British rural landscapes in pre-second world war film publicity

Abstract

A romanticised concept of pastoral life was widely established in British culture by the start of the twentieth century, having been popularised by, amongst others, the pre-Raphaelites as an ‘idealised medieval vision’1 since the late 1800s, and used as shorthand for the essence of the British national character, the pedigree of which was located in the ‘green and pleasant fields’ of the (mainly English) countryside. This conflation of land and identity circulated through popular, commercial forms and contexts for mass consumption - and there was no medium as potent or ubiquitous as the cinema. Film was able to transport its audience to actual, authentic locations, not mere pictorial or literary representations, and its bucolic depictions of the countryside ensured that it would be indelibly associated with the British landscape in the public consciousness.