The 1970s: spectacle and show
Cinema
Intr oduction
Film-making has existed in Britain for over a century and in recent years it has become one of the most fashionable and creative areas of cultural life. Some of the best-loved and most highly-praised films are adaptations of classic novels, which have a reputation without equal for attention to details of dress, decor and setting. But the making of films in a simple, direct way about people’s daily lives is perhaps its greatest strength. The ‘documentary’ style was developed in Britain and has influenced film- making around the world, while naturalistic films by directors such as Ken Loach and Mike Leigh are among the most highly praised.
In spite of its successes, the film industry has suffered from a lack of investment. Since the 1950s British film-makers have been unable to compete with the extravagant productions made by the wealthy Hollywood studios. The government does not invest large sums in film and for many years film-makers had to rely on the success of popular commer- cial genres, such as spy thrillers, horror and comedy. Consequently, some professionals have preferred to work in America, with the world presence of the major studios, plus the promise of big film budgets and earnings. The actor Charlie Chaplin and director Alfred Hitchcock were among the first to work in Hollywood, where their careers flourished.
Film-making in Britain is heavily centralised around the south-east of England, but its commercial heart is the central London district of Soho, where film production companies, publicity agencies and related trades have their offices. The majority of studios are based in outer London.
Pinewood and Shepperton are among the most established, and the new ones of Leavesden, Radlett and Three Mills are among the largest.
The majority of films are shown in cinema chains such as Warner, Virgin and Odeon, which are found all over Britain. They provide a total of approximately 2,200 screens and offer popular, well-publicised films to audiences of around 2.5 million per week. Productions of more limited interest are usually shown in ‘art-house’ or repertory cinemas, or on Channel 4 television. These screens offer more specialised programmes, such as short ‘seasons’ on a particular topic, as well as older films and films in foreign languages.
A growing number of courses in many colleges and universities offer training for careers in film and television. The National Film and Television School is one of the most respected institutions and is financed by the government, together with the film, video and television industries. A related organisation is the British Film Institute, which was founded in 1933 to encourage the arts of film and television. It has some thirty-five regional film theatres and incorporates film councils for Scotland, Ireland and Wales, as well as the National Film and Television Archive and the National Film Theatre (NFT).
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All public cinemas are licensed by the local authorities. These have powers to prevent the showing of a picture if they believe it would be unsuitable. However, they generally follow the recommendations of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). This is a government body, established in 1912 to examine and classify material for public entertain- ment. It currently classifies more than 4,000 films per year and attempts to reflect public opinion by following a ‘line’ between the traditional moral- ists on the political right and progressive libertarians on the left. But critics complain that the British Board is among the strictest in Europe and demand that its secret reports be made available to the public.
The current system was introduced in 1982: ‘U’ films are open to everyone and ‘Uc’ films are especially suitable for children; those with ‘PG’ suggest parental guidance; ‘15’ and ‘18’ films are open respectively to those aged 15 and 18 years and over; R18 is a classification reserved for soft pornographic material and sex films, which can only be shown in special cinemas. The Video Recordings Act of 1984 subjects video material to the same requirements. Video rental is common in Britain, where some five million are hired each week.
In a major ceremony, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) makes awards each year to films from around the world. Two other important events are the London Film Festival in November and the Edinburgh Film Festival in August. Both take place annually and show some 250 films which are often complemented with talks and interviews by international specialists. There are also several smaller annual events around the country, such as the Celtic film festival, which takes place in a different town each year.
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Pioneers
Making movies in Britain began towards the end of the nineteenth century. At that time, there were no commercial cinemas and films were shown in fairgrounds, shops, theatres, schools and even in the open air. They were short, silent and often presented by the people who made them. Many were of humorous incidents, views or perhaps a brief record of some major event, such as a ship launch. But cinema of today has its origins in the mid-1920s when, after interruption during the First World War, a new generation of film-makers appeared. These included the directors Victor Saville and Alfred Hitchcock, producer Michael Balcon and stars such as Ivor Novello and Fay Compton. By the 1930s, the success of Hitchcock’s thrillers had made him the most important director in Britain.
