History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

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Poster from the Alexander Korda filk Knight without Armour

“There are no revolutions in well-governed countries” – British film and the Russian Revolution

In this blog, Rob James explores how the events of the 1917 Russian Revolution impacted British film production in the mid-twentieth century. Rob tells us that the chance of a film being made depicting those tumultuous events depended on how they were presented. If the film demonstrated any sympathy towards the revolutionaries, then a ban was inevitable. Rob’s research covers society’s leisure activities and how they were shaped and controlled from both within and outside the entertainment industry. His research feeds into a number of optional and specialist modules that he teaches in the second and third year. In the 1934 film Princess Charming, produced by Michael Balcon, one of […]

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Using Visual Sources: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Mark Cleverly, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, has written the following blog entry on the 1960 ‘New Wave’ film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) for the Introduction to Historical Research module. Mark discusses how the film reveals much about changing social attitudes in the ‘swinging sixties’. The module is co-ordinated by Dr Maria Cannon, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Portsmouth. The proverb ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ is certainly a cliché in the modern era, but it superficially highlights the value that can be found in visual sources. If a still image can muster this level of inquiry, then what of […]

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