nocinema - interludes - Jerome Joy website

B I U S link image code HTML list	Show page Syntax
!'''The Interlude''' "An important point in the transmission schedule up until 1957 (and sporadically in 1958) was the break between 4pm and 8.50pm (the times vary, but are always, approximately, late afternoon to early evening). It may, or may not have been foremost in the minds of the programme planners for Christmas Day 1937 but it certainly was in the mind of John Reith and the planners over subsequent years, to close transmission down at that time of the day for very specific reasons. On weekdays (particularly during the 1950s) the closedown became known as 'Toddlers Truce' - a period of time when mothers could persuade their children to go to bed with the minimum of distraction. On Sundays however the motive was more to do with Reith's attitudes towards the Sabbath. In short, television was not to be permitted to offer an excuse for people to miss evening services at their church; the assumption being that everybody belonged to one Christian denomination or another. The break in transmission became a context in which a virtually new art form found its genesis and brief existence: the Interlude. The Interlude was a short film most ubiquitous in the years 1954,55 and 56 and transmitted usually just before the evening broadcasting services were resumed. The content of the Interlude would seem apposite to the whole argument concerning the need of the new medium to assert its cultural worth. There were three main Interlude films; the most famous of which involved a potter throwing a pot on a wheel. The other two depicted a typically English pastoral scene and a kitten playing with a ball of wool. The potter's wheel seems particularly appropriate to the dichotomy between the religious observance of the sabbath and the potential for secular edification contained in the classic drama. In this Interlude we are offered a concrete example of the forging of material (clay and water) with the aesthetic; the potter's hands in direct contact with the rhythm of the clay's momentum are forging the aesthetic of the pot. This image is almost irresistible as a paradigm for the cultural development of BBC television through to the end of 1959." ''(Christopher McCullough, The Rise and Fall of the Reithian Sunday: 1936-1959, in Europa Number 2 Article 3 - 1996, {small}http://www.intellectbooks.com/nation/html/reith.htm {/small})'' ----
Password Summary of changes		↓ ↑

[Edit] [History] [UP] [List of all pages] [Create page] [Erase cookies]