Structures of Desire : British Cinema, 1939-1955

This book examines representations of desire in British cinema during a period of turbulent change, 1940-1955. In addition to investigating male-female desire in status quo "realist" films and in various "anti-realist" movements represented by Gainsborough Melodrama and the work of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, the book also explores the various factors that affected utopian aspirations for a better postwar world and how these desires eventually became restrained by the dominant forces of conservative ideology.