Film Appreciation and Cultural Leadership: Rudolf Arnheim, Roger Manvell and Two Books Called Film

MacDonald, Richard. 2014. Film Appreciation and Cultural Leadership: Rudolf Arnheim, Roger Manvell and Two Books Called Film. Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 23(1), pp. 109-127. [Article]

No full text available

Abstract or Description

This article examines the significance of Roger Manvell’s Penguin paperback Film to the postwar generation of volunteer film society activists in Britain. It begins by contrasting the concept of aesthetic appreciation and film analysis found in a prewar film theory classic, Rudolf Arnheim’s Film, translated into English and published in the UK by Faber in 1933, with that found in Manvell’s title of the same name. Manvell was a Leicester film society activist turned Ministry of Information film officer, and his book would be remembered as a “bible” for the new generation of film society activists after 1945. This article argues that at a time when the film society model was expanding, Manvell’s Film envisaged the responsible film society as an instrument of the educated classes advancing the cause of film as a socially responsible, realist, and popular art, rather than a minority art promoted by an intellectual or artistic vanguard

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.3138/cjfs.23.1.109

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Media, Communications and Cultural Studies

Dates:

DateEvent
March 2014Published

Item ID:

14463

Date Deposited:

26 Oct 2015 10:48

Last Modified:

21 Apr 2021 15:40

Peer Reviewed:

Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/14463

Edit Record Edit Record (login required)