Chapter 23 - Film

Summary

Vaughan Williams’s film scores are considered in light of the state of the British film industry from the 1930s into the post–Second World War period, and of the implications of the composer’s bold decision to try his hand at what many of his contemporaries might have regarded as a rather inferior use of music. His contribution of scores for both feature films and documentaries involved some interesting ideas of his own about the genre of cinematic music. The responses of contemporary critics reflected the complexity of British attitudes to the dominance of Hollywood as much as the inventive ways in which Vaughan Williams negotiated the specific constraints upon British film-making during the Second World War and the demands for ‘propaganda’.