Harrison - From Steam to Screen: Cinema, the Railways and Modernity

Rebecca Harrison is Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow. She received her PhD from University College London (UCL), and has presented her research in peer-reviewed journals and at conferences internationally.

From Steam to Screen uses an extraordinarily productive thematic structure to draw out the myriad of interconnections between cinema, modernity and the railways. Covering class, gender, travel, empire, space and time, Harrisons compelling analysis keeps film at the centre yet incorporates a number of issues of wider cultural and historical significance. The book is simply a first-rate, fast-track way into understanding how both cinema and the railways affected peoples lives at key moments in the last century.

Sarah Street, University of Bristol

Harrisons important study reveals the entwined histories of the railway and cinema in the early British twentieth century. She explores, using rich archival research, how cinema allows us to access neglected spaces and narratives of the past, uncovering the experiences of women, children and other historically marginalised groups. A fascinating read.

Michael Williams, University of Southampton

Cinema and Society series

General Editor: Jeffrey Richards

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Banned in the USA: British Films in the United States and their Censorship, 19331960

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The British at War: Cinema, State and Propaganda, 19391945

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British Childrens Cinema: From the Thief of Bagdad to Wallace and Gromit

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British Cinema and the Cold War: The State, Propaganda and Consensus

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Children, Cinema and Censorship: From Dracula to the Dead End Kids

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Christmas at the Movies: Images of Christmas in American, British and European Cinema

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From Moscow to Madrid: European Cities, Postmodern Cinema

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From Steam to Screen: Cinema, the Railways and Modernity

Rebecca Harrison

Hollywood and the Americanization of Britain: From the 1920s to the Present

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The Hollywood Family Film: A History, from Shirley Temple to Harry Potter

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Hollywood Genres and Postwar America: Masculinity, Family and Nation in Popular Movies and Film Noir

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Contents

List of Illustrations

Vicky Paige and Boris Lermentov meet inside a railway carriage in The Red Shoes (The Archers, 1948).

The eponymous countryman is scared by the oncoming, onscreen train in The Countryman and the Cinematograph (R W Paul, 1901).

The railway, a symbol of modernity, stretches into a rural environment and so collapses the distance between urban and pastoral space in Metropolitan Railway (1910).

A cartoon in Worlds Fair reveals that new technology was just as important at countryside shows as in the metropolis. See Worlds Fair, Chronophone, March 30, 1907.

Architects drawing of passenger rolling stock being converted to an ambulance train. Detail from Railway News, War Department Ambulance Trains as Arranged from the Existing L&SWRs Stock, August 30, 1914.

The pervasive whiteness of the war as displayed in advertising for Bengers Food. See Illustrated London News, Bengers Food, July 13, 1918.

Joan travels down the outside of the train as she attempts to thwart the villain in