Historical Dictionary of British Cinema

One of comedian Eddie Izzard’s well-known monologues compares British and American film. While the Brits tended to churn out endless Merchant Ivory period pieces featuring characters called Sebastian and long awkward pauses, the American equivalent would be called a Room With A View of HELL, replete with guns and non-stop swearing. Neither vision is completely accurate, but as producer David Puttnam remarked in 1985, and as quoted on the first page of the Historical Dictionary of British Cinema, the British film industry “[…] suffered chronically from this country’s cherished and dangerous belief that commercial success is vulgar”.

The “vulgarity”...