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This book offers a startling re-evaluation of what has until now been seen as the most critically lacklustre period of the British film history. It includes fresh assessment of maverick directors; Pat Jackson, Robert Hamer and Joseph Losey, and even of a maverick critic Raymond Durgnat. The book features personal insights from those inidividually implicated in 1950s cinema; Corin Redgrave on Michael Redgrave, Isabel Quigly on film reviewing, and Bryony Dixon of the BFI on archiving and preservation. A classic image from 1950s British cinema would be Jack Hawkins in The Cruel Sea, the epitome of quiet English integrity. Raymond Durgnat's A Mirror for England: British Movies from Austerity to Affluence, which deals extensively with British films of the 1950s, was written in the mid-1960s and was published in 1970. In a 1947 article called 'Angles of Approach' Lindsay Anderson delivered a fierce attack on contemporary British film culture, outlining a model for a devoted politics of creation, well in line with what we would later understand as auteurism and art cinema aesthetics . The war films of the 1950s together constitute the assented-to record of the emotions and moral judgments called upon to set in order those disorderly events. The book also talks about the Festival of Britain, White Corridors, and four Hamer's post-Ealing films: The Spider and the Fly, The Long Memory, Father Brown and The Scapegoat. A number of factors have contributed to the relative neglect of the 1950s as a decade in British cinema history.
: Faber and Faber, 2013), p. 4. 11 Roeg, The World is Ever Changing , pp. 4–5. 12 Colm McAuliffe, ‘Leaving it to Chance: Maverick Director Nicolas Roeg On Don’t Look Now ’, The Quietus , 27 June 2011, available at: http://thequietus.com/articles/06489-leaving-it-to-chance-maverick-director-nicolas-roeg/ . Accessed 29 June 2016. 13 Joseph Lanza, Fragile Geometry: The Films, Philosophy, and Misadventures of Nicolas Roeg (New York, NY: PAJ Publications, 1989), p. 15
films of the period, too. For example, Horror Hospital 101 085-105_BritFilm70s_Ch 3.indd 101 27/09/2012 12:55 British films of the 1970s (Antony Balch, 1973) features Robin Askwith as Jason, a songwriter who is convinced a progressive rock band has stolen one of his songs. The Music Machine (Ian Sharp, 1979) is a film about a discodancing competition. And That Summer! (Harley Cokliss, 1979) is a youth film set in Torquay which spawned a successful soundtrack LP. Moreover, the maverick director, Ken Russell, also made a number of music-themed films during the
local transport café where the highlight of the week was a dance in the local village hall to the happening sounds of the local amateur combo. Baker was hired to play Tom against some considerable odds; Andrew Spicer cites this as evidence of how the actor’s transformation from ‘heavy’ to star was ‘not made by unimaginative Rank executives’ ( 1999 : 7) but by such maverick directors as Endfield. By 1957 Rank’s promotion for Hell Drivers proclaimed Baker as ‘a fine actor for whom great things are predicted’ in a film they described as ‘enormously accomplished
via an additional tax on ticket sales (Crisp 1993 : 76–7). By that time the maverick director had already taken combating American hegemony into his own hands by shooting La Belle Meunière with an experimental colour process invented by French engineers Lucien and Armand Roux. In contrast to other existing colour technologies, Rouxcolor was optical rather than chemical in nature and involved recording four
Featuring more than 6,500 articles, including over 350 new entries, this fifth edition of The Encyclopedia of British Film is an invaluable reference guide to the British film industry. It is the most authoritative volume yet, stretching from the inception of the industry to the present day, with detailed listings of the producers, directors, actors and studios behind a century or so of great British cinema.
Brian McFarlane's meticulously researched guide is the definitive companion for anyone interested in the world of film. Previous editions have sold many thousands of copies, and this fifth instalment will be an essential work of reference for universities, libraries and enthusiasts of British cinema.