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Michael Balcon
"Here...many films were made projecting...the British character."
2016: Forever Ealing Book Reviewed, Photos & In Stock
Rather than attempt a filmography for Michael Balcon, it seems more appropriate to list the key positions he held.
His function in British cinema is essentially that of a chief executive, a studio head, rather than a producer in the creative sense of the word.
1921
1924
1936
1937
1959
1964
Some of the films he produced for Gainsborough Pictures are: The Pleasure Garden (1925), The Mountain Eagle ,
The Lodger (1926), Woman to Woman (1929), Rome Express (1932), The Good Companions, I was a Spy (1933),
His name appears as producer on most Ealing films of the period of his incumbency, but one needs to check the name of the associate producer to discover
who actually performed the producer's function on an individual Ealing film.
'the most rewarding years in my personal career, and perhaps
one of the most fruitful periods in the history of British film production.'
Balcon was always concerned to establish a recognisable British industry, believing 'that a film, to be international, must be
thoroughly national in the first instance.' While at Gainsborough, however, as well as making such wholly indigenous works as the Jessie Matthews
musicals,
Balcon also imported American stars and made films with an eye consciously on the US market. He nevertheless bewailed the loss of
British talent to America, later claiming that
scaped to Ealing, where he spent:
'...before the war a debilitating effect was had upon British films by the fact that it was generally the British technician's and the
British actor's ambition to go to Hollywood as the Mecca of filmmaking.'
The plaque he had erected at Ealing when the studio was sold in 1955 (the classic The Ladykillers was in fact in production at the time of the sale)
said:
'Here during a quarter of a century many films were made projecting Britain and the British character.'
What most people associate with the studio is 'Ealing comedy'. This term derives from a batch of comedies ushered in by Hue
and Cry in 1947 and followed famously by Passport to Pimlico, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Whisky Galore! and
The Lavender Hill Mob. They are really more heterogeneous than the 'Ealing comedy' label suggests: they are variously gentle or dry, sunny or black, whimsical or tough. Wrote Balcon:
'Our theory of comedy...is ludicrously simple. We take a character, or a group of characters, and let them run up against either an
untenable situation or an insoluble problem. The audience hopes they will get out of it, and they usually do: the comedy lies in how they do it.'
He goes on to say that 'comedy at Ealing usually starts with an original filmic idea rather than a bestselling book', and certainly among the charms of the films is their quirky
freshness and oroginality, their cinematic inventiveness. (Compare them with some of the stiffly theatrical comedies whose production Balcon oversaw at Gainsborough
in the '30s) Elsewhere, he wrote that 'film producers want good authors to work for them and with them...provided they are prepared to acquire...an understanding of films and
a skill in writing for them'. And it's true that Ealing films avoid debilitating literariness. But Ealing offered more than comedy, and its war
films (e.g. San Demetrio, London) and its post-war dramas (e.g. Mandy) were much praised for their realism. In their way, they also projected
'Britain and the British character'. In its representations of courage, fortitude and consensual effort, the Ealing ethos was characterised by a low-key realism which was
the legacy of 'the men who kept realism going on the screen': by these 'men', he meant the documentary filmmakers he praised in a lecture he gave to the Film Workers' Association
in 1943.
The worst that could be said of Balcon's achievement is that it was sometimes too suburbanly cosy; against this it may be said that he brought
a new naturalness into British feature films.
Michael Balcon autographs, photographs and more @ ebay.co.uk (direct link to photographs)
British War Dvd Collection. Prices from £1.99 incl. postage from the golden years of the
1940s & 50s.
Michael Balcon Biography @ amazon.co.uk (direct link)
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