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This film consists of footage taken by a family during their caravan and boating holiday to Dartmouth, Devon in 1957. The footage presents an image of an affluent family, reflecting a wider affluence experience in Britain during the 1950s. Much of the footage consists of the family’s children and dogs playing in the ocean. The boys play with rubber rings and lilos, are taught to swim, steer the family boat, and laugh and point at the camera. This demonstrates the primary amateur uses for film technology in the period being within the family space, and the use of home movies to construct and enforce a shared internal image of the family. The content of the footage, placed in context, reflects the experience of post-war affluence and the changing technology available.
Citron states that family home movies can represent ‘the delight of possession’.[1] This could be possession by a mother ‘of the clothes she made and the children who wore them’, by a father ‘of his wife and daughters’, or even by ‘the entire family of the camera’.[2] This notion of using home movies to capture and ‘possess’ the family can be seen in this film and in the advertising of film technology from the period. Of Kodak’s Daily Mail advertisements in 1957, two thirds contained images of, or made explicit reference to, women and children.[3] One advert states that ‘whether it’s your girlfriend or your … daughter, whether it’s a family group or the family pet, they’ll come out best on Kodak film.’[4] This supports Citron’s personal experience with home movies, demonstrating that during the 1950s the family was an important space for the use of home and amateur film-making, and home movies could be used to construct a family hierarchy and image. Odin states that during the period in which this film was shot, within the family ‘the father has a particular position; it is he who directs the formation of familial memory … who takes the photographs; and, obviously, it is he who shoots the films.’[5] We do not know who it was that filmed this particular home movie. However, we can glean from what the camera is pointed at and what it lingers on, the intention of the filmmaker. In this case, the primary actors in the film are the children, the pets, and the women. These actors are aware of the camera, and seem to act and engage with it at the encouragement of the filmmaker, for example when the sons pose at the wheel of the family boat. This supports both Citron and Odin’s statements that home movies were used to create a shared internal image and memory of the family, and is supported by the nature of the advertisements for camera equipment during the period.
The film also presents an image of post-war affluence, the true nature of which historians still contend with today. Lawrence states that in the period ‘[w]ork was more plentiful, more secure and better remunerated than before the war’ and due to full employment and rising wages, social class was becoming increasingly ‘subjective, its meanings flexible, inconsistent and elusive.’[6] In 1961 Zweig stated that ‘change is very deep and far-reaching. Working-class life finds itself on the move towards new middle-class values and middle-class existence.’[7]
Because of this oft cited phenomena of a more fluid class identity during this period, as well as the largely subjective nature of class, it is impossible to assign a class to the actors in this home movie. This is in part due to the fact that self-identification is an important aspect of class identity. However we can still see visible signs of their affluence – an affluence which they are keen to display. The camera lingers on some of their possessions – their two caravans, boat, family car, jeep, camping equipment, toys, and pets. All the actors are impeccably dressed, with one woman sporting a pearl necklace in an almost cartoonish display of wealth. There are also less obvious displays of affluence, for example their ability to take a seaside holiday, as well as their ability to film it. Feeney states that even during the affluent 1950s ‘[n]ot everyone could afford to go away on holiday’ and ‘[m]any working-class families strived to save enough money to have a modest seaside holiday.’[8] Meanwhile a colour camera to shoot photographs, let alone film, could cost as much as £12 at the time, whilst the extras and film required to actually use it would increase the cost even further.[9] Thus this home movie provides a valuable example of an experience of post-war affluence. However this experience is of course limited. It is limited by a lack of knowledge of the social class of the actors, and of their regional and professional background, among other things. This limits the film’s usefulness to social historians for the study of class and class hierarchies during the period, but it is still a useful example of what a lived experience of post-war affluence could be like.
In conclusion, this film demonstrate two key things. First it is an example of how home movies were used as tools within the family in the period, and continue to be used today. This can be seen in the focus of the footage on the family unit, in particular on the children and the women of the family, to create a shared image of the family and family hierarchy. Secondly it is evidence of a wider affluence experienced in post-war Britain. This can be seen in the focus of the footage on possessions, and in the fact that the family were capable of taking a holiday and filming it in the first place. This film is useful for historians as evidence of both the use of home movies with the family, and post-war affluence. Its usefulness as the latter is lessened due to our limited ability to place the family within a region, a social class, or a professional background.
[1] Michelle Citron, Home Movies and Other Necessary Fictions (Minneapolis, 1999), 4.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Daily Mail Historical Archive 1896-2004, http://find.galegroup.com/dmha/dispBasicSearch.do?prodId=DMHA&userGroupName=ulh.
[4] ‘Kodak’, Daily Mail, 14 Dec. 1957, 6. Daily Mail Historical Archive.
[5] Roger Odin, ‘The Home Move and Space of Communication’ in Laura Rascaroli, Gwenda Young and Barry Monahan (eds.) Amateur Filmmaking: The Home Movie, The Archive, The Web (New York, 2014), 15-26 (16).
[6] Jon Lawrence, ‘Class, “Affluence” and the Study of Everyday Life in Britain, c. 1930–64’, Cultural & Social History 10(2) (2013), 273-299 (282-283).
[7] Ferdynand Zweig, The Worker in an Affluent Society: Family, Life and Industry (London, 1961), ix
[8] Paul Feeney, A 1950s Childhood: From Tin Baths to Bread and Dripping (Gloucestershire, 2009), 178-179.
[9] ‘Kodak Film’, Daily Mail, 31 May 1957, 11. Daily Mail Historical Archive.
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