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This article examines the British Film Weeks of 1924. Drawing on trade, national and local press reports, I explore how these high-profile events impacted on the British film industry’s operations at this time and on broader discussions of British national cinema raging in the public sphere. While most academic literature dismisses the ‘Weeks’ as the failed projects of an ailing industry, I argue that they served as a testing ground for a number of industrial and political initiatives that would influence the ways in which British cinema was debated and promoted later in the 1920s and beyond. Firstly, I would like to thank Andrew Higson, Peter Krämer, Melanie Williams, James Chapman and Maggie Gruner for generously giving up their time and providing detailed and extremely helpful advice on various drafts of this manuscript. Secondly, I am grateful to all those present at the University of East Anglia's British cinema study day in February 2010, whose comments helped me add to and develop my arguments. Finally, I would like to thank the AHRC, whose funding enabled me to complete this research. Notes 1. The Prince's Day for British Pictures, The Bioscope, 22 November 1923, 40. 2. British Films: Prince of Wales Tribute, The Times, 15 November 1923, 10. 3. Ibid. 4. Laying Foundations: The Significance of Last Wednesday, Kinematograph Weekly, 22 November 1923, 47. 5. The Film World: Successes and Failures in 1924, The Times, 30 December 1924, 8. 6. Figures from Margaret Dickinson and Sarah Street, Cinema and State: the film industry and the British government 1927–84 (London, 1985), 13. 7. Paul Rotha, The Film Till Now: a survey of world cinema (London, 1949), 313. 8. Rachael Low, The History of British Film Vol. IV 1918–1929 (London, 1971), 90. 9. Kenton Bamford, Distorted Images: British national identity and film in the 1920s (London, 1999), 116, 90–99. See also Andrew Higson, Waving the Flag: constructing a national cinema in Britain (Oxford, 1995), 32–33; Dickinson and Street, Cinema and State, 14. 10. Higson, Waving the Flag, 32. 11. Andrew Higson, The concept of national cinema, Screen, 30(4) (1989), 37. 12. British Films, Prince of Wales Tribute, op. cit., 10. 13. The Prince's Day for British Pictures, The Bioscope, op. cit., 40–41. 14. Higson, Waving the Flag, 19. 15. Bamford, Distorted Images, 3–33. 16. Rachael Low, The History of British Film Volume I, 1896–1906 (London, 1997), 21. 17. Ibid. 18. Low, The History of British Film Volume IV, 45. 19. M.L. Sanders, British film propaganda, 1916–1918, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 3(2) (1983), 117–129. 20. Ibid., 120. 21. Ibid., 124. 22. A.C. Bromhead Diaries, 14 April and 31 May 1917 (available at Senate House Library, London). 23. Sanders, British Film Propaganda, 127. 24. Ibid. 25. Higson, Waving the Flag, 32. 26. Charles Barr, Before Blackmail: Silent British Cinema, in Robert Murphy (ed.), The British Cinema Book (London, 1997), 12. 27. British Program, Kinematograph Weekly, 17 November 1921, 53. 28. Cecil Hepworth, Came the Dawn: memoirs of a film pioneer (London, 1951), 144. 29. A notable feature of Hepworth's pictures were the lengthy single-takes. In Tansy, for example, a long shot of sheep hurding lasts over one and a half minutes. This was markedly different from the rapid editing that characterised Classical Hollywood film-making. For an in depth analysis of this film see Christine Gledhill, Reframing British Cinema, 1918–1928: between restraint and passion (London, 2003), 38–40, 95–97. 30. The U.S Film Ban, The Times, 21 July 1921, 8. 31. The Bioscope, 15 November 1923, 27. 32. British Program, Kinematograph Weekly, 17 November 1921, 53. 33. Bamford, Distorted Images, 93–94. 34. Anon, British Program, op. cit., 53. 35. Organising the Producer, The Times, February 21, 1922, 10. 36. The Bioscope, 25 October 1923, 43. 37. What the C.E.A. is doing, The Bioscope, 4 October 1923, 51. 38. Edinburgh Section and the ‘Week’, Kinematograph Weekly, 8 November 1923, 63. 39. North Staffs and British Film Weeks, Kinematograph Weekly, 1 November 1923, 79. 40. Northern C.E.A Promise, Kinematograph Weekly, 8 November 1923, 64. 41. British Film Weeks, The Daily Mirror, February 4, 1924, 2. 42. John Hawkridge, British Cinema from Hepworth to Hitchcock, In Geoffrey Nowell Smith (ed.), The Oxford History of World Cinema (Oxford, 1996), 136. 43. Betty Balfour's Million Audience, Kinematograph Weekly, 31 January 1924, 34. 44. The Daily Mail, 4 February 1924. 