CFP Reminder: Britain/Hollywood: Revisiting the relationship between British cinema and Hollywood during the classical period

Dear Colleagues, 

Please find below the full Call for Paper for an issue of Film Journal https://journals.openedition.org/filmj dedicated to the relationship between British cinema and Hollywood during the classical period, it aims to revisit the complex dynamics of exchange and competition that bound British and Hollywood film industries and their relation to so called classical norm. 

Please send your proposals by September 1, 2026 to this address: [email protected]. Notification of acceptance will be communicated by mid-Steptember.  Full papers to be submitted by December 22, 2026 [change from November 30 Earlier. 

CFP Reminder: Britain/Hollywood: Revisiting the relationship between British cinema and Hollywood during the classical period. An issue of Film Journal. 

This issue of Film Journal aims to revisit the complex network of mutual influence, collaboration, competition and economic dependency that bound British cinema and Hollywood during the classical period (from the 1920s to the 1960s), highlighting how these dynamics have shaped both film industries and their respective aesthetic orientations, especially in regard to an allegedly dominant classical norm.  

The 1927 British film Shooting Stars (Anthony Asquith, A.V. Bramble) opens with the shooting of what appears to be a Western on the set of a contemporary British film studio. Although its central tragic love triangle of wife, lover and husband belongs to melodrama, Shooting Stars as a movie-about-the film industry is also a slightly satirical take on British silent cinema and its reliance on cheap Hollywood imitations. The male lead (Brian Aherne) is an actor whose athletic performance in Westerns and swashbucklers recalls that of Douglas Fairbanks; his female partner and wife is reminiscent of Mary Pickford; and the lover is a comedian whose films are obviously derived from Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp. The early example of Shooting Stars crystallizes the ambivalent relations of British cinema to Hollywood, both as an artistic model and a dominant and invasive competitor. Shot around the passing of the Cinematograph Films Act of 1927, an attempt by the British Parliament to protect the British film industry from Hollywood hegemony (Street, 2009: 8–10), Shooting Stars’s “mise en abyme”, with its elaborate settings and cinematography, can be seen both as a celebration of the industry’s newfound creativity and economic expansion, but also as an ironic commentary on Hollywood’s hold on popular expectations of what films should be.

In their landmark study The Classical Hollywood Cinema Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960 (1985), David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson note that, by the end of the 1920s, British cinema, like most film industries across the world, appeared to offer a variation of the classical mode of filmmaking as it developed in the Hollywood studio system from 1917 to the 1960s (1985: 378). Although the label “classical” has been used to describe the dominant mode of narrative cinema across the world preceding the emergence of so-called “cinemas of modernity” (such as Italian neo-realism after World War II or the various “New Waves” of the 1960s), this dominance has been often linked to Hollywood economic and cultural hegemony. Sometimes described as a “Hollywood outpost” (Gomery, 2005: 9), British cinema offers an example of such influence and ambivalence during the classical era, with many producers and studios being dependent on partnership with Hollywood majors, while at the same time trying to assert the idea of an independent national cinema. 

A shared language and history certainly helped shape a sense of cultural proximity, facilitating exchanges between the two countries. Although Hollywood has always attracted integrated foreign talents, the formation of classical cinema could be seen in part as a product of such a “cultural community”. The development of the classical narrative mode has been linked to British literary and scenic traditions such as Dickensian novels (Smith, 2003) and Victorian melodramas (Mayer, 2018). Ian Scott, in his 2010 book From Pinewood to Hollywood: British Filmmakers in American Cinema, 1910 to 1969, offered a reassessment of previously neglected British contributions to classical Hollywood. Alongside famous names such as Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, Charles Laughton, Vivien Leigh or Claude Rains, Scott emphasizes the influence of British studio “Moguls” like Alexander Korda, Michael Balcon and Sam Spiegel and the roles of early pioneers J. Stuart Blackton and David Horsley in early US-American cinema and the foundation of Hollywood (2010: 12–16). In turn, US-American directors such as Bernard Vorhaus, Edward Dmytryk and Joseph Losey made significant contribution to British cinema. 

