Picturing Cornwall

Rachel Moseley

Description

This book explores the history of Cornwall‘s picturing on screen, from the earliest days of the moving image to the recent BBC adaptation of Winston Graham’s Poldark books. Drawing on art history to illuminate the construction of Cornwall in films and television programmes, the book looks at amateur film, newsreels and contemporary film practice as well as drama.

It argues that Cornwall‘s screen identity has been dominated by the romantic coastal edge, leaving the regional interior absent from representation. In turn, the emphasis on the coast in Cornwall‘s screen history has had a significant and ongoing economic impact on the area.New research with an innovative approach, looking at amateur film and newsreels alongside mainstream film and television.  Will appeal to both the academic and the more general reader.

List of Figures

Preface

Introduction: A Journey into Cornwall

1 Landscape, Region and the Moving Image

2 The Outsider and the View: Travel, Tourism and Film

3 Screen Fictions

4 The ‘Real’ Cornwall

5 A Different View

Notes

Filmography

Television Programmes

Bibliography

Index

 

 

Sujets

• Social History
• landscape
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Cornualles
• Película fotográfica
• Segunda Guerra Mundial
• Local history
• University of Exeter Press
• World War I
• Pathe
• Jamaica Inn
• Straw Dogs
• General officer
• World War II
• Television
• History of film
• General
• Winston Graham
• Poldark
• Wycliffe
• Cornwall
• Les Chiens de paille
• Film
• Première Guerre mondiale
• Seconde Guerre mondiale

Informations

• Publié par: University of Exeter Press
• Date de parution: 13 février 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780859890885
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Picturing Cornwall
An exploration of the history of Cornwall s portrayal on screen, from the earliest days of the moving image to the recent BBC TV adaptation of Winston Graham s Poldark books
Picturing Cornwall illuminates the construction of Cornwall in films and television programmes, looking at amateur film, newsreels and contemporary film practice as well as drama. It argues that Cornwall s screen identity has been dominated by the romantic coastal edge, leaving the regional interior absent from representation. In turn, the emphasis on the coast in Cornwall s screen history has had a significant and ongoing economic impact on the area.
Breathtakingly comprehensive and vivid in the telling, Rachel Moseley provides a detailed critical analysis of Cornwall s film and television history. Scholarly yet eminently readable, it takes us on a remarkable exploration of the myriad ways in which Cornwall has been imagined and depicted through the moving image.
Rachel Moseley teaches in the Department of Film and Television Studies, University of Warwick, UK.

First published in 2018 by
University of Exeter Press
Reed Hall, Streatham Drive
Exeter, Devon, EX4 4QR
www.exeterpress.co.uk

2018 Rachel Moseley

The right of Rachel Moseley to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBNs
Hardback 978 0 85989 358 9
Paperback 978 0 85989 077 9

Cover image: Excellent PZ513 by John Turner
John Turner
To everyone who loves Cornwall but, especially, to Johnny and Ned
Contents

