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Sixties British Cinema
British films of the 1960s are undervalued. Their search for realism has often been dismissed as drabness and their more frivolous efforts can now appear just empty-headed. Robert Murphy's Sixties British Cinema is the first study to challenge this view. He shows that the realist tradition of the late '50s and early '60s was anything but dreary and depressing, and gave birth to a clutch of films remarkable for their confidence and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, A Kind of Loving, and A Taste of Honey are only the better known titles. Sixties British Cinema revalues key genres of the period--horror, crime, and comedy--and takes a fresh look at the "swinging London" films, finding disturbing undertones that reflect the cultural changes of the decade. Now that our cinematic past is constantly recycled on television, Murphy's informative, engaging, and perceptive review of these films and their cultural and industrial context offers an invaluable guide to this neglected era of British cinema.
- GenresFilm
368 pages, Paperback
First published April 26, 1992
About the author
Robert Murphy
162 books5 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 15, 2013
A valuable era-specific survey of a standout period in filmmaking. For what it's worth, most parts of the cinema world were in the stirrings, or the midst, of a new wave of filmmaking during the sixties. The war had truly ended and more importantly the grim Postwar period had also begun to dissolve, and something new was in the air; in fact, it would seem that everything new was in the air.
"I tasted the sourness of envy. Then I rejected it. Not on moral grounds, but because I felt then, and still do, that envy's a small and squalid vice ... This didn't abate the fierceness of my longing. I wanted an Aston-Martin, I wanted a three-guinea linen shirt, I wanted a girl with a Riviera suntan -- these were my rights, I felt, a signed and sealed legacy."
Room At The Top 1957
"This spring, as never before in modern times, London is switched on. Ancient elegance and new opulence are all tangled up in a dazzling blur of op and pop. The city is alive with birds (girls) and beatles, buzzing with minicars and telly stars, pulsing with half a dozen separate veins of excitement. The guards now change at Buckingham Palace to a Lennon and McCartney tune, and Prince Charles is firmly in the long-hair set."
Piri Halasz, TIME, 1966
The war had democratized society, classes were breaking down, rationing and economic burdens were beginning to subside, and the coming generation were getting secondary education to a much greater extent; what hadn't changed was a multi-generational fascination with the Movies.
Beyond the basic historical background, Robert Murphy necessarily covers the intertwined topics of the Quota rulings, the documentary movement, and the unique role of Cinema Societies and groups that preceded the sixties. The author very often references films from the '45-59 period that birthed the movements to come.
Central to the whole presentation here is the 'social problem' film, generally related to the angry-young-man or kitchen-sink genres of theater or literature. Specifically cited and revisited throughout the book, director Jack Clayton's "Room At The Top" from 1959 seems to encapsulate a lot of what would blossom, or mutate, in the years that immediately followed. A culture that had survived the Victorian & Edwardian eras, gone to disastrous war twice, and still refused to sink under the weight-- was about to emerge, but not from the usual sources.
Though the framework of the 'system' and fading class & racial barriers are hard to avoid in sixties Brit films, nothing really prepares the student for the explosion of contrarianism, revisionism, in fact surrealism and humor, eventually psychedelia and beyond (Nic Roeg's Performance arguably set the pattern, stylishly, for nearly every 'music-vid' to follow in the Mtv era). The locked-room of the problem films of the late fifties moved on to the why-not-smash-thru-the-window outlook of the sixties. Billy Liar, Alfie and Georgy-Girl begot Darling and Petulia. The era simply took off (and it looked a lot like Julie Christie much of the time).
It isn't within the scope of a goodreads review to condense this era, but it is worth saying that there is a lot of ground covered between The Lavender Hill Mob and, say, Thunderball; from there to 2oo1 A Space Odyssey-- is hard to summarize neatly. But even given an unmanageable topic, Murphy's book seems at once indispensable to the film student outside Britain. ( If occasionally a little odd-- how does the chapter on Hammer horror films turn out to be twice as long as the one titled 'Swinging London' ?)
(The case could be made that the Hammer methodology gave on to what would become the later-sixties hallucinatory or dystopian genres, ala Clockwork Orange, or Repulsion or O Lucky Man. Really, though, it seems more likely that Murphy is just a horror fan. Which is fine, but the many-genre branches here require more leashing-in, the territory is already too much without detours. Surveys need central themes, concision; not parsings of vampire etiquette, which can get a bit
A particularly complex relationship existed (and still does) between British filmmaking and Hollywood, and Murphy devotes a fact-filled chapter to that theme. The reader shouldn't expect the author to spend a lot of time on David Lean or Hitchcock, though, since those are both well documented, and certainly International in their exploits; it might be argued that they had both graduated to 'world' cinema. Nor will the reader find the cinema of India, Jamaica, or any other colonial Brit outpost here either, but Murphy isn't after that, in any case.
The central value of "Sixties British Cinema" is the unprecedented wealth of titles to explore, long after they were popular, some of which never gaining anything like popularity. This book is not about blockbusters, but not about rareties either. Excellent Brit films that may now be slightly obscure are covered, and if only by mention, provide the reader with a tremendous checklist for a movie marathon.
For me, the best Brit films manage to stay just clear of the genres that the historian needs to define them; the best ones share a kind of dark humor, but are serious; something of the history involved, but something futuristic, something secret & macabre but also something broadly knowing, even to the extent of being unintentionally slapstick, but in the manner of Dada rather than Chaplin. Social problems beget crime, that turns mysterious, that becomes suspense or caper as it evolves, then domestic and human as it is explained-- eventually becoming touching, even-- and all of a sudden, the viewer
Just go ahead and select any film mentioned above, (alright, maybe not 'Thunderball') but also : A Night To Remember, A Taste Of Honey, Our Man In Havana, Sapphire, The Servant, Lord Of The Flies, Victim, Séance On A Wet Afternoon, The L-Shaped Room, Poor Cow, Sebastian . . . or better, pick up the book and get all the options in a guided tour.
