Lawrence Napper – författare

Since the spectacular success of The Artist (2011) there has been a resurgence of interest in silent cinema, and particularly in the lush and passionate screen dramas of the 1920s. This book offers an introduction to the cinema of this extraordinary period, outlining the development of the form between the end of the First World War and the introduction of synchronized sound at the end of the 1920s. It addresses the relationship between film aesthetics and the industrial and political contexts of film production through a series of case studies of 'national' cinemas. It also focuses on film-going as the most popular leisure activity of the age. Areas such as the star system, cinema buildings, musical accompaniments, film fashions, and fan cultures are addressed - all the elements that ensured that the experience of the pictures was 'big'. The international dominance of Hollywood is outlined, as are the different responses to that dominance in Britain, Germany, and the USSR. Case studies seek to move beyond the familiar silent canon, and include The Oyster Princess (1919), It (1927), Shooting Stars (1927), and The Girl with the Hatbox (1927).Lawrence Napper is lecturer in film studies at King's College, London. He is the author of British Cinema and Middlebrow Culture in the Interwar Years (2009) and The Great War in British Popular Cinema of the 1920s: Before Journey's End (2015).

Since the spectacular success of The Artist (2011) there has been a resurgence of interest in silent cinema, and particularly in the lush and passionate screen dramas of the 1920s. This book offers an introduction to the cinema of this extraordinary period, outlining the development of the form between the end of the First World War and the introduction of synchronized sound at the end of the 1920s. It addresses the relationship between film aesthetics and the industrial and political contexts of film production through a series of case studies of 'national' cinemas. It also focuses on film-going as the most popular leisure activity of the age. Areas such as the star system, cinema buildings, musical accompaniments, film fashions, and fan cultures are addressed - all the elements that ensured that the experience of the pictures was 'big'. The international dominance of Hollywood is outlined, as are the different responses to that dominance in Britain, Germany, and the USSR. Case studies seek to move beyond the familiar silent canon, and include The Oyster Princess (1919), It (1927), Shooting Stars (1927), and The Girl with the Hatbox (1927).Lawrence Napper is lecturer in film studies at King's College, London. He is the author of British Cinema and Middlebrow Culture in the Interwar Years (2009) and The Great War in British Popular Cinema of the 1920s: Before Journey's End (2015).

British Cinema and Middlebrow Culture in the Interwar Years offers an understanding of British Cinema between 1928 and 1939 through an analysis of the relationship between the British film industry and other ‘culture industries’ such as the radio, music recording, publishing and early television.This relationship has been seen as a weakness of the British film-making tradition, but Lawrence Napper stages a re-appraisal of that tradition, arguing that it is part of a specific strategy of differentiation from Hollywood cinema, designed to appeal to the ‘middlebrow’ aesthetic of the most rapidly expanding audience of the period—the lower middle class.Lawrence Napper argues that the ‘middlebrow’ reputation for aesthetic conservatism masks an audience and popular culture marked by dynamism. ‘Middlebrow’ texts addressed a British audience on the move, physically (into the new suburbs), socially (as upwardly mobile consumers), economically (employed in new and developing industries, and involved in new modes of living), and culturally (embracing new forms of mass cultural consumption, such as the cinema, the wireless and the best-selling novel). The ability of these audiences to adapt cultures of the past to the media of modern life (through stage or screen adaptations) ensured their negative reputation amongst Modernist commentators and intellectual elites.