanhoe... more This article examines the development of Hollywood representations of medieval Britain in Ivanhoe (1952) and Knights of the Round Table (1953). Both films were initially developed in the mid 1930s before being postponed on the eve of war, revised by new producers, and put into production in the early 1950s. Drawing on archived screenplays, this article shows that the films were drafted and redrafted across three decades in response to shifting political contexts. This layered creative process reveals how both films were able to accommodate subversive and occasionally contradictory political themes, and sheds light on the rich relationship between modern America and medieval Britain. As broader political events tested America's relationship to its own historical ideals, images of Britain's Middle Ages functioned as a cultural space used to articulate ideas about democracy and race relations at home, and interventionism abroad.
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Journal of British Cinema and Television, 2009
This article examines the impact of American ‘runaway’ production in Britain with emphasis on the... more This article examines the impact of American ‘runaway’ production in Britain with emphasis on the early 1960s. I examine why Britain became the preferred location for Hollywood producers seeking to relocate internationally in the post-war period, and the ramifications of this process for the film industry in Britain. I argue that Hollywood producers working in Britain prioritised films which depicted Britain and British history in order to maximise the payments they received from the Eady levy. The role of the Eady levy on British runaway production is further examined through three case studies based on material from British and American archives. The production history of Lawrence of Arabia (1962) reveals how carefully British identity had to be negotiated by its producers in order to secure Eady payments, while the production of Becket (1964) offers an insight into the selection of a British production base ahead of other European locations. Finally, analysis of My Fair Lady (1964), a film produced in Hollywood but seriously considered for runaway production, reveals why the impulse to outsource films to Britain did occasionally have limits.
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Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2008
This article examines why Hollywood relocated production abroad in the early 1950s, why so many o... more This article examines why Hollywood relocated production abroad in the early 1950s, why so many of these runaway films came to Britain, and how the filmmaking conditions in Britain influenced the films produced by Hollywood companies. Particular attention is given to the primary factor motivating the relocation of Hollywood production to Britain in the early 1950s: the 1948 Anglo-American Film Agreement and the ‘blocking’ of Hollywood revenues in Britain. This economic context is followed by a consideration of the practical issues which faced Hollywood producers as they set up operations in Britain in during the early 1950s, and in particular the resistance they faced from British trade organisations and the media. Finally, the financial benefits and practical problems that marked the relocation of production to Britain in practice are explored through a case study examining the transatlantic production history of the 1951 Warner Bros. film Captain Horatio Hornblower.
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Book Chapters by Jonathan Stubbs
Elisabetta Gagetti and Monika Woźniak (eds.), Quo Vadis la Prima Opera Transmediale (Rome: Accademia Polacca Roma, 2017), 2017
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Reviews and Essays by Jonathan Stubbs
Reviews in History, 2018
Lee Grieveson's bold historical analysis of the relationship between media and capital is nothing... more Lee Grieveson's bold historical analysis of the relationship between media and capital is nothing if not timely. As I write, a new wave of consolidation among traditional telecommunication and media companies in America is concentrating unprecedented wealth and power in the hands of an ever-narrowing elite. Concurrently, a new generation of technology companies led by Google and Facebook have established themselves as lucrative and persuasive gateways between the public and the world around them. The inequalities created by these concentrations of wealth have become unimaginably vast. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, whose estimated personal fortune of $150 billion derives in large part from media distribution, recently declared 'the only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel'.(1) But while Bezos shoots his money at the moon, Amazon's median full-time salary is a dollar below America's national living wage.(2) Grieveson makes a compelling case that this dominant form of political economy, and the particular role of the media within it, took shape during the inter-war period. It was at this time, he argues, that 'a corporate media industry was established, and then synchronised with finance capital and other large technology and telecommunications companies, as part of a corporate-dominated consumer economy' (p. 1). In 500 densely printed pages, he maps out the entrenchment of this industrial system while also examining specific ways in which mass media (particularly cinema) has been pressed into the service of corporations and states. Critical to this project is the broader but largely overlooked history of cinema's use as a practical, pedagogic tool.
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Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Nov 2014
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Books by Jonathan Stubbs
Journal Articles by Jonathan Stubbs
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03086534.2016.1210254
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01439685.2015.1027561#abstract
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13688804.2014.926081#.U6E8z_mSySo
Book Chapters by Jonathan Stubbs
Reviews and Essays by Jonathan Stubbs
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17411548.2016.1234838
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03086534.2016.1210254
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01439685.2015.1027561#abstract
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13688804.2014.926081#.U6E8z_mSySo
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17411548.2016.1234838
This paper will examine the role which supplementary DVD materials play in one of the key Hollywood genres: the historical film. In this genre, mini-documentaries detailing the relationship between the film and its historical setting have become a major component in ‘special edition’ DVD releases. Indeed, they are packaged even with films which make few claims for historical accuracy, such as 300 (2006) and Sweeney Todd (2007). Drawing on a range of contemporary ‘special edition’ DVDs, I will explore the ways in which supplementary materials allow films to assert both their relationship with history and their participation in the historical film genre.
This paper investigates the urban, architectural and spatial mise-en-scène of major western 21st-century science fiction film dystopias portraying urban societies under totalitarian rule. While extensive scholarship exists on architecture, the city and power and similarly on architecture, the city and film, the triad of architecture/city, film and power remains under-researched. This paper therefore concentrates on how power is mediated through built form on screen. It also investigates whether recurring visualizations and meaning(s) of built form concerning power can be observed. Considering key works about the built environment and its relation to power, this study also uses a semiological approach in order to assess the symbolic-metaphorical use of urban, architectural and spatial form. We assume that producers, directors, set-designers, screenwriters on one side and the film audience on the other „speak a similar language‟ and share cultural codes and symbols. The frequent recurrence of specific urban, architectural and spatial visualizations in science fiction films which mediate specific meanings of power may be proof of a widespread, conscious or subconscious reading of these visualizations and understanding of their meaning(s) with regards to power – meanings which may therefore be deeply rooted in the culture of western societies.