Structures of Desire: British Cinema, 1939-1955 (Cultural Studies Cinema (Dis))

Examines the cultural, historical, and ideological factors influencing British cinema during World War II and the postwar years, with attention to male-female relationships as well as to utopian desires for a better postwar world.

This book examines representations of desire in British cinema during a period of turbulent change. In addition to investigating male-female desire in status quo “realist” films and in various “anti-realist” movements represented by Gainsborough Melodrama and the work of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, the book also explores the various factors that affected utopian aspirations for a better postwar world and how these desires eventually became restrained by the dominant forces of conservative ideology. Structures of Desire provides new perspectives on previously recognized film movements such as Ealing Comedy and Gainsborough Melodrama while also offering analyses of interesting but neglected films such as Love on the Dole (1941), Perfect Strangers (1945), They Made Me a Fugitive (1947), The Bad Lord Byron (1949), and Madeleine (1950).