Preface

Wilcox, Helen; Herbert, George

doi:10.1017/cbo9781316584910.001

Cited by 3 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…that this story is a true one." 102 The increasing prominence given to the British role in European resistance movements through the focus on the SOE sometimes extended to a tendency to claim continental European heroism for the British, exemplified in the reception of Odette. The premiere of the film, attended by the king and queen, was something of a national event.…”

Section: Postwar Resistance Narrativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Europe against the Germans”: The British Resistance Narrative, 1940–1950

Webster¹

2009

J. Br. Stud.

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Section: Postwar Resistance Narrativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Europe against the Germans”: The British Resistance Narrative, 1940–1950

Webster¹

2009

J. Br. Stud.

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“…23 This is evident in the way servicewomen --with one or two exceptions, such as Odette (1950) and Carve Her Name With Pride (1958) -generally featured only as a backdrop to scenes of male heroism. 24 As John Ramsden comments: "Whole hours of these films go by without a woman even uttering a word, and, if they are there at all, it is in roles without responsibility, pushing flags around RAF maps in Angels One Five, ... or doing the same job a decade later at the Admiralty while Kenneth More plots to Sink the Bismarck." 25 It is evident also in the way in which the home front faded from view, and war was generally sealed off from domestic imagery.…”

Section: Colonial Wars and The Second World Warmentioning

confidence: 99%

“There'll Always Be an England”: Representations of Colonial Wars and Immigration, 1948–1968

Webster¹

2001

J. Br. Stud.

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“In Malaya,” theDaily Mailnoted in 1953, “three and a half years of danger have given the planters time to convert their previously pleasant homes into miniature fortresses, with sandbag parapets, wire entanglements, and searchlights.” The image of the home as fortress and a juxtaposition of the domestic with menace and terror were central to British media representations of colonial wars in Malaya and Kenya in the 1950s. The repertoire of imagery deployed in theDaily Mailfor the “miniature fortress” in Malaya was extended to Kenya, where the newspaper noted wire over domestic windows, guns beside wine glasses, the charming hostess in her black silk dress with “an automatic pistol hanging at her hip.” Such images of English domesticity threatened by an alien other were also central to immigration discourse in the 1950s and 1960s. In the context of the decline of British colonial rule after 1945, representations of the empire and its legacy—resistance to colonial rule in empire and “immigrants” in the metropolis—increasingly converged on a common theme: the violation of domestic sanctuaries.Colonial wars of the late 1940s and 1950s have received little attention in literatures on national identity in early postwar Britain, but the articulation of racial difference through immigration discourse, and its significance in redefining the postimperial British national community has been widely recognized. As Chris Waters has suggested in his work on discourses of race and nation between 1947 and 1963, these years saw questions of race become central to questions of national belonging.

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“…2 Michele, the continental woman whose country is occupied by the Nazis, and who works loyally for the resistance under British leadership, is a figure much more extensively developed in Odette (1950), embodying female heroism. 3 None of these films feature active British women, and Against the Wind …”

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confidence: 99%

“…Bridie in Against the Wind, the Irish woman from a neutral country who spies against Britain, is a figure who is much more extensively Dark Stranger (1946), embodying the active woman as a threat to the British nation. 2 Michele, the continental woman whose country is occupied by the Nazis, and who works loyally for the resistance under British leadership, is a figure much more extensively developed in Odette (1950), embodying female heroism. 3 None of these films feature active British women, and Against the Wind…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The boundaries of pre-war gender roles were extensively breached through the mobilisation of women for war-work, and the idea of war as a masculine sphere was further eroded as the home front became a place of danger in the black-out and the blitz. 3 This essay explores the significance of gender in representations of national and colonial relations in a range of British films of war and empire made at a transitional moment in the late 1940s, as the war was coming to an end, and in its immediate aftermath. As Britain made the transition to a post-war world, gender, I…”

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Reconstructing Boundaries: Gender, war and empire in British cinema, 1945-1950

Webster¹

2003

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

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In Against the Wind (1947), a British film released soon after the Second World War, the fate of Max --who is shown working for the British-led resistance in Belgium --is sealed by two women.1 The film is careful to establish that Max (Jack Warner) does not identify as British before he is revealed as a traitor. He is shown telling his fellow resistance workers that 'My mother was Belgian, my old man was a Yank and his father was German'. Both his own non-Britishness, and that of the Irish woman, Bridie (Sheila Carty), to whom he sells his secrets, are emphasised during their clandestine meeting. He calls her 'Shamrock' while she tells him that: 'A man without some sort of country is a poor sort of mongrel'. It is through his association with Bridie, who is passing his information to the Nazis, that Max's treachery is discovered by the British authorities. The discovery comes too late to stop him being dropped by parachute in Belgium, and the information about his treachery has to be passed on from Britain to the wireless operator in Belgium. As soon as she decodes the message, this wireless operator --Michele (Simone Signoret) --shoots him.The two women who seal Max's fate might be taken as emblematic of the way in which women's active involvement in the Second World War began to be portrayed in its immediate aftermath. Bridie in Against the Wind, the Irish woman from a neutral country who spies against Britain, is a figure who is much more extensively Dark Stranger (1946), embodying the active woman as a threat to the British nation. 2 Michele, the continental woman whose country is occupied by the Nazis, and who works loyally for the resistance under British leadership, is a figure much more extensively developed in Odette (1950), embodying female heroism. 3 None of these films feature active British women, and Against the Wind

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Preface

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

“Europe against the Germans”: The British Resistance Narrative, 1940–1950

“Europe against the Germans”: The British Resistance Narrative, 1940–1950

“There'll Always Be an England”: Representations of Colonial Wars and Immigration, 1948–1968

Reconstructing Boundaries: Gender, war and empire in British cinema, 1945-1950

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