Steve Crook

Or when it's repeated tomorrow

Steve

DB7

Not a bad documentary from Mr. Sweet and he did thankfully keep the sleaze to a minimum. Sadly I think he could have focused more on some of the well-crafted low-budget films rather than more or less dismissing them all as unexceptional drama's (which the majority were) - the likes of Clash by Night, Man in the Back Seat and House of Mystery (amongst others) are far more entertaining than some of the Technicolor fluff produced by Rank. Someone like Derren Nesbitt would have made a good contributor.

penfold

Or, put another way, when commissioned to write a book on the undergrowth of the British Film industry, didn't do the cut-and-paste job that many, including some academics, would have produced, and actually had the temerity to do his own research, and personally seek out survivors of the era and interview them sensitively over many visits over quite a period of time...thereby preserving memories and anecdotes that would otherwise have been lost. You may not enjoy his personal style....that's subjective....but objectively, he did something that should be close to our hearts here, and I didn't see anyone else being elbowed out of the way for him to do it.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

narabdela

Very well put.

charliekane

Except I think it clashes with the Jimmy Hanley picture then.

Windthrop

I have noticed in some 60s films people asking for mono versions of LPs. The implication being that stereo versions wouldn't play on those little mono dansette players.

Thats the joke that killed the Music Hall !

charliekane

I think the programme did wander a bit though, with some rather painful narration ('Michael Shepley Rocks !' - oh dear), and I wouldn't consider the Crown Film Unit movies to be 'b' pictures (more a genre on their own). Considering the extent of the material available, thought it odd that we saw the same 'egg and spoon race' clip from The Black Rider three times..

There might have been some mention of the number of British film companies that sprang up in the 30s to produce 'quota quickies' - almost 400 new companies were registered between 1930 and 1935 - and, while he was busy canonising Shepley and Seymour Hicks (which is entirely understandable), overlooked several other people who appeared in the clips - a very young and lovely Geraldine Fitzgerald at one point.

Googie Withers told me that people loved 'quota quickies' in the 30s, and that this was where many people learned to make movies - not just directors but actors, too, like Googie, Margaret Lockwood, John Laurie, Ida Lupino, John Mills, Garry Marsh, the lovely Judy Gunn....

I remember seeing Konga at Garston Empire when it was released, and - undeniably cheap though it may be - I think I'd question whether it was actually a 'b' in the same way that Edgar Lustgarten's pictures of the time certainly were.
(Incidentally, why would the chief of Croydon police be 'bribed' with a colour television to allow filming in the High Street in 1960 ? What was he going to watch on it ? Colour televsion didn't reach the UK until some years later.)

charliekane

I think we need to agree to disagree over the merits of Matthew Sweet. My major gripe is probably with the BBC who evidently now consider him their first port of call on all things British cinema, thus giving a somewhat skewed point of view which I'm not alone in thinking does tend to involve rather more emphasis on sleaze than might at times be necessary.

charliekane

Yes I think there was a theory that you would only hear half of a stereo record on a mono player - not sure that was true, though

Windthrop

The record companies probably hoped that if customers upgraded to a stereo player they would replace all their old records

Thats the joke that killed the Music Hall !

batman

IIRC you hear everything that's on the record, but obviously the sound would not be separated as it would on a stereo, therefore you wouldn't be hearing it as intended. Therefore mono records were preferred by those who still had mono players as they were intended for that equipment. EarlB would be your boy for more accurate info.

charliekane

Sorry, I was being a little facetious - however, there were significant differences between stereo and mono releases in the 60s at least, when the artists would actually record two versions. I remember my mono version of The Beatles White Album was quite different to the stereo copy I bought years later, as was A Saucerful of Secrets.

batman

I'm a bit slow on the uptake today (no change there then). I had a mono record player till about '73 and remember having two versions of Focus 'Moving Waves' album. They both sounded OK on the mono player (although the mixing was different) but the mono LP sounded bloody awful when I played it on my first stereo player ... it was all tinny.

Steve Crook

It was about low budget films and was made to show on BBC4 so was probably made to as tight a budget as the films it was talking about. They probably couldn't afford a "star" of Derren Nesbitt's calibre

Steve

Steve Crook

Steve Chibnall, who was interviewed in the documentary, wrote a very good book about British 'B' films. In that he explains that it's not at all easy to categorise a lot of the films as obviously an 'a' or a 'b' film. A lot of quota films that were expected to be 'b' films and to be shown as second features were actually shown with another similar film in a double bill as co-features. And a few were even sometimes shown as the main feature.

If you think of them as supporting films rather than as 'a' and 'b' then it doesn't make it much clearer, but it does show how Crown Film Unit and other documentaries can be regarded alongside quota films.

Steve