British Popular Cinema Since 1945

British Popular Cinema Since 1945 explores the industrial, cultural and ideological contexts of some of the most commercially successful British films ever made. Drawing upon three decades' experience of researching British cinema, film historian James Chapman considers well-known popular cycles such as the Hammer horror films and ‘Carry On’ series alongside other, critically marginalised genres including the sitcom adaptations and British-made action movies of the 1970s. He maps the changing landscape of film-making in Britain and the vicissitudes of popular taste, examining the differences between the dismissive critical reception of popular films and the response of cinema audiences. With case studies of various cycles of British popular cinema, ranging historically from the Herbert Wilcox-Anna Neagle melodramas of the late 1940s to the Richard Curtis-Hugh Grant romcoms of the 1990s, this book is an important new addition to the revisionist scholarship of British cinema.