45. The Daily Mail, 5 February 1924. 46. The Daily Mirror, 4 February 1924, 5; The Daily Mirror, 5 February 1924, 11. 47. All British Film Weeks, The Daily Mail, 18 January 1924, 6; Anon, British Film Weeks, The Daily Mirror, 4 February 1924, 2. 48. Alder Anderson, All British Film Week: Bid for National Patronage, The Daily Telegraph, 4 February 1924, 6. 49. At the Cinema: The British Film Weeks, The Morning Post, 4 February 1924, 4. 50. The Picturegoer, February 1924. 51. Our Honours List, The Picturegoer, February 1924, 16. 52. Three Famous Women in Famous British Films, The Picturegoer, February 1924, 61. 53. Anne Perkins, A Very British Strike: 3 May–12 May 1926 (London, 2006), 23–24. See also Noreen Branson, Britain in the Nineteen Twenties: the history of British society (London, 1975), 91–102. 54. The British Film: Giving its Place on the Screen, The Manchester Guardian, 30 January 1924, 9. 55. See for example, Prince of Wales and British Film Week, The Scotsman, 1 August 1923, 6; Screen Plays: Encouragement of British Film Production, The Scotsman, 9 November 1923, 5. 56. Perkins, A Very British Strike, 24. 57. David Cannadine, The context, performance and meaning of ritual: the British monarchy and the invention of tradition, in: Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983), 101–164; Paul Ward, Britishness since 1870 (London, 2004), 14–36. 58. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism (London, 2006). 59. For a discussion of this film's audiences see Nicholas Reeves, Cinema, spectatorship and propaganda: ‘Battle of the Somme’ (1916) and its contemporary audience, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 17(1) (1997), 5–28. 60. Kinematograph Weekly, 1 February 1924, 2. 61. See Nicholas Hiley, ‘Let's Go to the Pictures’: The British Cinema audience in the 1920s and 1930s, in Annette Kuhn and Sarah Street (eds), Journal of Popular British Cinema, 2 (1999), 39–53. 62. Around the Metropolis, Kinematograph Weekly, 14 February 1924, 42. 63. Ibid. 64. British Film Weeks: A Successful Opening, The Morning Post, 5 February 1924, 9. 65. Kinematograph Weekly, Jan 31, 1924, 32. 66. Eastern Daily Press, Thursday Jan 31, 1924, 4. 67. All British Film Week. Round Up of Norwich Picture Houses, Tuesday 5 February 1924, 3; All British Film Week. Lord Mayor at the Regent Theatre, Eastern Evening News, Tuesday 5 February 1924, 4. 68. Eastern Daily Press, Tuesday 5 February 1924, 3 69. Norwich Reports Success, The Bioscope, 21 February 1924, 35. 70. Eastern Daily Press, Monday 18 February 1924, 3. 71. Liverpool and the British Film Week, Liverpool Echo, Tuesday 12 February 1924, 9. 72. Kinematograph Weekly, 21 February 1924, 35. 73. Manchester Evening News, Monday 11 February 1924, 1. 74. Ibid, 6. 75. The Bioscope, 21 February 1924, 35. 76. The Bioscope, 21 February 1924, 35. 77. Ibid., 34. 78. The Bioscope, 13 March 1924, 60 and 14 February 1924, 37. 79. The Scotsman, 1 March 1924, 2. 80. Quoted in Bamford, Distorted Images, 12. 81. Alex Potts, ‘Constable Country’ between the wars, in Raphael Samuel (ed.), Patriotism: the making and unmaking of British national identity, Vol. III: National fictions (London, 1989). Potts argues that ‘while Constable had been much copied after his death, his work did not come to be seen as paradigmatic of the English Landscape scene until this century’ (p. 168). For film see Higson, Waving the Flag, 27–97. 82. See notes 66, 74 and 75. See also Kinematograph Weekly, 21 February 1924, 75 and 27 March, 57 83. C.A.L., The Week on the Screen: The Irony of It, Manchester Guardian, Feb 9, 1924, 9. 84. Hiley, ‘Let's Go to the Pictures’, 50. 85. British Film, The Parliamentary Debates (Official Report), volume 61, 14 May 1925, column 283. I have used the Prince's Luncheon attendance list printed in Kinematograph Weekly, 22 November 1923, 50 as a reference for those present. 86. C.A.L., A Week on Screen, The Manchester Guardian, 25 February 1924, 5. 87. British Films Avoided, Kinematograph Weekly, 27 March 1924, 52 88. Parliamentary Debates, 14 May 1925, column 275. 89. Andrew Higson, The Discourses of the British Film Year, Screen, 27(1) (1986), 86–110. 90. Ibid., 91. 91. Low, The History of the British Film Volume IV, 80. 92. There is little reference to the BNFL after the Film Weeks. It would seem to have been relegated to the mundane occupation of campaigning on behalf of producers for the right to film events such as the FA Cup Final. See British Films Avoided, Kinematograph Weekly, 27 March 1924, 52

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