Andrew Higson

Nostalgia is not what it used to be: heritage films, nostalgia websites and contemporary consumers

Nostalgia is not a singular phenomenon; it is multi-layered, diversely experienced and variously exploited, as I demonstrate by briefly outlining the history of nostalgia, especially the recent shift from modern to post-modern versions of the experience. The modern, temporal version of nostalgia is founded on the unattainable distance between the past and the present; the post-modern, atemporal version erases this sense of distance. Central to the modern concept of nostalgia is the experience of wistfulness, a hopeless longing for something lost and irrecoverable. But for post-modern nostalgics, the irrecoverable is now attainable, the difference between past and present flattened out. This is partly because post-modern nostalgia re-cycles images, objects and styles associated with the relatively recent past, a prime site of such re-cycling being the Internet. I therefore look at a range of websites that use nostalgia as a central concept in their marketing and which demonstrate some of these recent shifts in the experience of nostalgia. In the final part of this article, I explore these concerns in relation to the reception of four films about the English, past released in the 2000s: Ladies in Lavender (2004), Becoming Jane (2007), Brideshead Revisited (2008) and An Education (2009). How are films mobilised for nostalgic purposes at the levels of production, marketing and consumption? How is an experience of the past built into these films? Are some of the resulting images, sounds and pasts more resistant to nostalgic uses than others? Are these films discussed by audiences in terms of nostalgia? If so, is this is a positive or negative experience? Ranging in this way across a variety of material, my article is an attempt to bring together cultural history, conceptual, formal analysis and the analysis of reception or consumption.

Transnational developments in European cinema in the 1920s

ABSTRACT Transnational cinema is not a new phenomenon, as this discussion of European collaboration in the 1920s demonstrates. In an attempt to match the scale of Hollywood film-making and compete with American film distributors, some European companies established co-production arrangements with each other, while leading actors, directors and other key creative personnel worked in a variety of countries, producing films that often explored intercultural relationships and/or transnational journeying. One of the key examples explored here is the work of Mihály Kertész for the Austrian company Sascha in the mid-1920s, before he moved in 1926 to Hollywood, where he became Michael Curtiz. The films he made in this period include Moon of Israel, a Monumentalfilm co-produced with the British company Stoll, and with a range of European collaborators both behind and in front of the camera; three later films, The Red Heels, Road to Happiness and The Golden Butterfly, were made on a smaller scale, but still exhibit the same transnational arrangements. Also mentioned are various ‘British’ films of the period that embody aspects of transnationalism.

Historical Films in Europe: The Transnational Production, Circulation and Reception of ‘National’ Heritage Drama

To live in Europe in the 2010s is to live through challenging times. On the one hand, the idea of Europe as a collective entity is at the time of writing as robust as it has ever been, and the coordinating function of the supranational European Union remains strong and far-reaching. On the other hand, the European project is threatened by financial crises, concerns about immigration, insular nationalist politics and Eurosceptic lack of interest at best and downright hostility at worst. As the great Norwegian actress and film director Liv Ullmann argued in 2014, European film and European cultural institutions ‘are more important than ever’ in this context: through cross-European collaboration and cooperation, it is possible to ‘develop understanding and knowledge of each other’s countries, art, culture and human dignity’ and protect ‘our common democratic culture’ (2014: 11).

British Cinema, Europe and the Global Reach for Audiences

The British film industry may frequently look like an outpost of Hollywood, with film producers always having at least one eye on the American market. But it is also, by definition, a European cinema, while some of its films receive European funding, and many more are distributed in other European territories besides the UK itself. What then does British cinema look like in the context of Europe? How involved in European production developments are British filmmakers, and indeed policy-makers? How important is it for UK-based filmmakers to address their films to and exploit them in European markets? How extensive is UK/European co-production activity? How widely do British films circulate in the rest of Europe, and which types of films tend to travel best?