British Social Realism

Social Realism in European Cinema Soviet Socialist Realism Italian Neorealism French New Wave New British Cinema

Five Periods of British Social Realism DOCUMENTARY John Grierson BRITISH NEW WAVE “Angry Young Men” “Saturday Night, Sunday Morning” SWINGING LONDON “Blowup” CONTEMPORARY (Mike Leigh, Ken Loach) “Secrets & Lies” HYPERREALISM “Trainspotting”

John Grierson (1889-1972) MODERN DOCUMENTARY REALISM Father of the documentary film Film as an effective means of communications between individual and the state Purpose is to create social unity and reform

John Grierson (1889-1972) MODERN DOCUMENTARY REALISM Focused on poverty, hunger, unemployment, and other social problems Intuitive/experiential films can enable people to understand social issues better than rational, cognitive analysis Use of realistic and naturalistic images to signify abstract realities

British Social Realism ZEITGEIST OF THE 1950s Collapse of British Empire Suez Canal crisis Cold War (Ban the Bomb) Working class / student protests Materialism and consumerism

British Cinema: 1945-54 “Several pressures prevented films from adopting more radical social positions in that period. Foremost was the industry's fear and suspicion of involvement in controversy. Behind this was the repressive form of censorship imposed at that time by the British Board of Film Censors. Attacks on the establishment were not only discouraged, they were actively forbidden. Social criticism, at least of things British, tended to be retrospective. Hence the flurry of historical costume pieces. It was all right to discuss the bad behaviour of the Victorians . --www.britmovie.co.uk

British New Wave (1950s-1960s) FREE CINEMA “Free” from the dictates and restraints of the commercial film industry and UK studio system Comparable to French New Wave rebellion against “cinema du papa” and tradition of quality Title of film program at National Film Institute in 1956: Anderson: O Dreamland Reisz/ Richardson: Momma Don’t Allow Mazzetti: Together “Kitchen Soup” Manifesto

British New Wave (1950s-1960s) FREE CINEMA Sight and Sound and Sequence magazines “The camera eye they turn on society is disenchanted, sad, occasionally ferocious and bitter.” Signed films, with a point of view (not documentaries) Make films “in the streets”

British New Wave (1950s-1960s) Lindsay Anderson O Dreamland (1953) Reisz / Richardson Momma Don’t Allow (1955) Jack Clayton Room at the Top (1958) Tony Richardson Look Back in Anger (1958) Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) Karel Reisz Saturday Night, Sunday Morning (1960)

British New Wave (1950s-1960s)

British New Wave (1950s-1960s) ANGRY YOUNG MEN Protests by college students and working class Questioning of the “myth of the British Empire” Frustration over lack of class mobility Loss of traditional moral and cultural values Females depicted as “clinging, entrapping” individuals, forcing men to stay in home town, raise family and buy new consumer products Alienated youth

British New Wave (1950s-1960s) ANGRY YOUNG MEN New Left Review Called for a fundamental restructuring of the British economic system Attacked: Unfair labor practices Middle class values Immoral popular culture Class structure

British New Wave (1950s-1960s) ANGRY YOUNG MEN Part of a larger social movement, assailing the British class structure and calling for the replacement of bourgeois elitism with liberal working-class values.

British New Wave (1950s-1960s) ANGRY YOUNG MEN Frank approach to sex and other taboos The mechanization of life The “sadness of urban life” Found Board of Censors over-protective and obsolete

British New Wave (1950s-1960s) Room at the Top “The film coincided with the upsurge of discontent with Britain's direction, distaste for the government and anxiety over nuclear involvement which produced the CND and the Aldermaston marches. Room at the Top, with its opportunist hero screwing the establishment of his northern town and the inn owner's daughter, provided a readily identifiable index of reaction for the suburban filmgoer. “ --www.britmovie.co.uk Room at the Top

British New Wave (1950s-1960s) The People D. H. Lawrence Ah the people, the people! surely they are flesh of my flesh!   When, in the streets of the working quarters they stream past, stream past, going to work;   then, when I see the iron hooked in their faces, their poor, their fearful faces   then I scream in my soul, for I know I cannot cut the iron hook out of their faces, that makes them so drawn, nor cut the invisible wires of steel that pull them   back and forth to work, back and forth, to work   like fearful and corpse-like fishes hooked and being played by some malignant fisherman on an unseen, safe shore where he does not choose to land them yet, hooked fishes of the factory world.

