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Soho on Screen
Cinematic Spaces of Bohemia and Cosmopolitanism, 1948-1963
Jingan Young
Foreword by Peter Bradshaw
262 pages, 22 illus., bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-80073-477-7 $135.00/£99.00 / Hb / Published (May 2022)
eISBN 978-1-80073-478-4 eBook
Reviews
“This impressive and imaginative study explores Soho’s representation in films from multiple angles, situating these films in the broader social and cultural context of postwar Britain. By covering an admirably wide range of films, including some lesser-known ones, Jingan Young explores Soho’s image on screen during the 1950s and early 1960s as a way of examining changing ideas surrounding British national identity, London’s immigrant communities, youth culture, sex and commercialism.” • Chris O’Rourke, University of Lincoln
Description
Despite Soho’s rich cultural history, there remains an absence of work on the depiction of the popular neighbourhood in film. Soho on Screen provides one of the first studies of Soho within postwar British cinema. Drawing upon historical, cultural and urban studies of the area, this book explores twelve films and theatrically released documentaries from a filmography of over one hundred Soho set productions. While predominantly focusing on low-budget, exploitation films which are exemplars of British and international filmmaking, Young also offers new readings of star and director biographies, from Laurence Harvey to Emeric Pressburger, and in so doing enlivens discussion on filmmaking in a time and place of intense social transformation, technological innovation and growing permissiveness.
Jingan Young in an award-winning screenwriter and journalist. She is a lecturer at Birkbeck University and King’s College London. She edited Foreign Goods: A Selection of Writing from British East Asian Artists (Bloomsbury, 2018) and is a regular contributor to the Guardian newspaper on film.
Subject: Film and Television StudiesMedia Studies
Area: Europe
Contents
Download ToC (PDF)