The Cinematheque recently ran a 2 week program of films called Angry Young Cinema: The Original British New Wave. The full list of the films can be seen here. I managed to see none of the films, despite working literally across the street from ther excellent Hollywood theater, The Egyptian.
I won’t list all of the film that played – the link above will let you see that – but I hope some here will check out the films that played and recommend a few in comments. They sound interesting, and I plan to rent a batch of them, though several have not been released on DVD.
I will include the program’s introductory write-up here though: Post-war European cinema in the 1950’s and early 1960’s – especially movies hailing from England, France and Italy – had some universal things in common contrary to their obviously different stylistic and cultural approaches. Much like the impact of WWII on American cinema (seen most dramatically in downbeat film noir, the Method Acting revolution and later in 1960’s New Hollywood), there was a fresh quest for emotional truth, social relevance, realistic human behavior and down-to-earth stories about individualistic, working class people. Italy really got there first in the late 1940’s by way of the neo-realist movement, with both the UK and France erupting simultaneously in the late 1950’s with their own respective New Waves. In England, “Angry Young Cinema,” “Kitchen Sink Cinema,” and “Free Cinema” were some of the descriptive titles for this startling explosion of tell-it-like-it-is movies, virtually all filmed in high contrast, ashen black-and-white and often adapted from theatrical (John Osborne, Harold Pinter, et.al.) or literary (Alan Silitoe, David Storey, et.al) source material. Three monumental filmmakers – Tony Richardson, Karel Reisz and Lindsay Anderson – took the lead, first when they co-founded the groundbreaking film journal, Sequence, and subsequently when their directing careers in film shorts and plays mushroomed into full-blown dramatic features. Tony Richardson launched the notable initial foray in 1958 with LOOK BACK IN ANGER with Reisz following in 1960 with SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING and Anderson in 1963 with THIS SPORTING LIFE. There were also directors like Jack Clayton, originally known for more traditional fare, who took advantage of the new climate of freedom with trailblazers like ROOM AT THE TOP (1959). And we haven’t even mentioned other great directors like John Schlesinger (BILLY LIAR, DARLING). The films became famous for their acting, too, with thespians like Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Julie Christie, Tom Courtenay, Rita Tushingham, Anne Bancroft, Peter Finch, Laurence Harvey, Dirk Bogarde, Mary Ure turning out what remain, to this day, arguably their most accomplished, mesmerizing performances. Please join us for this look back at some of the best films from the era, as well as the final double feature (Lindsay Anderson’s IF… and Michael Winner’s I’LL NEVER FORGET WHAT’S ‘IS NAME) representing Angry Young Cinema transformed into an even more revolutionary, stream-of-consciousness organism.
I have watched some of these, though I have nothing terribly profound to say about them collectively. But last night I finally watched ‘Poor Cow’ which ought to qualify on the grounds of its social and emotional realism. I have been wanting to watch this ever since Soderbergh sampled it on ‘Limey’ for the younger Terence Stamp.
In any case, it is a 1967 Ken Loach film, just a little before he directed ‘Kes.’I’m not sure it coheres as a movie, but it is fascinating. The protagonist, the person described in the title, is a young woman who has a child (in a remarkably realistic childbirth scene) and then a series of relationships, all the while navigating the relative poverty of a working class London neighborhood. It must be unusual for this period to find a (male) director creating an entire film around a female character (played by Carol White). It would be wrong to say that it is told through her eyes or from her point of view. The camera observes without much empathy, and perhaps a little condemnation. Still the contrast with ‘Alfie’ is noteworthy because it focuses upon the consequences of sexuality for the woman rather than the man.
But the real enjoyment of the film is the grittiness of British working class life: the griminess of the tenement blocks; the misshapen people; the young children just running wild. There are two lovely scenes. One in a pub, as the camera just pans across the customers as they chew and swallow and flirt. The other when two women take a job “modeling†which means posing half-naked for a bunch of middle-aged men without film in their cameras.
If you look it up on IMDb there is a 1968 review by Roger Ebert. He didn’t like the movie, but he tries to put it in the context of the British “New Wave†in interesting ways that bear on the Cinematheque series Mauer posted about.
By the way – Of note that Ken Loach won the Palm d’Or at Cannes yesterday for a film about Irish / British colonialism; a film directly influenced by our current colonial war-without-end-amen.
Having seen lots of Mike Leigh and only a little Loach, I think I’ll start with him.
does anyone know if loach’s land and freedom is available on dvd? i saw it at a festival in l.a when it first came out and it was just incredibly stirring (about the spanish civil war). i hope the new one will come to boulder.
I think Anthony Lane had a funny line in his review of ‘Land and Freedom’ about the fact that there were fully fifteen minutes of screen time devoted to a debate about agricultural coops. It did go on a bit.
i found that sequence thrilling! no joke.
Late, but: I think Schlesinger’s films–Darling and Billy Liar–are damn good, and not just because of Julie Christie. What I like about ’em–and about some of the other films by these directors, particularly Richardson and Anderson–is how they disregard notions of “realism” as realistic and instead emphasize the focal consciousness of the lead character, even (in Billy or in Anderson’s later stuff) skipping into a blurring of the real and the psychological.
I’ve never seen Pumpkin Eater, but that’s the one that interests me the most.
Yeah – those two really interest me too, and i’ve not seen either. Also I know they are widely available so I assume I should be able to find them at Video Journeys or Jerry’s.
Nicola and I happened onto Tony Richardson’s 1960 adaptation of John Osborne’s The Entertainer on the American Movie Channel last night. I had never seen it so we watched and were completely hooked. What a terrific film. Equating the waning glories of British Music Hall with the the decline of the Empire herself, Osborne’s mid-century allegory of an over-the-hill/over-the-top, seaside song and dance man and the family he slowly wrecks is unsparing and unsentimental (if Noel Coward had written a tragedy, this is what it certainly would have looked like). Lawrence Olivier delivers what must be one of the great screen performances of all time; his Archie Rice emoting layers and layers of artifice and deceit and it all adds up to a taudry portrait of a hollow vaudevillian. Olivier was 53 but was smart to surround himself with a google of “angry young men” (including Osborne, Richardson, Albert Finney and Alan Bates). The film also includes Joan Plowright who plays Olivier’s daughter but would become his bride within the year.