The British Pop Music Film: The Beatles and Beyond by Stephen Glynn (review)

When writing about a film genre, one is faced with myriad decisions regarding inclusions and omissions. It is now widely agreed that genre studies must consider both text and context, but most generally gravitate towards one or the other. With regard to context, a genre can be examined focusing on a number of stages, including production, distribution, exhibition, marketing, critical and audience reception, and so on. A textual approach can be further broken down into analysis of narrative and form, using a variety of theoretical frameworks and methodologies. Any attempt to cover all of these issues will inevitably lead to a shallow survey rather than an in-depth examination of several aspects of the genre. If the genre in question is one in which music is sometimes the topic and diegetic performance is key, then the choices become even more complicated. In The British Pop Music Film: The Beatles and Beyond, Stephen Glynn wisely sets out a path and sticks to it. This book is a study of a genre to which music is central, rather than a study of film music, which means that readers should not approach it expecting detailed musicological analysis. While film texts are considered in detail, Glynn tends to favour context somewhat, though both are covered substantively. He describes combining a synchronic approach to the text with a diachronic study of production histories that accounts for the interactions between the British film and music industries. A survey of critical and popular reception rounds out the study of each film.

In a discussion of inclusive and exclusive approaches to constructing a generic corpus in The American Film Musical, Rick Altman states that many films can be included within a tautological definition of a genre, but that a number will also be excluded due to canonisation. As an example, Altman offers the following contradiction (with its implicit value judgements): ‘When is a musical not a musical? When it has Elvis Presley in it’ (92). Replace ‘Elvis Presley’ with ‘Cliff Richard’ and you have some explanation of why many of the films in Glynn’s corpus have received little scholarly attention. This is a prejudice of which he is aware, yet in defending his topic he occasionally reflects some of the common assumptions about entertainment and commerce in film studies. Paraphrasing literary theorist Franco Moretti, Glynn describes himself as ‘a Janus-like creature, a film historian and a fan of popular music’ (9, emphasis in original). He then elaborates on this metaphor:

The historian seeks to contribute to the nascent cultural rehabilitation of the genre; the fan hopes to convey the fun, skill and occasional embarrassment experienced in viewing these films, recognising that the majority’s primary function was, and must remain, foot-tapping fun and entertainment.

(9)

While Glynn argues for the legitimacy of the British pop music film as an object of study throughout the book, the professional/amateur connotations of the historian/fan binary slightly undermine this assertion of legitimacy. He also often comments on the presence or absence of social realist elements – a context that, while relevant, brings with it implicit value judgements. Thus, Glynn’s somewhat defensive stance regarding the study of a popular genre that serves as commercial entertainment reflects an attitude that, while more prevalent in film studies, is not widely held in the now well-developed field of popular music studies, despite the latter’s persistent preference for oppositional and subversive musical cultures. Nevertheless, this self-justification is understandable due to the inferior status of youth films within film scholarship – a prejudice Glynn is unlikely to share, but one of which he is clearly aware.

On first encountering this book’s subtitle – The Beatles and Beyond – one could be forgiven for assuming the book covers familiar territory. Glynn himself has published a book on A Hard Day’s Night (Richard Lester, 1964). Luckily the subtitle is somewhat misleading. While the Fab Four’s four fab films are covered in this book, so are...