In 1929 Hitchcock directed the first British ‘talkie’, Blackmail. After the arrival of films with sound, cinema audiences grew fast and a small industry expanded to meet demand. But British productions were still relatively unknown abroad. This began to change with Alexander Korda’s comedy The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), which was a major success in America and became the first British picture to win an Oscar. Historical themes, together with adaptations of literary classics, soon became one of the most admired and respected styles of British film- making.
But the arrival of the Second World War interrupted progress. Most studios closed, while a few continued to make films for propaganda purposes. These aimed to encourage patriotic feeling and boost national morale. Several were documentaries, such as London Can Take It (Harry Watts, 1940) and Listen to Britain (Humphrey Jennings, 1941). Others were feature films, such as In Which We Serve (Noel Coward and David Lean, 1942), Millions Like Us (Frank Launder, 1943) and The Shipbuilders (John Baxter, 1944).
Early representations of Britain at war showed leading actors such as John Mills, Noel Coward and later Kenneth Moore demonstrating courage, strength and a stiff upper lip in adverse conditions. They provided influential role-models for the heroes of later war films, such as The Cruel Sea (Charles Frend, 1952), The Dam Busters (Michael Anderson, 1955) and Reach for the Sky (Lewis Gilbert, 1956). Such films reassured the post-war public: they gave moral justification to combat, romanticised war heroism and made audiences feel both proud and relieved. The immediate post-war period was a time of social tranquillity, as government and all sections of society worked together for the common good. There were few popular distractions and television was still an expensive novelty. The cinema became the main source of entertainment, in which the fantasy, romance and escapism of American films represented a post-war land of ‘milk and honey.’
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However, at Ealing Studios in West London, producer Michael Balcon
preferred to ignore the influence of Hollywood and promote a more realist and characteristically British film industry. One of the best-known films to emerge from Ealing was the police drama Blue Lamp (Basil Dearden, 1950). It was a popular tribute to law, order and stability, which captured the mood of the era. It showed a paternal, protective police force and a calm, cohesive community, in which the chief character, P.C. George Dixon, was almost a sacred figure. The highly successful film led to its adaptation as a long-running television series, Dixon of Dock Green.
But Ealing Studios became better known for their distinctive comedy films. These have entered film history as nostalgic, detailed portraits of post-war Britain: a genteel country of friendly policemen, maiden aunts, village shopkeepers and numerous eccentrics who challenge conventional society and ridicule pomposity. Titles include Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), a satire of upper-class manners, and Passport to Pimlico (1949), a humorous critique of British bureaucracy. The Lavender Hill Mob (Charles Crichton, 1951) is one of the most famous. It features a mild- mannered bank clerk who plans a gold-bullion robbery, eventually disguising the loot as Eiffel Tower paperweights. The Ealing style is espe- cially noted for its fine ‘character’ performances, clever scripts and empathy for individuals who oppose big business and challenge the social order. It subsequently influenced numerous comedy films and television series, and is fondly remembered as a cosy celebration of English individu- ality.
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Documentary film-making
One of the most characteristic types of British film is the documentary. This style of film-making began in the 1930s, when Scottish film-maker John Grierson (1898–1972) pioneered new techniques. Grierson wanted to make authentic records of everyday life and was the first to use the term ‘documentary’ to describe a style of film.
Grierson strongly believed that film-makers had a duty to reveal and describe society in order to understand and improve it. To achieve his aim, he worked with the government, making dignified, creative studies of different industries and workers in Britain and the British Empire. These included Coal Face (1935) and Night Mail (1936). Grierson’s work quickly became influential, establishing objective, impartial techniques and the ‘documentary’ as a film genre. His later work demonstrated more social and environmental concern and included examinations of unem- ployment, pollution, education, health and housing. He also pioneered the use of interviews in film, using the camera to record the words of those directly involved.
Since the 1960s documentary techniques have become more common in television, where journalists and news reporters use them as essential investigative tools. In film, realism and authenticity evolved into free
cinema, whose pioneers Lindsay Anderson and Karel Reisz explored authentic, natural aspects of British society. Among their first works were Anderson’s O Dreamland (1953), about a day in the seaside town of Margate, and Reisz’s We are the Lambeth Boys (1958), about an East London youth club. At first the public was bemused, but enjoyed seeing themselves and their lives represented in film.
