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Cinema of Wales
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Cinema of Wales
The cinema of Wales comprises the art of film and creative movies made in Wales or by Welsh filmmakers either locally or abroad. Welsh cinema began in the late-19th century, led by Welsh-based director William Haggar. Wales continued to produce film of varying quality throughout the 20th century, in both the Welsh and English languages, though indigenous production was curtailed through a lack of infrastructure and finance, which prevented the growth of the industry nationally. Despite this, Wales has been represented in all fields of the film making process, producing actors and directors of note.
Wales has a long film making history, with the first films shot in 1896, just a year after the development of the Lumières' cinematographe. The first known film to be recorded in Wales was by American Birt Acres featuring a royal visit to Cardiff by the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. The film was later shown at the Great Fine Art, Industrial and Maritime Exhibition in Cardiff's Cathays Park in June 1896. Indigenous film production began in 1898, when Rhyl based Arthur Cheetham began recording silent 'short' films of local events. His first film was shown in January 1898 of children playing on Rhyl sands.
The first Wales based film-maker of enduring stature was William Haggar, who made over 30 fiction films between 1901 and 1908. Haggar's work received a worldwide audience mainly through the Gaumont and Urban companies. Haggar's most notable film was Desperate Poaching Affray (1903) which is recognised for its violence, iconoclasm and progressive editing. The film, along with Frank Mottorshaw's A Daring Daylight Burglary and Edwin Stanton Porter's The Great Train Robbery, has in the early Twenty-first century, been credited with influencing the chase subgenre of American films.
Other extant pre–Great War films to be shot in Wales were made by film-makers from outside the country. These included the British Biograph Company's film Conway Castle (1898) and Charles Urban Company's Wales, England: Land of Castles and Waterfalls (1907). The 1906 British Home Championship encounter between Wales and Ireland at Wrexham was filmed by Blackburn firm Mitchell and Keynon, and is now the oldest surviving film of an international football match. While the oldest footage of any football match is the 1898 film by Arthur Cheetham, Blackburn Rovers v West Bromwich Albion.
During the first few decades of Welsh cinema Wales was at the height of an industrial revolution, but there is little sense of the industrial landscape or life captured in the early silent movies taken within the country. Visiting companies, such as Edison and British and Colonial tended to favour filming in rural Wales.
Much of the cinema of Wales in the later 1910s and 1920s has been lost. In 1920 nine films were shot in Wales, all now lost. One of the most notable and celebrated of the films from this period is A Welsh Singer (1915), adapted from a work by Welsh writer Allen Raine, which starred Florence Turner. Henry Edwards who directed A Welsh Singer, also created the 1930 film Aylwin, from the novel by Theodore Watts-Dunton, drawing into the world of gypsies and a mythical, mystical Wales. The 1930s saw the first Welsh language film, Y Chwarelwr directed by Ifan ab Owen Edwards in 1935. The decade also saw two important agitprop documentaries, Today We Live (1937) set among the unemployed miners of the village of Pentre in the Rhondda Valleys, and Donald Alexander's Eastern Valley (1937). The outbreak of World War II saw the backdrop of a mining valley in Wales being used as the setting for a war propaganda film, The Silent Village (1943). Designed as a tribute to the mining community of Lidice, Czechoslovakia, which had suffered from Nazi atrocities, The Silent Village transpose the events to a Wales; and was also used to draw analogies with the oppression of the Welsh language.
The coming of the sound era had little impact on Welsh cinema, though 1938's The Citadel an adaptation of A. J. Cronin's 1937 novel brought Wales to a large audience; though King Vidor's interpretation failed to express the novel's political message. The first Hollywood 'talkie' to be set in Wales was James Whale's The Old Dark House. The best known films connected to Wales during this period failed to harness Welsh talents, The Proud Valley (1940) and How Green Was My Valley (1940) were neither directed or adapted for the screen by Welsh people. John Ford's How Green Was My Valley is notable for starring just one Welsh actor, Rhys Williams, and for being shot in the United States. Although John Ford's view of Wales was based on a mythical and romantic view of the industrialised valleys, Jill Craigie’s Blue Scar (1949), part financed by the National Coal Board, raised serious and radical questions about the nationalisation of the coal industry and has striking location photography around south Wales. Another release from 1949 to make an important cultural statement was Emlyn Williams' The Last Days of Dolwyn, the plot of which centred on the flooding of a Welsh village to create a reservoir; a subject that became extremely controversial in Wales in the 1960s.
The 1950s and 1960s saw the output of two of the country's best documentary makers. Jack Howells and John Ormond dealt primarily with Welsh people and subjects. Howells is best known for his impressionistic, lyrical documentaries that included Nye! (1965) and Dylan Thomas (1962). Dylan Thomas is the only Welsh film to have won an Oscar (for best short documentary), it features Richard Burton as narrator, visiting the haunts of Dylan Thomas. Ormond, a poet foremost, is remembered for his sensitive portrayals of writers and authors, and for documentaries concerned with the working class and with refugees, in particular Borrowed Pasture (1960) which follows two Polish ex-soldiers struggling to get by on a Carmarthenshire smallholding.