September 13, 2015
'Taken as a whole, the 1960s saw a greater number of significant and exciting films made in Britain than at any time before or since.' - as Murphy says in his conclusion. This is a good introduction to 60s British cinema, with chapters on 'Kitchen Sink' and realist film, the critical attitudes of the times, art cinema, the organisation of the industry, 'Swinging London', horror films, crime and spy films, comedy, and how the big (Hollywood) production companies worked in Britain.
Inevitably, with such a large subject, individual films are skimmed over (in his introduction, Murphy apologises for missing out any mention of some key films, directors, and actors), so the emphasis is perhaps slightly more on mentioning films you might not have heard of, or which have been unfairly disparaged, than in mentioning the obvious hits. (There is an appendix listing all the significant events and films, year by year, so those major films are all included there.) I certainly came away with a list of films to see, which is why I picked this book up to start with.
Inevitably, with such a large subject, individual films are skimmed over (in his introduction, Murphy apologises for missing out any mention of some key films, directors, and actors), so the emphasis is perhaps slightly more on mentioning films you might not have heard of, or which have been unfairly disparaged, than in mentioning the obvious hits. (There is an appendix listing all the significant events and films, year by year, so those major films are all included there.) I certainly came away with a list of films to see, which is why I picked this book up to start with.
November 27, 2023
Checking my list of favourite films from the 60s I see Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, The Entertainer, A Taste of Honey, Whistle Down the Wind, Victim all from 1960 and 61… and all the way along to Deep End and Performance in 1969/70. Lots of great British movies. What happened in the 70s? Hardly any at all! Poof! Vanished.
These 60s movies had a whole narrative arc of their own, starting off in black and white and ending in psychedelical colour, starting off in the gritty working-class wastelands of The North in all those Kitchen Sink grumpy-but-poetic dramas (Billy Liar, This Sporting Life) and migrating in 1965 to Swinging London ™ (Georgy Girl, Wonderwall). En route heaps of brand new stars were discovered (Albert Finney, David Hemmings, Julie Christie, Vanessa Redgrave) along with directors like Lindsay Anderson, Ken Russell and John Boorman. There was a lot going on.
(Some of these movies do not pass the test of time.)
Robert Murphy astounded me by 1) having apparently been able to watch every good and terrible 60s British movie (he complains in the introduction that he couldn’t get to see The Mark (1961) or The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963) but that’s about all he missed); and 2) being able to write such a splendid encyclopedic book of dense factpacked pages in a brisk style which entirely avoids the gruesome here-comes-another-migraine filmcriticspeak that turns so many books on film into a form of torture.
So we bowl merrily along, and all these movies throw up many intriguing ideas as they clash and blend with each other. Well of course, movies are about the stuff that’s going on when they’re made, they’re making all kinds of statements even if they think they’re just simple comedies or heist pictures. In your detailed survey of a decade of films you are therefore writing a social history too.
The 60s only lasted for ten years (in common with many other decades) and what happened to British film after 1970 is a tangled and not very edifying tale but heck, this is what happens to countries and their arts, they flourish and then they fade like flowers; French cinema up to the 1970s was stuffed with greatness – now? Not so much. Italians had at least 20 years of wonderful stuff but now? I don’t know. Now we have Korean cinema, a thing of wonder. It won’t last forever either. Greatness strikes where it pleases.
These 60s movies had a whole narrative arc of their own, starting off in black and white and ending in psychedelical colour, starting off in the gritty working-class wastelands of The North in all those Kitchen Sink grumpy-but-poetic dramas (Billy Liar, This Sporting Life) and migrating in 1965 to Swinging London ™ (Georgy Girl, Wonderwall). En route heaps of brand new stars were discovered (Albert Finney, David Hemmings, Julie Christie, Vanessa Redgrave) along with directors like Lindsay Anderson, Ken Russell and John Boorman. There was a lot going on.
(Some of these movies do not pass the test of time.)
Robert Murphy astounded me by 1) having apparently been able to watch every good and terrible 60s British movie (he complains in the introduction that he couldn’t get to see The Mark (1961) or The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963) but that’s about all he missed); and 2) being able to write such a splendid encyclopedic book of dense factpacked pages in a brisk style which entirely avoids the gruesome here-comes-another-migraine filmcriticspeak that turns so many books on film into a form of torture.
So we bowl merrily along, and all these movies throw up many intriguing ideas as they clash and blend with each other. Well of course, movies are about the stuff that’s going on when they’re made, they’re making all kinds of statements even if they think they’re just simple comedies or heist pictures. In your detailed survey of a decade of films you are therefore writing a social history too.
The 60s only lasted for ten years (in common with many other decades) and what happened to British film after 1970 is a tangled and not very edifying tale but heck, this is what happens to countries and their arts, they flourish and then they fade like flowers; French cinema up to the 1970s was stuffed with greatness – now? Not so much. Italians had at least 20 years of wonderful stuff but now? I don’t know. Now we have Korean cinema, a thing of wonder. It won’t last forever either. Greatness strikes where it pleases.
August 20, 2009
in my top five books on film which includes:
English Gothic by Jonathan Rigby
Movies Made For Television by Alvin Marill
Sex, Class and Realism - John Hill
Blood and Black Lace - Adrian Luther Smith
English Gothic by Jonathan Rigby
Movies Made For Television by Alvin Marill
Sex, Class and Realism - John Hill
Blood and Black Lace - Adrian Luther Smith
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews