The new British filmmakers, in the vein of the pioneers of the 'Grierson school' before them, forsook the use of studio sets in favor of real location shooting on the back streets, the waterways and the working-class homes of the industrial districts of cities. A strategic black-and-white photography was utilized, commonly with natural lighting and would give rise to the 'grainy realism' for which their visual style was the archetype. The influence of recently developed television techniques helped achieve a sense of immediacy.
The star system was officially outmoded and as if in rebellion - leading roles were only filled by new up-and-coming players in the likes of Tom Courtenay and Albert Finney, who was virtually unheard of outside of London theater circles before his foray into feature films, notably the meritorious Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960). The characters portrayed in these Kitchen sink dramas were closer to the bone and decidedly more complex - they emulated real life situations, and were the prototypes of the 'angry young men.' A term that was ultimately eschewed by the authors despite its accurate summation.
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| A Taste of Honey (1961) but the aftertaste was purely vinegar. |
A good portion of the New Wave and Kitchen sink realist productions were based on books and plays by authors that particularly had experiences of working-class life in the provinces. Very few were derived from original scripts, theirs was a stark contrast from the seemingly condescending view of blue-collar life that had been speculated in earlier feature films.
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| Running alone again, naturally - A dashing Tom Courtenay in The Loneliness of The Long Distance Runner (1962) |
Woodfall Films, with the backing of the British Lion subsidiary - Michael Balcon and Maxwell Setton's Bryanston Films, continued to lead the field. Tony Richardson brought dramatist Shelagh Delaney's Theatre Royal play, A Taste of Honey, to the screen in 1961, starring Rita Tushingham as a pregnant teenager and Murray Melvin (from Theatre Workshop) as Geoffrey, a homosexual art student with whom she shares a brief spell of contented domesticity. Richardson's subsequent The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), would be based on Nottingham novelist Alan Sillitoe's remarkable novella, with Tom Courtenay as the young delinquent living in Borstal; who demonstrates who his alliance is by deliberately throwing a competition that, if won, would have brought great prestige to the Borstal authorities. Criminally undervalued by the critics of its day, it has stood time's test as one of the most enduring films of the period. Both these films were behooved by the gripping camerawork that came courtesy of Free Cinema movement
cinematographer Walter Lassally (b.1926).
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| You're My Green-Eyed Girl (The Girl With The Green Eyes, 1964) clockwise: Peter Finch, Lynn Redgrave and Rita Tushingham |
Woodfall also launched Desmond Davis' (b.1926) career as a director , both melodramas that he helmed were based on Edna O'Brien stories - The Girl With Green Eyes (1964) and Time Lost and Time Remembered (1966) and were late contributions to a no-longer new trend.
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| Cliff Richard and his devil woman in Furie's Wonderful Life |
The young Canadian director, Sidney J. Furie (b. 1933) explored current social issues among working class youth in The Boys (1962) and a slight variation on that theme with 1963's The Leather Boys. He interjected a crisp and contemporary style into the British musical with The Young Ones (1961) and Wonderful Life (1964), both featuring teen idol Cliff Richard.