Overview

This open access book investigates film studios in Britain, France, Germany and Italy between the 1930s and 1960s. During this time, studios faces unprecedented challenges including wartime disruptions, post-war fragmentation, movement of labour and the introduction of new technologies. While the study of film studios has been dominated by the centralized Hollywood ‘studio system’, the authors present new research about the often very different histories of Europe’s film studios, comparing their geographic locations, architectures and infrastructural development. They explore a number of well-known studios including Pinewood, Joinville, Babelsberg and Cinecittà, as well as lesser-known production sites such as Manchester, Victorine, post-war West German studios and Tirrenia as diverse creative and economic infrastructures. Drawing on a wealth of archival sources, photographs, films, aerial maps and visualizations, the book charts how artistic practices responded to transnational flows in film studio expertise, as studios constituted formative, materially based ‘spaces of the imagination’ that produced some of cinema’s most influential films. How studios worked in the past as dynamic, creative working environments that were profoundly influenced by their locations, architectures and personnel, is foregrounded as the authors produce new understandings of how the collaborative and material environments of studio spaces and technologies shaped film production and cultures. The open access edition of this book is available under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the European Research Council.

Full Product Details

9781839025341

Table of Contents

Reviews

Written by a group of experts in British, French, German and Italian cinema this truly groundbreaking book marks a milestone for the historical study of studio filmmaking in Western Europe during one of its most turbulent but also most prolific periods. An admirable achievement. -- Michael Wedel, Professor of Media History, Filmuniversität Babelsberg, Germany This innovative and multi-prismatic volume offers an ambitious reordering of how we might understand European film history during the classical era. Instead of merely seeing the film studio as a series of static compartments facilitating the stable rectangle of the screen image, the authors animate a dynamic and transnational site of collaboration, social experience and political possibility. Just as the contours of the fictional film frame mobilise the conjunction of time and space for narrative ends, so this book too understands the scaled temporal-spatial potential of the film studio as a site of ongoing cultural meaning. Blending archival documentation, poly-vocal argumentation and conceptual acumen, this impressively researched work is going to reset the study of European cinema for a generation. -- Alastair Phillips, Professor of Film Studies, University of Warwick, UK

Written by a group of experts in British, French, German and Italian cinema this truly groundbreaking book marks a milestone for the historical study of studio filmmaking in Western Europe during one of its most turbulent but also most prolific periods. An admirable achievement. -- Michael Wedel, Professor of Media History, Filmuniversität Babelsberg, Germany This innovative and multi-prismatic anthology offers an ambitious reordering of how we might understand European film history during the classical era. Instead of merely seeing the film studio as a series of static compartments facilitating the stable rectangle of the screen image, the authors animate a dynamic and transnational site of collaboration, social experience and political possibility. Just as the contours of the fictional film frame mobilise the conjunction of time and space for narrative ends, so this book too understands the scaled temporal-spatial potential of the film studio as a site of ongoing cultural meaning. Blending archival documentation, poly-vocal argumentation and conceptual acumen, this impressively researched work is going to reset the study of European cinema for a generation. -- Alastair Phillips, Professor of Film Studies, University of Warwick, UK

Author Information

Sarah Street is Professor of Film at the University of Bristol, UK. Her publications include Colour Films in Britain: The Negotiation of Innovation 1900-1955 (2012) and Deborah Kerr (2018). She was the Principal Investigator on the ERC Advanced Grant STUDIOTEC (2019-25), collaborating with this book’s co-authors. Tim Bergfelder is Professor of Film at the University of Southampton, UK. His publications include Stars and Stardom in Brazilian Cinema (2018) and The German Cinema Book (2020). Richard Farmer is Lecturer in Film and Media at University College London, UK. His publications include The Food Companions: Cinema and Consumption in Wartime Britain, 1939-45 (2011) and Cinema and Cinema-going in Wartime Britain, 1939-45: The Utility Dream Palace (2016). Eleanor Halsall is a Visiting Academic at the University of Southampton, UK. She has previously contributed to The German Cinema Book (2020) and Die Kamera im Fokus (2024). Sue Harris is Professor Emerita of Film Studies at Queen Mary University of London, UK. Her publications include Bertrand Blier (2001) and An American in Paris (2015). Morgan Lefeuvre is an independent film historian and lectures at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Her publications include Les Manufactures de nos rêves, les studios de cinéma français dans les années 1930 (2021). She recently undertook a research project on Marcel Pagnol. Carla Mereu Keating is Honorary Senior Research Associate at the University of Bristol, UK. She is the author of The Politics of Dubbing (2016). Catherine O'Rawe is Professor of Italian Film and Culture at the University of Bristol, UK. Her publications include Stars and Masculinities in Italian Cinema (2014) and The Non-Professional Actor: Italian Neorealist Cinema and Beyond (2024).

Tab Content 6

Countries Available