British Cinema 1914-1918

By 1914 cinema as an art form in its own right had established itself in Britain’s existing complex popular culture, rivalling the theatres and music halls in a way which was beginning to worry them. On 20 February 1896 the Lumière brothers had presented a programme of films at the Marlborough Hall on London’s Regent Street. These ‘animated pictures’ were soon incorporated into music hall programmes in London and major cities. By 1899, music hall managers and fairground entertainers were regularly exhibiting films, and in the period 1914–1929 the medium rapidly increased its hold as a socially recognized form of popular entertainment. The fledgling film industry utilized techniques common to existing forms of theatrical entertainment: farce, melodrama and mime were key features, and screenings would often share venues with music hall and variety acts. However, it had soon become apparent that a profit could be made from showing films on their own. In a number of towns theatres and even skating rinks were transformed into cinemas. In April 1914, for example, the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in Clerkenwell, London, which had also served as a music hall, put on its final stage production and reopened a month later as a ‘picture palace’. In this way, cinemas provided continuities of theatrical architecture, décor and related conventions, but film was a distinctly separate medium.