Literature and Sound Film in Mid-Century Britain

Abstract What happened to cinema and literature upon the introduction of synchronized sound film? Literature and Sound Film in Mid-Century Britain studies the paths of film and text following the introduction of synchronized sound in the late 1920s. It asks how British cinema responded to the introduction of sound and how mid-century literature took up the challenge of the synchronized, audio-visual entertainment experience offered by this media change. By examining the technological history of film and its narrative strategies and by drawing links to literary culture, this study offers a new way of approaching mid-century writing and its media ecology. Developing innovative, audio-visual close readings, this book offers a multi-sensory, multi-media approach that reframes the relationships between cinema and literature in the twentieth century. This study addresses a wide range of film genres, such as musical film, screwball comedy, the thriller, documentary, and melodrama alongside the writings of a large group of authors including Elizabeth Bowen, Patrick Hamilton, Evelyn Waugh, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Henry Green, Jean Rhys, and Eric Ambler. It covers an expansive range of films and texts of the 1930s and 1940s and invites readers to comprehensively rethink mid-century literature and media culture.