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Life Here Today — British New Wave Cinema

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Representations of Working-Class Life 1957–1964

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Abstract

The period 1959–63 was marked by the appearance (and subsequent sudden disappearance) of a ‘New Wave’ of social realist films which seemed to signal a renaissance of seriousness and contemporary relevance within British cinema. One immediately apparent paradox is that this was also precisely the period in which the collapse of cinemagoing in Britain as a mass leisure pursuit became confirmed as a long-term trend. To understand this curious situation it is first necessary to consider the economic and institutional structure of the British cinema industry in the post-war period.

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Notes and References

  1. These and other statistics on British cinema are collated in the Appendix to J. Curran and V. Porter (eds), British Cinema History (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983).

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  2. J. Spraos, The Decline of the Cinema: an Economist’s Report (London: Allen and Unwin, 1962) p. 22.

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  3. T. Kelly, G. Norton and G. Perry, A Competitive Cinema (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1966) p. 16.

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  4. Ibid., p. 17.

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  5. C. Barr, Ealing Studios (London: Cameron and Tayleur/David and Charles, 1977) p. 84.

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  6. Cited in E. Sussex, Lindsay Anderson (London: Studio Vista, 1969) p. 32.

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  7. A. Walker, Hollywood, England (London: Michael Joseph, 1974) p. 37.

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  8. Ibid., p. 38.

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  9. Ibid.

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  10. Cited in A. Lovell and J. Hillier, Studies in Documentary (London: Secker and Warburg, 1972) p. 156.

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  11. L. Anderson, ‘Get out and push!’, in T. Maschler (ed.), Declaration (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1957) p. 158.

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  12. New Statesman, 5 October 1957, p. 414.

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  13. For a detailed discussion of the film see S. Laing, ‘Room at the Top: The morality of affluence’, in C. Pawling (ed.), Popular Fiction and Social Change (London: Macmillan, 1984).

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  14. Spectator, 30 January 1959, p. 144.

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  15. New Statesman, 31 January 1959, p. 144.

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  16. Walker, Hollywood, England, p. 110.

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  17. M. Balcon, Michael Balcon Presents: A Lifetime of Films (London: Hutchinson, 1969) p. 196.

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  18. Walker, Hollywood, England, p. 110.

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  19. J. Hill, ‘Working-class realism and sexual reaction: Some theses on the British “New Wave”’, in Curran and Porter (eds), British Cinema History, p. 305.

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  20. A. Sillitoe, ‘What comes on Monday?’, New Left Review, No. 4 (July–August 1960) p. 59.

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  21. Ibid.

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  22. Both cited in J. Richards and A. Aldgate, Best of British: Cinema and Society 1930–70 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983) pp. 134, 135.

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  23. For a different analysis of the significance of these shots see A. Higson, ‘Space, place, spectacle’, Screen, 25, No. 4–5 (July–October 1984).

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  24. Spectator, 4 November 1960, p. 689.

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  25. Richards and Aldgate, Best of British, pp. 137, 140.

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  26. R. Prince, ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’, New Left Review, No. 6 (November-December 1960). p. 17.

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  27. A. Lovell, ‘Film chronicle’, New Left Review, No. 7 (January-February 1961) p. 53.

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  28. Walker, Hollywood, England, p. 121.

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  29. S. Delaney, A Taste of Honey (London: Methuen, 1959) p. 7.

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  30. Ibid., p. 26.

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  31. Ibid., p. 87.

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  32. Walker, Hollywood, England, p. 122.

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  33. New Statesman, 28 September 1962, p. 429.

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  34. Walker, Hollywood, England, p. 120.

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  35. Hill, ‘Working-class realism’, p. 308.

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  36. Ibid., p. 309.

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  37. Isabel Quigly in the Spectator, 12 April 1962, p. 512.

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  38. See Chapter 6 for a discussion of this form.

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  39. I. Quigly, Spectator, 16 August 1963.

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  40. The stage version had prefigured the film in this respect.

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  41. As Alexander Walker noted in the early 1970s: ‘With Julie Christie, the British cinema caught the train south’, Hollywood, England, p. 167.

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  42. J. Coleman, New Statesman, 15 February 1963, p. 246.

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  43. ‘Sport, life and art’, Films and Filming (February 1963), cited in Sussex, Lindsay Anderson, p. 45.

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Authors
  1. Stuart Laing
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© 1986 Stuart Laing

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Laing, S. (1986). Life Here Today — British New Wave Cinema. In: Representations of Working-Class Life 1957–1964. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18459-0_6

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