The Film-Minded Public

Abstract

As much as pulp fiction, wartime British films appealed to the home-front popular imagination. Mass-Observation founder Tom Harrisson declared that “from the beginning film was of the highest interest to us, we were film-minded” (“Films” 235). Mass-Observation was not alone; although “the British film industry was brought practically to a standstill by the suspension of the Quota Act” during the first three months of the war (M-O A: TC 17/2/G, “Film Report,” 1940), industry leaders like Michael Balcon recognized the need for the nation itself to become “film-minded.”¹ In a 22 April 1940 letter to the Daily Telegraph, Balcon argued “that there is only one kind of film which can properly project the British point of view, and that is the British film” (qtd in M-O A: TC 17/2/H, “Film Stars,” 1940). Although audiences generally had broader tastes — enjoying MGM’s Gone With the Wind (1939) or Disney’s Pinocchio (1940) as much as London Film Productions’ The Lion Has Wings (1939) or Ealing’s Let George Do It (1940) — wartime ticket sales suggest that the British public was as film-minded as industry insiders. Mass-Observation found that “the average weekly audience at cinemas rose from 19 million in 1939 to 31.4 million in 1946, the peak year of attendance in British cinema history. Gross box office receipts trebled” (Richards and Sheridan 12).