George Shaw on Film

Johnson believed that the arrival of cinema made it necessary for the novel to distance itself from the 'what happens next?' structure. He did make some intriguing films himself, though I doubt if I will be seeing them on television anytime soon. For most of my youth, I could only see old films when they came on television. I read about films more than I saw them; they tended to exist as descriptions, stills, and posters. Most of the posters I have hanging at home have been found in second-hand shops or car-boot sales. I had the poster for 10 Rillington Place long before I saw the film itself (which didn’t disappoint) (44). It is one of the grubbiest films you can come across and the exploitative publicity poster feeds that grubbiness as it markets the crimes of Christie as a Soho side-show. It is strange that, until very recently, publicity posters very rarely used stills from the actual films but rather made do with heavily manipulated photographs or paintings.

Each of the objects collected in the exhibition, and described in this booklet, illuminated the world around me during my youth. The landscapes I have found myself painting in my middle age still radiate with the light of these stories, pictures, films, and songs — a truly second-hand daylight.