Realism and Tinsel

`Pursuing his theory in lively style and with examination of a large number of productions, the author has written an unfailingly interesting study, fully documented and concluding with a useful chronology of cinema society through the period.' - Film Review

`Robert Murphy … has broken new ground, not only in covering the British cinema in the forties as a whole, but in looking beyond the critical orthodoxy …' - Eric Braun, The Stage and Television Today

`…very well documented, gracefully written, and convincingly argued.' - Choice

`…[a] welcome addition to the impressive `Cinema and Society' series…' - History Today

Sight and Sound praised: `… the readiness, indeed eagerness, of Murphy's study to browse along not just the main thoroughfare of 1940s British Cinema … but also an assortment of back streets: By-Ways for variety and radio stars.'

`Pursuing his theory in lively style and with examination of a large number of productions, the author has written an unfailingly interesting study, fully documented and concluding with a useful chronology of cinema society through the period.' - Film Review

`… elegant and clearly written …' - Michael Paris, History Today

`Robert Murphy … has broken new ground, not only in covering the British cinema in the forties as a whole, but in looking beyond the critical orthodoxy …' - Eric Braun, The Stage and Television Today

`… solidly researched … a detailed and straightforward account of the hundreds of British films turned out during the period …' - J.K.L. Walker, Times Literary Supplement