Title: Introduction: Genre, Academia and the British Pop Music Film
Abstract: Roughly halfway through Terence Fisher’s Kill Me Tomorrow (1957), a low-budget Renown film shot in London and starring Pat O’Brien as a reporter needing cash to fund his son’s eye operation, the hero discusses with the leader of a diamond-smuggling racket how much they would pay him to take the blame for a murder he saw them commit. This key scene, where morality cedes to money, is set in a dimly lit coffee bar, already a short-hand site for youthful anomie, deviancy and promiscuity. The nefariousness of the setting is underlined by the presence of a singer-guitarist: as the plot negotiates its major development, the camera diverts our attention onto Britain’s first rock’n’roll star, Tommy Steele, singing snatches of ‘Rebel Rock’ to a young and enthusiastic audience. While O’Brien exchanges his good name for the sake of his son’s health, Tommy is engendering teenage obstruction and ingratitude. ‘Are you ready, rebel?’ he sings, before presenting his strategy of non-cooperation: ‘If they’re gonna ask you nice, / Make them have to ask you twice. / Have a heart of ice / When you’re at home.’ The first film appearance of a British Rocker is simultaneously the focus for teenage energy and the voice of anti-parental rebellion. This fresh if uneasy relationship between the cinema and the teenager that Fisher’s February release narratively illustrates had, on a broader scale, already been musically brokered with the January announcement that Steele would star imminently in a semi-biographical feature film.1 The British pop music film was about to be born.
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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