Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
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)
“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 US2 Charlie & The Chocolate Factory US/UK/Australia3 War Of The Worlds US4 Meet The Fockers US5 Madagascar US6 Hitch US7 Batman: Begins US8 Mr. & Mrs.Smith US9 Wedding Crashers US10 Fantastic Four US/Germany11 Ocean's 12 US/Australia12 Pride And Prejudice UK13 Robots US14 Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy US/UK15 Wallace & Gromit:Vurse Of The Were-rabbit UK16 Valiant UK17 Closer US18 The Aviator US19 Kingdom Of Heaven US/UK/Spain/Germany20 The 40 Year Old Virgin US
State of UK Film IndustryCountry 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 100
UK 100 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 EmpireCommon heroes and mythBritish heritage films & literary adaptations“Englishness”
British New Wave: Questioning of government’s visionProtest against consumerism, suburbanism and AmericanizationClass struggle
1960s-70s: Counter-culture experimentation
1980s: Deindustrialization, unemploymentChanges in social roles, masculine identity
1990s – 2000s: Multiculturalism, alternate heritages
