Costume Design and Emotional Communication in 1940s British Cinema

Film costume is often thought of as surface. However, enlarged on-screen, films present audiences with a hyper-real material experience of clothes and this acts as a powerful form of emotional communication. This chapter asks what we can learn about the relationship between film costume, feeling and the historical study of emotions by studying how the construction, materials and wear of clothing are represented on screen in two films produced by Ealing Studios: Hue and Cry (1946) and Passport to Pimlico (1949). By contextualising these visual representations of materiality within the broader historical context of post-war Britain, this chapter suggests that film costume can further our understanding of the British public’s changing emotional relationship to clothes during a period when conflict and global geopolitics disrupted every aspect of life. It argues that the familiar materiality of the garments used and the realism with which they were depicted provided audiences with opportunities to engage with processes of emotional improvisation and negotiate their place within the emotional regimes of post-war British society, offering insight into how mid-century audiences understood their relationship to the nation and its governance.