Social realism
Interest in social life and its authentic representation was also present in theatre and literature. Between 1956 and 1959 the works of many new playwrights and authors such as John Osborne, Colin Wilson and John Braine attracted critical interest. Between 1959 and 1963 several of their novels and plays were adapted for the cinema which explored the reality of the British working class: their thoughts, language, living conditions and aspirations. Their works examined the changing nature of society: how increased affluence was leading to greater individuality, less idealism and a reduced sense of social responsibility.
The film adaptations were generally faithful to the novels, with films set in provincial, grey northern towns. They focussed on ordinary people in their natural surroundings, in small, sparsely furnished terraced houses, in the factories and the pubs. Actors forgot their drama-school RP accents and spoke in the regional vernacular to convey a sense of life, energy and authenticity. Look Back in Anger (Tony Richardson, 1959), Room at the Top (Jack Clayton, 1959), Saturday Night, Sunday Morning (Tony Richardson, 1961) and A Kind of Loving (John Schlesinger, 1962) were among the first and most highly praised of a body of work which became known as ‘new cinema’ or ‘new wave’.
Richardson’s Saturday Night, Sunday Morning was adapted from a novel by Alan Sillitoe and remains one of the most representative. It is set in a small Nottinghamshire town, where Arthur Seaton (played by Albert Finney), a hard-drinking, hard-fighting, virile young man, rebels against the tedium and restrictions of his marriage and his work. But, unlike many older members of his community, he has no political beliefs or ideology and is shown as alienated; detached from his own people and disinterested in political ideas.
The new wave introduced a new style of film-making. It was one without theory or glamour and therefore very different from the fantasy and escapism of Hollywood productions. Here were the first authentic representations of working-class life, depicting as a nightmare the reality of being trapped in the provinces with a wife and children. Films were usually in black and white, with little lighting. Modern jazz, pop music and silence were all employed to support the action.
The older generation of cinema-goers found the new films worrying and confusing, and many stopped going to the cinema. With declining
audiences, competition from Hollywood and television, and little financial help from the government, the survival of the film industry depended on the profits from popular domestic genres which were made to attract the new teenage market.
The magnetism of youth
From the mid-1950s a new generation of teenagers and young single adults was emerging with its own fantasies and desires in film. The industry responded with films made specifically for young audiences: comedy, horror, sex, violence and the occasional literary adaptation were all common. Film-makers argued that their works reflected an increasingly liberal, permissive society. Increased affluence, the emergence of youth culture, the gradual emancipation of female sexuality and rising rates of crime and violence all supported their case.
Following its arrival in the mid-1950s, rock’n’roll music was also heavily exploited in film. The explosive rhythms in Rock Around the Clock (Fred Sears, 1956) led to riots in the cinemas. There were media reports of violence and hysteria among the teenage public and a delirium previously only generated by certain types of religious experience. American films featuring Elvis Presley were enormously popular with teenage audiences and British studios responded with musicals featuring English singers Cliff Richard and Tommy Steele, among others. These were undistinguished except in commercial terms. But their popularity ensured that films became important features in the career of many successful pop stars.
It was the Beatles who brought a measure of critical interest to the ‘pop’ musical. Their film A Hard Day’s Night (Richard Lester, 1964) was an enormous commercial and critical success, on which Help! (Richard Lester, 1965) and the animated, surreal musical Yellow Submarine (George Dunning, 1968) subsequently built. These films helped to make popular music not just the ‘property’ of youth, but a kind of entertainment which was acceptable and accessible to all the family.
The mid-1960s was a turbulent time in which old certainties were chal- lenged and became eroded. Traditional ideas about class, politics, drugs, sexuality and the place of women were all being interrogated in society and the arts. Some films were based on plays and novels which depicted the fashionable lifestyles of the young and beautiful. Darling (John Schlesinger, 1965), Alfie (Lewis Gilbert, 1966) and Georgy Girl (Silvio Narizzano, 1966), captured London’s mood and the magic of a city in which a social revolution in attitudes and values seemed to be taking place.
