Cinema and Society

Presiding over the "golden era" of the British Film Industry from the mid to late 1940s, J. Arthur Rank financed movies such as Oliver Twist , The Red Shoes , Brief Encounter , Ceasar and Cleopatra and Black Narcissus . Never Before, and never since, has the industry risen to such heights. J. Arthur Rank charts every aspect of the robust film culture that Rank helped to create. Having started out with relatively little knowledge of the cinema, Rank's sponsorship was to bring about astounding progress within the industry. He bought the Odeon and Gaumong-British chains, made inroads into the American marked and founded the Rank "Charm School" to create a genuine British star system. He invested millions in a radical new technique, "Independent Frame", commissioned newsreels and children's film and set up a "B" Feature training studio. He opened an animation department to rival Disney and even acquired a meteorological company so that he could predict the weather during shoots. By establishing an organization comparable in size to any of the major Hollywood studios, Rank briefly managed to reconcile and consolidate the competing demands of "art" and "business" - an achievement very much absent from today's diminished and fragmented film industry. Macnab goes on to explain the eventual collapse of the Rank experiment amidst the economic and political maelstrom of post-war Britain, highlighting the problems still facing the industry today. Meshing archival research with interviews with Rank's contemporaries and members of his family, this definitive study firmly restores rank to this rightful place at the hub of British film history.