EMI and the ‘Pre-heritage’ Period Film

First coined in the UK early 1990s as a new label for an ostensibly new, post-1979 kind and cycle of period cinema, ‘heritage film’ is now firmly established widely used term category academic film studies. Although heritage film’s defining features, ideological character ontological coherence would remain debated, its status ‘new’ hinges, self-evidently, on presumption that films culturally English cinema marked departure were clearly distinct from their pre-Thatcher-era precursors. Yet, paradoxically, British period/costume preceding decade, 1970s, have attracted almost no scholarly attention, none which connects them with film, nor 1980s cultural industry conditions said to fostered these productions those 1970s. This article pursues questions through prism Britain’s largest production distribution entity throughout 1970–86, EMI, EMI’s place significant sustained, but little-acknowledged, force time. In so doing, establishes case studying ‘pre-heritage’ cinema. output included proto-heritage also ventured notably wider. field examined within broader terrain 1970s American wider box-office patterns trends, attending commercial logics well genre films' positioning relation later debates.