One of the most unusual films to challenge conventional attitudes towards class and sexuality was The Servant (Joseph Losey, 1963), in which a Cockney manservant changes roles with his effeminate, aristo- cratic master. Although there is a suggestion of blackmail and repressed homosexuality, this tale by Harold Pinter (adapted from a novel by Robert
Maugham) does not deal with it openly, but uses broken dialogue, trivial conversation and silence to reflect the tension between the characters. Much angrier and more direct was Lindsay Anderson’s If … (1968), which criticises the elitism, arrogance and cruelty of the public-school system. It is set in an exclusive but old-fashioned private school, where pupil Mick Travers (Malcolm MacDowell) leads a student rebellion with machine- guns and hand-grenades against the school authorities, in a film which often resembles the American Rebel Without a Cause (1955).
Women were also becoming more liberated and less confined by convention. An interrogation of women’s traditional roles was depicted in a number of films which were set in a liberated, permissive, ‘swinging’ London. The new image could be seen in the leading roles played by Rita Tushingham in A Taste of Honey (Tony Richardson, 1962), Julie Christie in Billy Liar (John Schlesinger, 1963) and Darling (John Schlesinger, 1965), and later with Judy Geeson in Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (Clive Donner, 1968). Their roles ignored the traditional roles of marriage and childbearing, and instead emphasised freedom, innocence and sex appeal.
The speed and excitement of social change began to attract foreign film- makers, such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. The public loved their extravagant, modish films which captured the mood of the moment. But the most successful were those already resi- dent, such as Roman Polanski with Repulsion (1965) and Cul-de-Sac (1966), and Richard Lester with the Beatles films plus The Knack … and How to Get It (1965). Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up (1966) about a photographer involved in a London of drugs and parties, captured the atmosphere of the times and became a fashionable ‘cult’ film of the period. The American director Stanley Kubrick has made numerous films in Britain. His works during the 1960s and 1970s were among the most stylish and critically praised, and included Lolita (1962) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). But his most notorious work was A Clockwork Orange (1971), in which violent, make-up wearing gangs enjoy a disturbing life of crime, sex, violence and Beethoven, which the state attempts to correct by brainwashing techniques and thought-control. Although it was adapted from Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novel, which recalled allegedly true events of twenty years previously, the time of the action remains unclear. In the words of the protagonist Alex (Malcolm MacDowell) it is ‘just as soon as you could imagine it, but not too far ahead – it’s just not today, that’s all.’ But in the turbulent times of the early 1970s, it appeared to accurately document England’s present. One of the most disturbing and controversial films ever shown in or about Britain,
Kubrick withdrew it soon afterwards, following alleged copycat violence and demands that scenes be cut.
Popular genr es
After the austerity of the post-war years, young audiences found the sex, style, excitement and escapism in many 1960s films novel and thrilling. When mixed with the themes of spying and Cold War tension, the result was the James Bond films. Many are adaptations of the thirteen thrillers written by Ian Fleming, which first appeared in 1952 with Casino Royale. In literary terms they were generally undistinguished, but the screen adap- tations supplied a highly commercial combination of glamour, gadgets and exotic locations, in which the hero saved his exotic girlfriend and the world from evil despots with Eastern European accents.
The cocktail of ingredients was no more complicated than Bond’s favourite Martini, and proved just as popular. Almost half of the world’s population has seen a James Bond film, a series which began in 1962 with Doctor No (Terence Young), in which Sean Connery (a Scot) played the leading role. Since then the most famous secret agent in English fiction has been played by George Lazenby (Australian), Roger Moore (English), Timothy Dalton (Welsh) and Pierce Brosnan (Irish). But after some twenty- five years of the Bond formula, public interest began to decline. The disappearance of the Cold War, greater equality for women and popular
Figure 5.1 The classic Bond film Goldfinger, starring Sean Connery
tourism to exotic destinations left it looking tired and old-fashioned. However, in the mid-1990s public interest began to revive, as Bond was reborn as a modern, progressive, ‘new man’ in GoldenEye (1995) and Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), which led to renewed popularity.
Other popular genres of the 1960s included adaptations of well-known television comedy series, such as The Likely Lads, Till Death Us Do Part and Monty Python. They offered comical and often cynical satires of modern social attitudes, and reflected issues which the public found funny. Together with the Carry On … films, they were among the most commer- cially profitable of the 1960s and 1970s.
