WickedLadyKiller

I watched 'Contraband' (1940) last night I enjoyed the fun it had with the blackout. The film has been described as one of the first British films of the Second World War to feature the blackout - but what seems unusual to me is the fact that its blackout shots are shot (or at least set) outside. Other films I have seen reference the blackout by showing people inside their brightly-lit homes putting up the blackout curtains or switching off lights rather than having protagonists go roaming in the gloaming.

Does anyone know of any other films which, when the lights went down in the auditorium, decided to keep the lights off on the screen too?

Was any special technique employed to shoot such scenes?

Steve Crook

The major "special technique" used was Powell & Pressburger
They did tend to specialise in the unusual.

This was only their second film together and although they used a quite dark screen in later films like A Canterbury Tale where the screen is quite dark for the first 10 minutes or so. There had been some quite dark scenes in their previous film, The Spy in Black which also starred Conrad Veidt and Valerie Hobson

The chap behind the camera was Freddie Young who went on to make a few decent films, especially with David lean who also did some early work for Powell & Pressburger.

Powell & Pressburger were both well aware of techniques used in other countries, especially German expressionist cinema. They might have seen something there.

Is Contraband the sexiest film of the 1940s?

Steve

Steve Crook

PaPAS

WickedLadyKiller

I'd forgotten about the beginning of Canterbury Tale - now there's a film that uses the blackout to place characters in a sticky situation! Honk!

One of my friends in America knows John Sweet, and she says that he is a lovely man and a little bemused by the interest he receives as a result of his role in CT.

penfold

Steve and I can vouch for that, as we met him on the last occasion he visited Canterbury. I have to say he did seem to quite enjoy the attention, and when he was introduced on stage with Lady Attenborough, there was a marked spring in his step. His family were charming too....and even more bemused, as they hadn't really realised he was some sort of cult star over here...

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

Multi-Region

The movieposter (rare):

Steve Crook

That's a lovely poster. It's the American one. We can tell because it mentions The Red Shoes and AMOLAD (as Stairway to Heaven)

A Canterbury Tale wasn't released in the States until January 1949, by which time TRS had been released there (October 1948).

Martin Scorsese sent his poster for inclusion in the exhibition A Canterbury Tale: Michael Powell and the Neo-Romantic Landscape which was part of the Michael Powell Festival, Canterbury 9th-16th October, 2004

Steve

Everett Sloane

WickedLadyKiller, do you know the book Blackout: Reinventing Women for Wartime British Cinema, by Antonia Lant? Might be up your street if this is your area of interest. Amazon has second hand copies.

WickedLadyKiller

I have read Lant's book - and most informative it is too - and it points to films such as Perfect Strangers (1945) when discussing the blackout. Much of the book concerned with films such as Brief Encounter which are useful when investigating wartime representations of women, but which have less to say (if anything) about the cultural phenomenon of the blackout.

What I'm really interested in is films which attempt to show the blackout on screen - by no means an easy task. Any suggestions?

"Made from peanuts, I suppose"

Steve Crook

I think that Contraband is one of the best. It is not only shows the blackout in a few scenes but it also shows many lesser aspects of it. They use it when our heroes first go to London and later when Capt. Hardt attracts the attention of the police by turning on the lights in the building. It also shows things like the necessity of torches (not too bright like Bob Johnson's in A Canterbury Tale), the myths about closing your eyes for a while before going out to accustom yourself to the blackout, markings on cars, curbstones, lampposts, pillar boxes etc.

Another one that shows some aspects of the blackout, although only really in passing, is yet another Powell and Pressburger film, The Small Back Room (1949). There are a few scenes in that where they are out and about in blacked out London.

The IMDb lists 105 titles with keyword blackout. 79 of those are feature films. But I think some of them are using it to mean it in the sense of fainting rather than a wartime blackout.

Steve

WickedLadyKiller

I have read some really interesting material in Kine Weekly about cinema exhibitors' reactions to the blackout.

The cinemas often used external lighting to advertise their location and the nature of the pleasures that they offered, but were forced to turn these lights off when the war started. Also, some cinemas offered patrons the chance to stay in the auditorium at the end of an evening's screening so that the lights could be slowly dimmed, thus allowing patrons the chance to adjust their vision for the darkness outside.

The reillumination of the cinemas during VE and VJ Day celebrations were understood by many contemporary commentators to be symbolically represent the end of the benighted landscape of the war. It didn't last long, though. The post-war energy crisis saw the reintroduction of the blackout.

"Made from peanuts, I suppose"

Steve Crook

Also, during the blitz, they used to put the words "Air Raid" up on the screen (discreetly) so that patrons had the option of staying there or heading for the shelters.

During the first world war, many cinemas and theatres in the big cities were apparently closed because of the fear of them being bombed and so killing a large number of people gathered in one place.

The same closure policy was apparently being considered at the start of WWII - until Korda rushed out The Lion Has Wings and the authorities saw that cinemas could be useful to spread propaganda and general information.

Theatre people tend to still say that the theatre is "dark" when it's closed to the public when there is no show on there. I wonder if that derives from the blackout?

Steve

WickedLadyKiller

The policy was not only considered but actually implemented for a couple of weeks in September 1939. Theatres and cinemas were ordered to close in an act George Bernard Shaw described as 'a masterstroke of unimaginative stupidity'. Pubs did good business as a result, and many exhibitors suggested that the only way to combat this outbreak of public drunkenness was to reopen the cinemas.

Later in the war, plans were discussed, but never introduced, which would have given British cinemagoers a monthly film ration.

"Made from peanuts, I suppose"

Nick Dando

I'd say that it's more to do with the lack of lime light to illuminate the stage.

Nick

Nick Dando

Cottage to Let uses the breaking of the blackout to good effect, when Alistair Sim opens the curtains suddenly whilst in a sticky situation.

Nick

Steve Crook

Probably. I think it almost certainly predates the wartime blackout.

Steve