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Cinema of Wales
The cinema of Wales comprises the art of film and creative movies made in Wales or by Welsh filmmakers either locally or abroad. Welsh cinema began in the late-19th century, led by Welsh-based director William Haggar. Wales continued to produce film of varying quality throughout the 20th century, in both the Welsh and English languages, though indigenous production was curtailed through a lack of infrastructure and finance, which prevented the growth of the industry nationally. Despite this, Wales has been represented in all fields of the film making process, producing actors and directors of note.
Wales has a long film making history, with the first films shot in 1896, just a year after the development of the Lumières' cinematographe. The first known film to be recorded in Wales was by American Birt Acres featuring a royal visit to Cardiff by the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. The film was later shown at the Great Fine Art, Industrial and Maritime Exhibition in Cardiff's Cathays Park in June 1896. Indigenous film production began in 1898, when Rhyl based Arthur Cheetham began recording silent 'short' films of local events. His first film was shown in January 1898 of children playing on Rhyl sands.
The first Wales based film-maker of enduring stature was William Haggar, who made over 30 fiction films between 1901 and 1908. Haggar's work received a worldwide audience mainly through the Gaumont and Urban companies. Haggar's most notable film was Desperate Poaching Affray (1903) which is recognised for its violence, iconoclasm and progressive editing. The film, along with Frank Mottorshaw's A Daring Daylight Burglary and Edwin Stanton Porter's The Great Train Robbery, has in the early Twenty-first century, been credited with influencing the chase subgenre of American films.
Other extant pre–Great War films to be shot in Wales were made by film-makers from outside the country. These included the British Biograph Company's film Conway Castle (1898) and Charles Urban Company's Wales, England: Land of Castles and Waterfalls (1907). The 1906 British Home Championship encounter between Wales and Ireland at Wrexham was filmed by Blackburn firm Mitchell and Keynon, and is now the oldest surviving film of an international football match. While the oldest footage of any football match is the 1898 film by Arthur Cheetham, Blackburn Rovers v West Bromwich Albion.
During the first few decades of Welsh cinema Wales was at the height of an industrial revolution, but there is little sense of the industrial landscape or life captured in the early silent movies taken within the country. Visiting companies, such as Edison and British and Colonial tended to favour filming in rural Wales.
Much of the cinema of Wales in the later 1910s and 1920s has been lost. In 1920 nine films were shot in Wales, all now lost. One of the most notable and celebrated of the films from this period is A Welsh Singer (1915), adapted from a work by Welsh writer Allen Raine, which starred Florence Turner. Henry Edwards who directed A Welsh Singer, also created the 1930 film Aylwin, from the novel by Theodore Watts-Dunton, drawing into the world of gypsies and a mythical, mystical Wales. The 1930s saw the first Welsh language film, Y Chwarelwr directed by Ifan ab Owen Edwards in 1935. The decade also saw two important agitprop documentaries, Today We Live (1937) set among the unemployed miners of the village of Pentre in the Rhondda Valleys, and Donald Alexander's Eastern Valley (1937). The outbreak of World War II saw the backdrop of a mining valley in Wales being used as the setting for a war propaganda film, The Silent Village (1943). Designed as a tribute to the mining community of Lidice, Czechoslovakia, which had suffered from Nazi atrocities, The Silent Village transpose the events to a Wales; and was also used to draw analogies with the oppression of the Welsh language.
The coming of the sound era had little impact on Welsh cinema, though 1938's The Citadel an adaptation of A. J. Cronin's 1937 novel brought Wales to a large audience; though King Vidor's interpretation failed to express the novel's political message. The first Hollywood 'talkie' to be set in Wales was James Whale's The Old Dark House. The best known films connected to Wales during this period failed to harness Welsh talents, The Proud Valley (1940) and How Green Was My Valley (1940) were neither directed or adapted for the screen by Welsh people. John Ford's How Green Was My Valley is notable for starring just one Welsh actor, Rhys Williams, and for being shot in the United States. Although John Ford's view of Wales was based on a mythical and romantic view of the industrialised valleys, Jill Craigie’s Blue Scar (1949), part financed by the National Coal Board, raised serious and radical questions about the nationalisation of the coal industry and has striking location photography around south Wales. Another release from 1949 to make an important cultural statement was Emlyn Williams' The Last Days of Dolwyn, the plot of which centred on the flooding of a Welsh village to create a reservoir; a subject that became extremely controversial in Wales in the 1960s.
The 1950s and 1960s saw the output of two of the country's best documentary makers. Jack Howells and John Ormond dealt primarily with Welsh people and subjects. Howells is best known for his impressionistic, lyrical documentaries that included Nye! (1965) and Dylan Thomas (1962). Dylan Thomas is the only Welsh film to have won an Oscar (for best short documentary), it features Richard Burton as narrator, visiting the haunts of Dylan Thomas. Ormond, a poet foremost, is remembered for his sensitive portrayals of writers and authors, and for documentaries concerned with the working class and with refugees, in particular Borrowed Pasture (1960) which follows two Polish ex-soldiers struggling to get by on a Carmarthenshire smallholding.
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