The Carry On … comedies began in 1958 with Carry On Sergeant. They appeared almost annually until 1980 and regularly found enthusi- astic young audiences. Individual performances were usually caricatures: a fat, unattractive wife with a weak, mousy husband; a large-breasted young woman; an effeminate idiot; and a vigorous young bachelor. Early films were frequently set in familiar locations. State institutions were most common, such as a school, hospital or the army. Inside, infantile innuendo and double entendres were used to ridicule and subvert the official routine and its guardians.
Figure 5.2 Carry On Up the Khyber
The Carry On … films are clear descendants of the Ealing tradition created under Michael Balcon, and became some of the most popular films in the history of British cinema. Although they were ignored by critics for many years, they have recently been the subject of new evaluation by a generation of public and critics who enjoy their irony and kitsch. These elements also attracted young fans to many horror films made by the Hammer production company. Many were directed by the hand of Terence Fisher and starred Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, such as The Horror of Dracula (1958). Early pictures created an atmosphere with shadows and suspense, but in the 1960s they became more explicit, with vivid depictions of blood, sexuality and violence, such as Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969). Plots were typically set on dark nights in elaborate Gothic castles. Common themes included a struggle between good and evil, the familiar and the unknown, or involved a scientific discovery over which man has lost control. But their repetitive and heavily commercial nature made them unpopular with critics, who described them with adjec- tives such as camp, kitsch and exploitative. However, as with the Carry On … films, an enthusiastic teenage public was unworried about critical opinion and ensured their survival until the 1970s.
In spite of some isolated successes, the 1960s were difficult years for British cinema, which was seen as creatively inferior to big-budget American productions and stylish European ‘art’ films. Low levels of finance from central government meant a heavy dependence on commer- cial genres and, by the end of the decade, many critics considered it almost dead, sunk by the popularity of television and the glamour of Hollywood.
The 1970s: spectacle and show
Faced with difficult conditions at the beginning of the decade, and compe- tition from video systems as well as television, the film industry continued to make numerous safe, commercial productions. Many were historical dramas, such as Young Winston, Cromwell and Mary Queen of Scots, which were always popular with audiences overseas. There was little attempt to critically engage with contemporary social issues or to challenge the public, but a notable exception was Alan Parker’s Midnight Express (1978). Based on a true story of drug-smuggling and imprisonment in Turkey, it became one of the most highly regarded works of its time and won many international awards.
Advances in technology allowed the creation of dramatic new special effects. But these made film-making increasingly complex, specialised and expensive, so production was often shared among various companies. There were several British and American collaborations to make extrava- gant science-fiction works, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Superman II and the Star Wars trilogy. In contrast, the turbulent years of the 1970s also witnessed unexpected adult enthusiasm for the simplicity and cosiness of
children’s films, such as Bugsy Malone, The Railway Children, Watership Down and The Tales of Beatrix Potter.
Although cinema attendances had declined, youth was still a major audience and was easily attracted by films starring famous singers and rock bands. These had previously been light and populist, but material gradually became more imaginative and substantial. The Who appeared in Tommy (Ken Russell, 1975), an adaptation of their 1969 album, and again in Quadrophenia (Franc Roddam, 1979), a colourful exploration of the life and times of a frustrated young Mod immersed in London’s youth culture of 1964. With this film, popular culture began to discover its own history. Similarly, That’ll Be the Day (Claude Whatham, 1974) was the first major British film to look back at the 1950s, and followed the successful American pop musical American Graffiti.
Some musicians began to appear in non-musical feature films. The Rolling Stone’s singer Mick Jagger appeared in Performance (Nicolas Roeg, Donald Cammell, 1970), an exploration of sexual, social and narcotic practices in the London of the late 1960s. David Bowie appeared in The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicholas Roeg, 1976), playing an alien who travels to Earth, looking for a way to save his dying planet. This was a highly praised film which raised questions about corporate imperialism, as well as Britain’s decline as a world power.
Although audiences of the 1950s had been shocked by teenage attitudes and behaviour, by the early 1970s films about rebellious youth were part of the mainstream cinema. The new issues of racism, women’s rights and the ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland were considered provocative, dangerous, unprofitable topics, and, in the tough economic climate, film companies did not want to address them. Instead, it was the innovative and daring independent sector which explored them further.
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