Hollywood’s “anglophilia” also expressed itself especially in the 1930s and 40s through “British” films (Glancy, 1999), with an important cycle of Empire films such as The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (Henry Hathaway, 1935), The Charge of the Light Brigade (Michael Curtiz, 1936) and Gunga Din (George Stevens, 1939); gothic melodramas like Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940) and Gaslight (George Cukor, 1944), a remake of the British film of 1940 by Thorold Dickinson; literary adaptations from nineteenth century classics like David Copperfield (George Cukor, 1935) and Wuthering Heights (William Wyler, 1939), and of contemporary novelists such as James Hilton whose popular works served as the basis of many films during that period from Lost Horizons (Frank Capra, 1937) to Random Harvest (Mervyn LeRoy, 1942) and Goodbye Mr Chips (Sam Wood, 1939). Hilton also served as a screenwriter on film such as the wartime melodramas Mrs Miniver (William Wyler, 1942) on the life and resilience of a British housewife during World War II.  

British cinema during the classical period share with Hollywood an emphasis on genre films, with categories such as the “woman’s film”, “family melodrama” and “film noir” as staples of both industries and sites of tensions revealing bridges and gaps between them. While Hollywood had its own cycle of Empire films, this particular genre has also often been considered as a British equivalent of the American Western (Landy, 1991: 97; Chapman, Cull, 2009: 7), highlighting the importance of imperial narratives and ideology within classical cinema. Alongside these intersections, critical discourse in Britain, especially after World War II has often emphasized “realism” as a distinctly British quality against the escapism associated with Hollywood genres (Ellis, 1996). Although they mostly followed the classical pattern of a psychologically motivated, goal-oriented narrative with a four to five act structure, films such as The Demi-Paradise (Anthony Asquith, 1943), The Way Ahead (Carol Reed, 1944), Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945) and Odd Man Out (Carol Reed, 1947), were applauded for their restraint and documentary authenticity against those that followed the “Hollywood path of lavishness and extravagance” (Ellis, 1996: 71) like Rank’s “prestige films” such as Caesar and Cleopatra (Gabriel Pascal, 1945), or the Gainsborough costume melodramas like The Man in Grey (Leslie Arliss, 1943) or The Wicked Lady (Leslie Arliss, 1945) and the self-consciously artificial worlds of Powell and Pressburger. 

While these oppositions, including the ideas of a dominant realist norm against anti-realist margins have long been challenged (Murphy, 1992), revisiting the notion of realism may help us explore the possibility and the aesthetic specificities of a British “classicism”, as well as reflect on Hollywood’s own versions of realism. Finally, the perceived stylistic and narrative excess of productions such as the Gainsborough melodramas and Powell and Pressburger’s films rather than an imitation of Hollywood “lavishness and extravagance”, may be viewed as challenging the idea of a dominant classicism usually characterized by harmony, transparency and balance. 

This issue of Film Journal thus welcomes articles on the relationship between British and Hollywood cinemas during the classical period. Possible topics include but are not restricted to:  * The works and careers of actors, directors, producers, writers and technicians who worked in both industries.  * The structures of the British film industry and its relations to Hollywood majors. * Transnational productions between Great Britain and Hollywood during the classical era. * The influence of British literary and theatrical traditions on the elaboration of classical Hollywood narrative from Victorian novels and melodramas to the British Music Hall tradition.  * The Hollywood “British” Films of the 1930s and 1940s including Empire films, literary adaptations, gothic melodramas and wartime propaganda.  * Comparison between important genres in both Hollywood and British cinemas such as the Empire films and the Western, melodrama and the woman’s film, film noir or the social problem film. * Realism, romanticism, gothic and escapism, British contributions and challenges to the classical norm.

