JN:Jamaica Inn (Hitchcock 1939)

Media audiences

• The target audience is clearly an adult audience as the opening credits display the British Board of Film Censors accreditation very prominantly. It could also be seen to be aimed at a literate audience as you have to read the Cornish Wreckers Prayer to contextualise the film.
• The probable reading of this text is that these people are outside the law and operate a well organised but brutal crime ring.
• The possible reading is that these men live in impoverished conditions and the only way they can earn a living is through crime.
• My reaction to this text as a white british teenage male would be that ultimately the actions of these men are morally wrong,  yet I could understand that their poverty   might force them to wreck and kill to keep food on their tables.

Institutional context:

• The star with headline billing is Charles laughton, who also co-produced the film. He would have been used as he was a famous actor of the era and would have been a pull factor to entice more people into coming to watch the film.
• The film was distributed by Paramount an industrial film studio.
• Its pre-war release was aimed at the regular film going public. The little advertising that it had was a Poster with the faces of the two principal actors, Laughton and O'hara as well as the standard trailers that were played in cinemas.