Swinging London London center of counter-culture revolution Music, fashion, art, film Recovery of the British economy from the post World War II austerity Creation of alternate view of reality (beyond rebellion of “angry young men”)

Swinging London Emphasis on hedonism, free-love, drugs, experimentation, mysticism and “the East” (vs. West) Also focuses on the lost, isolated individual alienated from tradition and convention (e.g., Alfie)

Swinging London

Popular British Cinema “Americans have shown…that they want pictures reflecting the simple emotions. We are trying to crash into their market by offering them gloom-sadism-and-soft-focus. We must aim at the box office and not the art gallery. It is no good aiming over their heads. It will not help us earn dollars.” Kine Weekly (1947)

Popular British Cinema Sustain myth of “Englishness” Stereotypes: London urbanity (lords and ladies) Historical costume dramas Simple but crafty villagers Adaptation of literary classics Animations

Top Grossing Films in UK (2005) 1 Revenge Of The Sith US 2 Charlie & The Chocolate Factory US/UK/Australia 3 War Of The Worlds US 4 Meet The Fockers US 5 Madagascar US 6 Hitch US 7 Batman: Begins US 8 Mr. & Mrs.Smith US 9 Wedding Crashers US 10 Fantastic Four US/Germany 11 Ocean's 12 US/Australia 12 Pride And Prejudice UK 13 Robots US 14 Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy US/UK 15 Wallace & Gromit:Vurse Of The Were-rabbit UK 16 Valiant UK 17 Closer US 18 The Aviator US 19 Kingdom Of Heaven US/UK/Spain/Germany 20 The 40 Year Old Virgin US

State of UK Film Industry Country Films Per Year Screens India 1,200 United States 543 36,000 Japan 293 France 200 Spain 137 Italy 130 Germany 116 China 100 Philippines UK 3300

The Power of Cinema “Americans have turned every cinema in the world into the equivalent of an American consulate.” --UK government report

The Battle with Hollywood Government subsidies (including Lottery) Television support (Channel Four) (33% of feature films made in Britain in 1984) Secrets and Lies, Trainspotting Co-productions (“The Full Monty”) British “product”; US distribution—and profits Use US stars (Bridget Jones’s Diary) Emigration to US (directors) Artistic resistance (Mike Leigh)

Current British Social Realism MARXIST SOCIAL REALISM Expose social injustices, poverty, crime, etc. Economic determinism PSYCHOLOGICAL SOCIAL REALISM People forced to live in horrific conditions Society dealt them a bad hand Still human beings with free will

Current British Social Realism KEN LOACH (Marxist) Film as medium for social reform Location shooting & non-professional actors Class inequality, unfair labor practices, child welfare, poverty, crime Marxist political perspective “Not an exemplary example of cinematic realism”

Current British Social Realism MIKE LEIGH (Psychological) “Master of psychological cinematic realism” Social commentary without sermonizing “This is the way life is, the way people are” Characters are the key Unique approach to filmmaking

Mike Leigh: “All or Nothing”

Hyperrealism “The burning intensity of a copy where an imprint of the real becomes a starting point for its stylization and refinement.” --European Cinema Intensification of “the real” Postmodern, time-condensed, hyperbolic and parodic depiction of social reality Reality on steroids

A Question of National Identity THEMES / EMPHASIS 1930s – 1955: Nostalgia for Old England the Empire Common heroes and myth British heritage films & literary adaptations “Englishness” British New Wave: Questioning of government’s vision Protest against consumerism, suburbanism and Americanization Class struggle 1960s-70s: Counter-culture experimentation 1980s: Deindustrialization, unemployment Changes in social roles, masculine identity 1990s – 2000s: Multiculturalism, alternate heritages