Researcher in Focus: Philip Horne

Philip Horne is Professor of English at University College London. He is currently researching Thorold Dickinson for an academic conference to be held at Senate House in October, to commemorate the centenary of Dickinson's birth in 1903.

"I am spending a certain amount of time in Special Collections at the moment working on the extensive holdings of material on Thorold Dickinson (1903-1984), whose centenary falls on 16 November 2003. Dickinson is a neglected figure who was of immense importance in the history of British cinema in a whole number of areas - primarily as a film director of genius who seldom had the chance to show what he could do. His Gaslight (1940) and The Queen of Spades (1949), both starring Anton Walbrook, are among the most remarkable British films of any period, but his smallish oeuvre also includes one of the most interesting, and thrillingly ruthless, propaganda films of the War, The Next of Kin (1942) (a worthy precursor to his friend Cavalcanti's Went the Day Well?); the flawed but fascinating account of British East Africa Men of Two Worlds (1946), which has a black leading character and nearly killed Dickinson with its difficulties; the restrained, delicate, under-appreciated study of political violence of Secret People (1952), which was disastrous for Dickinson's British career; and Hill 24 Doesn't Answer (Israel, 1955), the first feature film to be made in that new nation and shot in the neo-realist manner Dickinson had planned to use on The Malta Story until he was taken off the project. One shouldn't forget, either, the film of Dickinson's that shows off most wonderfully his sense of fun - The Arsenal Stadium Mystery (1939) with Leslie Banks, a comedy thriller featuring George Allison and his great Arsenal team of the era.

Dickinson was also a thinker and institutional innovator who became immensely significant in film education. In 1960, after a spell with the United Nations, he began to teach Film Studies at the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London, and in 1967 became the first Professor of Film in Britain. (The introduction a couple of years ago of a MA in Film Studies at UCL, where I teach, is a welcome revival of the Dickinson tradition.) He might be considered the most influential figure in British film culture before and since the Second World War - having been closely involved with the Film Society, the foundation of the Cine-Technicians Union (with his friend Sidney Cole), the BFI, the National Film School, the Slade Film History Register, and many more initiatives. His students at the Slade included Charles Barr, Gavin Millar, Lutz Becker, Don Levy and Raymond Durgnat; he had close associations with Lindsay Anderson and Karel Reisz - in fact he seems to have known everybody, and to have been much loved.

I am writing a piece about Dickinson for Sight & Sound (to which Dickinson was a regular contributor), to coincide with the centenary and the season of his films at the National Film Theatre, which runs from 8 November to 27 December. The London Film Festival will also be screening a print of The Queen of Spades.

I am organizing a conference on Dickinson at the Institute of English Studies in the School of Advanced Studies at Senate House, University of London on 10-11 October , with a hand-picked group of speakers, many of whom knew Dickinson personally: Anthony Aldgate, Charles Barr, Lutz Becker, John Chiddock, Ian Christie, Gregory Dart, Kevin Gough-Yates, Clyde Jeavons, Richard Kahlenberg, Anthony Lane, James Leahy, Luke McKernan, Laura Marcus, Gavin Millar, Frances Miller, Lynda Morris, Lisa Pontecorvo, Jeffrey Richards, Barry Salt, Peter Swaab, Richard Taylor, David Thomson, Hillel Tryster, Murray Weston, Valerie Wilson and Christopher Wintle.

My own contribution will be on the subject of a couple of the films by Dickinson we'll never see. First Then and Now, which was halted at the last moment by U.S. censorship difficulties about the adultery subplot, and which was to have been based on the historical novel of that title by Somerset Maugham. It would have been shot partly in Italian locations, a witty, darkly serious political film noir about the relationship between Machiavelli (Trevor Howard) and Cesare Borgia (George Sanders). The script is in Special Collections. Second is his version of Thomas Hardy's novel The Mayor of Casterbridge, which fell through due to budgetary problems - films without obvious American selling-points had to be cheap.

Overall, I hope my efforts and those of all the others involved will succeed in putting Dickinson back on the cinematic map in the central position he so richly deserves."