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and provide them with a past and a present. The dripping walls and poorly lit cramped spaces of Vera Drake (2004) evoke poverty, deprivation and poor sanitation. But the locations also suggest a tight-knit workingclass community and a visual evocation of the urban inner city in the 1950s, as well as the social realism popular in earlier periods of British filmmaking. Sometimes the set design is less about a naturalistic evocation of place and space and more about mood or tone. Films which are fantastical or futuristic frequently eschew set designs which evoke
ideologies of the free cinema movement of which Reisz was a founder member. The continuing influence of the British new wave and of the social realist aesthetic is evident in films as diverse as Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake (2004) and Mark Herman’s Brassed Off (1996). Film as social history Aesthetically, the film draws on older traditions in British cinema of documentary and social commentary. Dubbed ‘kitchen-sink drama’ or social realism for its engagement with issues and social concerns, the films of the new wave did not shy away from addressing issues which had previously