List of Figures
Preface

Introduction: A Journey into Cornwall
1 Landscape, Region and the Moving Image
2 The Outsider and the View: Travel, Tourism and Film
3 Screen Fictions
4 The Real Cornwall
5 A Different View
Notes
Filmography
Television Programmes
Bibliography
Index
Figures
Figure 1 A century of family holidays in Cornwall
Figure 2 Ancient, foreign Cornwall in Cornwall-The Western Land (Strand Film Company for GWR, 1938)
Figure 3 The Cornish clay landscape as view in China Clay (British Path , 1964)
Figure 4 Foreign Cornwall in Scilly Isles (British Path , 1963)
Figure 5 Ancient Cornwall: the vignetted view in Eve Helps the Flower Harvest (British Path , 1932)
Figure 6 Wartime woman at the edge of Cornwall in Sailor s Return (British Path , 1946)
Figure 7 Woman as landscape: Summer in February (Menaul, 2013)
Figure 8 Intermedial Cornwall: Summer in February (Menaul, 2013)
Figure 9 Woman artist as art in Summer in February (Menaul, 2013)
Figure 10 Florence at the edge in Summer in February (Menaul, 2013)
Figure 11 Tourist Cornwall in Poldark (BBC, 2015)
Figure 12 Bodmin Moor as Wild West in Jamaica Inn (BBC, 2014)
Figure 13 The troubling modern woman at the Cornish edge in A Seaside Parish (BBC, 2004)
Figure 14 Spiritual reflection at the edge in A Seaside Parish (BBC, 2004)
Figure 15 The Fisherman s Apprentice (BBC, 2012)
Figure 16 Cornwall with Caroline Quentin (ITV, 2012)
Figure 17 Unfamiliar moorscape in Brown Willy (Harvey, 2016). By permission of the Malabar Film Unit.
Figure 18 Skin and rock in Brown Willy (Harvey, 2016). By permission of the Malabar Film Unit.
Figure 19 The Essential Cornishman (Jenkin, 2016; Super 8 black-and-white reversal film). By kind permission of Mark Jenkin.
Figure 20 The graphic qualities of the Cornish landscape in Enough to Fill Up an Eggcup (Jenkin, 2016; 16mm black-and-white negative). By kind permission of Mark Jenkin.
Preface
I can t resist comparing the writing of this book to a journey, given its focus. It s been a long and slightly bumpy one, and I owe lots of thanks to lots of people; I m sorry if I ve forgotten anyone. First of all, thank you to all the people who helped with the research for this book, including colleagues at the BFI National Archive, at the South West Film and Television Archive, the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro (Sarah Lloyd Durrant, Sue Coney) and at STEAM-Museum of the Great Western Railway, especially Elaine Arthurs, who saved me a great deal of time via photocopying. Thanks are particularly due to Lawrence Napper (I m pretty sure he would have done it even without the hevva cake!), Simon and Brett Harvey, and Mark Jenkin, who were all generous, both with their time in talking to me about their work, and in allowing the use of images for the book. Martin Pumphrey donated his late mother s collection of books about Cornwall to me, and I am so grateful for and touched by that gesture.
The Humanities Research Fund at the University of Warwick provided essential funds to support the illustration of this book-thank you Liese Perrin and Katie Klaassen for unwavering support of all kinds. My colleagues in the Department of Film and Television Studies at Warwick have also been generous in so many ways, from supporting periods of research leave, to reading drafts and sharing ideas (thank you Jon Burrows, so much). In particular, Karl Schoonover, as ever, offered incisive, insightful comments at a critical juncture, and I am more grateful for that than you can imagine. The students I have worked with have been formative for Picturing Cornwall in many ways, from undergraduate seminar discussion of key texts, to postgraduate students on the MA in Film and Television Studies (2014-15) who provided a sounding board when I was trying to restructure the whole project. Philip Payton has been endlessly supportive and encouraging of this project, which meant more than he could know, and Gemma Goodman has been my intellectual companion, and friend, throughout-thank you so much. Mom and Dad instilled a love of Cornwall, and Dad identified 1960s cars for me. To Johnny and Ned, in particular: thank you for putting up with me in the last few weeks of writing. I know I was a grump.
Last, but absolutely not least: Kathryn, thank you for keeping me going with emergency childcare, email humour, sewing chat and cups of tea at moments of crisis. Heather: your humour, companionship and care packages sustained me through the year of research leave. I can t believe we ve never met! We must put that right, now that I wrote that f****r!
And Helen-you suggested that I write a book about Cornwall many years ago. I did. Thank you, always.
R.M., 2018
Introduction: A Journey into Cornwall
This is a book about the picturing of Cornwall in the moving image. At the same time, it is about much more than the representation of one particular place. In its concern to identify and draw attention to the audiovisual strategies-the grammar -by which one region has been realized on screen, it is also a book about the wider significance of landscape on film and television, in both theoretical and political terms. The moving image has been central to Cornwall s ability to be imagined, or even seen at all, and how places are made and remade in visual culture impacts directly upon them, often in significant material and economic ways. In the case of places on the literal and metaphorical periphery, unpicking the process of that making allows the possibility of change to become visible. In Picturing Cornwall , I trace the history of one region s construction on screen, from the beginning of cinema to contemporary emplaced film practice, in order to argue for the importance of paying attention to the materialization of region in the moving image.
Cornwall
My earliest memories of Cornwall begin with a long, long car journey, usually through the night, from the landlocked English Midlands to the outermost, south-westerly coast. In particular, I remember being woken from my cosy bed, made up on the back seat (before the days of rear seat belts and child car seats), for the most exciting moment: I had to be awake for crossing the Tamar Bridge from Devon into Cornwall. It was dark, so there wasn t much to see except, of course, for the sign that said Welcome to Cornwall , signalling that we had arrived somewhere else. This was before the time of dual-language signs, so a key visual signifier of difference was absent. It was also before the improvement of the A30, the major trunk road down the Cornish peninsula. It was all about the bridge, about the crossing over and the passing of the sign, even though that was just a moment in an eight-hour drive. Simply in the journey, then, Cornwall was already figured for me, as for most other non-Cornish British people, as remote, different: somewhere else.
Cornwall is the most south-westerly county of England, a peninsula, almost entirely bounded by water: the English Channel lies to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and the River Tamar marks the boundary with Devon, and with England. Save for a short stretch of land, Cornwall is separated from England. It is also a region with its own language, flag, and cultural and ethnic identity. While Cornish is said to have been last spoken in the late eighteenth century by Dolly Pentreath, the Celtic revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries brought the language back, and it was officially recognized under the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages in 2002. It is taught in schools across Cornwall, although government funding for the Cornish language was rescinded in 2016. 1 The Cornish were finally recognized as a national minority under the Council of Europe s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities in 2014, and Cornwall has its own black and gold tartan, invented in 1960 (Kennedy and Kingcome 1998: 52). The ancient flag of St Piran, a white cross on a black background, thought to represent white tin/black ore or rock, was adopted as the national flag during the late nineteenth century (Payton [2004] (2017): 272). Tin, and to a lesser extent copper and silver-mining, along with china-clay excavation