Abstract:
This thesis is a social history of the cinema in Wales. It examines the position of
the cinema, as an institution, in Welsh society in the period when film-going was at its
peak. It argues that from the 1920s to the 1950s the cinema performed a broader social
function that went beyond the mere screening of films, and that this function was far
more heterogeneous than previous historians have suggested.
The first section of the thesis examines the structure of the cinema industry in
Wales, and the nature of the buildings themselves. The severity of the inter-war
depression meant that major cinema companies were seldom interested in investing in
Wales, and very few modern 'super cinemas' were actually built there. The vast majority
of picture houses were small, relatively old and locally owned. It was to these 'fleapits',
not the 'dream palaces' of popular repute that the majority of cinema audiences flocked
each week.
The second section explores the reasons behind the appeal of cinema-going, and
also examines the nature of the entertainment that audiences went to see. The central
argument here is that it was not just the main feature film that attracted people to the
cinema. The cinema provided an opportunity to escape, for a few hours, from the realities
of everyday life. Whole programmes of entertainment were therefore consumed as a
matter of routine, irrespective of the individual pictures being shown.
The final section deals with the responses to this form of mass entertainment in
Wales. Opinions expressed by film critics, journalists, councillors and clergymen in
Wales were similar to those heard in other parts of Britain. The campaign to prevent
Sunday opening of cinemas, however, was a national, Welsh, issue. The intensity with
which this issue was debated revealed the extent to which cinema had become an
important social institution in Wales.