Please send your proposals for articles (about 500 words) along with a brief bibliographical note, by September 1, 2026 to Hadrien Fontanaud: [email protected]. The results of the selection process will be communicated by mid-September.

Full papers to be submitted by December 22, 2026. 

Bibliography:

Barefoot, Guy. Gaslight Melodrama: From Victorian London to 1940s Hollywood. London, New York: Continuum, 2001.

Bergfelder, Tim, Cargnelli, Christian, (ed.). Destination London. German-Speaking Émigrés and British Cinema, 1925-1950. New York, Oxford : Berghahn Books, 2008.

Berthomieu, Pierre. Hollywood Classique, Le Temps des Géants. Pertuis : Rouge Profond, 2010.

Bordwell, David, Staiger, Janet, Thompson, Kristin. The Classical Hollywood Cinema, Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960, London, New York, Routledge, 1985.

Bourget, Jean Loup. Sir Alfred Hitchcock, cineaste anglais. Paris : Classiques Garnier, 2021.

Bourget, Jean-Loup, Nacache, Jacqueline. (dir). Le classicisme hollywoodien. Rennes : Presse Universitaire de Rennes, 2009.

Chapman, James, Cull, Nicolas J. Projecting Empire: Imperialism and Popular Cinema. Londres: IB Tauris, 2009.

Cook, Pam. Gainsborough Pictures. Londres, New York: Continuum, 1997.

Cowie, Elizabeth. “Storytelling, Classical Hollywood cinema and classical narrative” in Neal, Steve, Smith, Murray, (ed.). Contemporary Hollywood Cinema. London, New York: Routledge, 1998. 178-190. 

Ellis, John. “The Quality Film Adventure: British Critics and the Cinema, 1942-8” in Higson, Andrew, (dir). Dissolving Views. Londres:Bloomsbury, 1996. 66-93.

Gomery, Douglas. The Hollywood Studio System: A History. London: BFI Publishing, 2005.

Glancy, H. Mark. When Hollywood Loved Britain, The Hollywood “British Film”, 1939-45. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999.

Gledhill, Christine (ed.). Home is Where the Heart Is, Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film. Londres: BFI Publishing, 1987.

Hill, John (ed.). A Companion to British and Irish Cinema. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2019.

Landy, Marcia. British Genres, Cinema and Society 1930–1960. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.

Lapointe, Julien. “Hollywood Cinema and Baroque Companionship: An Analytic Critique of David Bordwell’s “Classical Paradigm””, Film journal [Online], 3 | 2016, Online since 01 July 2016, connection on 27 April 2026. URL: urldefense.com/v3/_*...PGDyQ$ .  

Macnab, Geoffrey. J. Arthur Rank and the British Film Industry. London, New York: Routledge, 1993.

Mayer David. « Melodrama in Early Film ». in Williams Carolyn. The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 224-244. 

Mayer, Hervé. Roche, David, (ed.). Transnationalism and Imperialism, Endurance of the Global Western Film. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2022. 

Murphy, Robert. Realism and Tinsel, Cinema and Society in Britain, 1939-49. London, New York: Routledge, 1989. 

Murphy, Robert. “British Film Noir”, in Spicer Andrew, (ed.). European Noir. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. 84-111.

Murphy, Robert (ed.). The British Cinema Book. Londres: British Film Institute – Palgrave Macmillan, 1997, 2009.

Richards, Jeffrey. The Age of the Dream Palace. Cinema and Society in Britain 1930-1939. Londres: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.

Scott, Ian. From Pinewood to Hollywood, British Filmmaker in American Cinema, 1910-1969. Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Smith Grahame. Dickens and the Dream of Cinema. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003.

Street Sarah. British National Cinema. London, New York: Routledge, 1997, 2009.

Stubbs, Jonathan. Hollywood and the Invention of England: Projecting the English Past in American Cinema, 1930-2017. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.