1953 (Hurry On
Down: novel, John Wain) - 1960 (This Sporting Life: novel, David
Storey & A Kind Of Loving: novel, Stan Barstow.)
3)
What were the outcomes of this movement?
The key works of the artists
lumped together as “Angry Young Men” are:
| Hurry On Down
|
John
Wain
|
Novel 1953
|
|
| Lucky Jim
|
Kingsley
Amis
|
Novel
1954
|
Film
1957
|
| The Outsider
|
Colin
Wilson
|
Philosophical treatise 1956
|
|
| Look
Back In Anger |
John
Osborne
|
Play 1956
|
Film
1959 |
| The Entertainer
|
John
Osborne
|
Play 1957
|
Film
1960
|
| Room At The Top
|
John
Braine
|
Novel 1957
|
Film
1959 |
| Saturday Night And Sunday Morning
|
Alan
Sillitoe
|
Novel 1958
|
Film
1960
|
| A Taste of Honey
|
Shelagh
Delany
|
Play 1959
|
Film
1961
|
| The Kitchen
|
Arnold
Wesker
|
Play 1959
|
Film
1961
|
| Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner
|
Alan
Sillitoe
|
Short Story 1959
|
Film 1962
|
| A
Kind Of Loving |
Stan
Barstow
|
Novel 1960
|
Film
1962 |
| This Sporting Life
|
David
Storey
|
Novel 1960
|
Film
1963
|
“But in the meantime, these young and angry operators
encapsulate not so much an era as a couple of fleeting years: born in 1954,
washed up by 1957; a movement that had no act to get together, which broke
bottles and hearts indiscriminately; which raved and sold out and wallowed in
absurdity; as lasting as a headline in the Mail, as important as a leader in the
Express, an inchoate mix of tops and flops. And yet ... at the going down of
Chateau Margaux, we do remember them.” Peter Preston 2002.The
Angry Young Men
4)
What films were made during this
era?
| Room At The Top
|
1959
|
Dir. Jack Clayton
|
| Look Back In Anger*
|
1959 |
Dir. Tony Richardson
|
| Saturday Night And Sunday
Morning
|
1960
|
Dir. Karel Reisz
|
| The Entertainer* |
1960 |
Dir. Tony Richardson
|
| The Kitchen
|
1961
|
Dir. James Hill
|
| A Taste Of Honey*
|
1961
|
Dir. Tony Richardson
|
| A Kind Of Loving
|
1962
|
Dir. John Schlesinger
|
| The Loneliness Of The Long
Distance Runner*
|
1962
|
Dir. Tony Richardson
|
| This Sporting Life
|
1963
|
Dir. Lindsay Anderson
|
| Billy Liar |
1963 |
Dir. John Schlesinger
|
* Woodfall films.
Speaking
in 1959, Tony Richardson told Films and Filming “It is absolutely vital
to get into British films the same sort of impact and life that what you can
loosely call the Angry Young Man cult had in the theatre and literary worlds.”
Richardson, along with John Osborne and Harry Salzman, created the independent
film company Woodfall in 1959 determined to produce new types of film drawing on
the ideas of Free Cinema. The social realism of the new wave films owed much to
the Free Cinema school of documentary film making which was itself influenced by
the work of Humphrey Jennings. Key Free Cinema films are Lindsay Anderson’s O,
Dreamland (1953), Every Day Except Christmas (1957) and Tony Richardson’s
Momma Don’t Allow (1955). However, the new wave filmmakers were also following
in the time-honoured tradition of British Cinema by bringing to the screen best
selling novels and highly successful plays – a trend that began with Room At
The Top (1959). The success of social realism in TV drama, such as Armchair
Theatre, was also a key factor in making such productions commercially viable.
The key actors
associated with the new wave films are: Tom Courtenay, Albert Finney, Alan
Bates, Richard Harris, Rachel Roberts and Rita Tushingham.
Key factors
in new wave films:
·
Independent film companies eg Woodfall.
·
Took advantage of more liberal censorship
·
Adaptations of successful “angry young man”
plays/novels
·
Protagonist often a discontented working class male
seeking
escape
·
Shift away from the collectivist social realism
films of the 40s
·
The workplace is absent or not important
·
Independent females tend to get “punished”
5)
Did
the angry young men influence the films
produced today?
Although
definable British “social realism” films effectively disappeared from the
big screen in the mid 60s, the genre moved to TV in the Play For Today and
Wednesday Play slots with plays like Cathy Come Home (1967) and was also
reflected in popular comedy series such as Steptoe and Son, Till Death Us Do
Part and The Likely Lads. With more rating conscious and less adventurous TV
programming in the 80s and 90s, filmmakers such as Ken Loach and Mike Leigh
returned to the big screen with such recent examples of the genre as Sweet
Sixteen (2002), All Or Nothing (2002) and Vera Drake (2004). Other recent
examples are Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting (1996), Mark Herman’s Brassed Off
(1996), Peter Cattaner’s The Full Monty (1997), Tim Roth’s The War Zone
(1997) and Gary Oldman’s Nil By Mouth. (1997).
Contempory actors whose styles
are in the social realism tradition include Ray Winstone, Timothy Spall,
Robert Carlyle and Kathy Burke.
6)
How
did the New Wave Cinema effect Britain, France and America?
Most
of the new wave films were commercially successful in Britain and America but
they didn’t influence American or French filmmakers. The French contemporary
equivalent, the nouvelle vogue of Truffaut, Godard and others, was more concerned with innovative
narrative and cinematic techniques than realism. The last films of the cycle,
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and Billy Liar, actually borrowed
some stylistic trappings of the French school. Woodfall’s next film was the
successful historical romp Tom Jones (1963) paving the way for other such
historical epics such as The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) whose failure
led to a lack of American investment in the UK film industry. Generally the new
wave films encouraged 60s British filmmakers to be more ambitious and this is
reflected in the work of Richard Lester, Joseph Losey, John Boorman and others.
