Roy Ward Baker

Geoff Mayer, Roy Ward Baker, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2004. ISBN: 0-7190-6354-X. 224 pp.

Auteurism might be a decidedly old-fashioned approach in the world of academic film studies but director studies continue to appear at a remarkable rate. Attempts have been made to secure authorship credentials for other players in the filmmaking process - including the producer, the screenwriter, the production designer, the cinematographer - but the film director still reigns supreme. This could well reflect the director's status and importance within the film industry. At the same time, one can often detect the residual influence of auteurism in these director studies as they seek to identify the ways in which directorial visions are communicated via the medium of film.

This bifurcated approach registers clearly in Geoff Mayer's book-length study of the British film director Roy Ward Baker. On the one hand, there is a concern to place Baker within the context of the British film industry as someone whose career and films are revealingly typical. On the other hand, the book also projects a sense of Baker as a special creative figure whose films are in certain respects distinctive and different. Baker's career lends itself well to both these perspectives. Very much an industry insider, he directed a series of solid entertainments during the 1950s - most notably the prisoner-of-war drama The One That Got Away (1957) and the Titanic film A Night to Remember (1958). When the market for this type of product dried up in the early 1960s, he switched to television direction for a while before directing some lowbudget fantasy-themed films for independent companies Hammer and Amicus from the mid-...