Pinewood

This chapter introduces the book’s main themes and approaches, setting out the key questions it engages with regarding Pinewood’s history and reputation. Relevant literature on Pinewood and film studios is surveyed as context for the book’s film-historical-materialist methodology combined with a ‘tectonic’ approach applied in the context of film studio analysis. The chapter presents a brief early history and information about Pinewood’s foundation in 1936, its development as a studio facility, and its experience of being requisitioned during the Second World War. The chapter sets out how the book’s particular structure and ‘pivot’ focus produces a micro history which offers new insights into the material, cultural, and social role of film studios during a key period of British film history.

This chapter is based on documentation from the British Film Institute’s Special Collections which offers new, primary information on visits made in 1945 by British technicians to film studios in Hollywood. The visits aimed to gather information on and insights about contemporary Hollywood practices which then informed Pinewood’s post-war policies around equipment and studio infrastructures. The documentation sheds light on strategic areas such as special effects, set design, the evolution of Independent Frame technologies as well as attempts to change working practices at Pinewood during a time of economic recession. The chapter provides an opportunity to reflect on how British studio practices differed from Hollywood’s, with commentaries from technicians and leading figures in the film industry including Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, and cinematographer Ronald Neame.

This chapter analyses how Pinewood’s post-war culture was evolving as a more streamlined, economical style of filmmaking with reference to some key film examples. While these resembled the mid-range budgeted type of films produced before the Second World War, it is argued that the adoption of newer, more efficient modes was key to Pinewood’s identity. The chapter examines the desire to rationalise production methods in 1946 by focusing in detail on five films shot at Pinewood by the Independent Producers group. It concentrates on the methods used by set designers and other technicians working on the feature films Great Expectations (1946), Green for Danger (1946), Black Narcissus (1947), Take My Life (1947) and Captain Boycott (1947). The chapter draws on the trade press’s often extensive reportage of visits to Pinewood’s stages when the films were being shot. It applies the concepts of ‘studio relay’ and ‘situated art direction’ to highlight the many innovative techniques which were integral to the films’ economical and artistic creation.

This chapter focuses on films produced by the Independent Producers at Pinewood during 1947, a key year in which the film industry was under great pressure to produce more films. It examines in detail the new techniques and approaches to set design in the films Blanche Fury (1948), The End of the River (1947), The Woman in the Hall (1947), Oliver Twist (1948), The Red Shoes (1948), Esther Waters (1948) and London Belongs to Me (1948). Experiments in Technicolor design in particular emerge as an important theme, and also techniques used for films shot primarily on location. The chapter concludes with an overview and assessment of the immediate post-war years when Pinewood supported many productions whose art direction practices and working methods were very much situated in the exigencies of post-war shortages and studio rehabilitation.

This chapter examines the role of management and labour during a pivotal period of the studios’ post-war development. Drawing on documentation by Frank L. Gilbert, an executive who worked for the Rank Organisation in 1944-47, the chapter considers how management strategies evolved and assesses their effectiveness. It also discusses the role of film industry trade unions, particularly the Association of Cine Technicians, in responding to economic constraints and pressures for cutbacks, while including several key, inter-related themes including the contribution of women to the studio workforce. It concludes that technicians who worked at Pinewood exercised degrees of creative agency in coming to terms with the constraints associated with budgetary control. The immediate post-war years were key in influencing Pinewood’s survival despite the fluctuations and uncertainties associated with different managerial regimes, and the impact of economic and material constraints.

This chapter draws on The Pinewood Merry-Go-Round, a newly discovered primary source, which is a rare surviving example of a film studio magazine, produced at Pinewood by employees in 1946–1947. This chapter details how the magazine articulated Pinewood’s culture as a social enterprise as well as providing insights into its various working spaces. It brings to life the reality of being a studio employee, the day-to-day activities that are rarely described in film histories. The Pinewood Merry-Go-Round provides a rare glimpse into how studio employees bonded through sports and social clubs, musical and film groups, organising a Christmas pantomime, putting on art exhibitions, writing short stories, sharing studio gossip, and reporting issues of concern such as transport to work and long working hours.

This chapter brings together the arguments advanced in the book concerning how a materialist, ‘tectonic’ focuses on a major, surviving film studio during pivotal years of its lifetime set in train an infrastructure that contributed to its longevity as a major international film studio that is still operating. It constitutes a test case of how a micro history of such an enterprise augments and on occasion revises established historical interpretations. It reflects on the contrasting experience of Denham, Britain’s other premier studio also opened in 1936, but which was closed by Rank in 1952. Why Pinewood survived, it is argued, is rooted in the post-war years, the development of the studios’ physical and material infrastructure and practices, and the experience of producing films within a culture of constraint, key areas which have featured as the book’s central themes.