Description
Book SynopsisOffers a startling re-evaluation of what has until now been seen as the most critically lacklustre period of the British film history. Covers a variety of genres, such as B-movies, war films, women''s pictures and theatrical adaptations; as well as social issues which affect film-making, such as censorship. Includes fresh assessment of maverick directors; Pat Jackson, Robert Hamer and Joseph Losey, and even of a maverick critic Raymond Durgnat. 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. Presents a provocative challenge to conventional wisdom about 1950s film and rediscovers the Festival of Britain decade.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements
Contents
Celebrating British Cinema of the 1950s - Ian MacKillop and Neil Sinyard
Critics
Raymond Durgnat and A Mirror for England - Robert Murphy
Lindsay Anderson: Sequence and the Rise of the British Auterism - Erik Hedling
Mirroring England
National Snapshots: Fixing the Past in English War Films - Fred Inglis
Film and the Festival of Britain - Sarah Easen
Pat Jackson's White Corridors - Charles Barr
The Long Shadow: Robert Hamer after Ealing - Philip Kemp
If They Want Culture, They Pay: Consumerism and Alienation in 1950s Comedies - Dave Rolinson
Boys, Ballet and Begonias: The Spanish Gardener and its Analogues - Alison Platt
'The Case of Joseph Losey': His Early British Films - Neil Sinyard
Painfully Squalid?
Women of Twilight - Kerry Kidd
Yield to the Night - Melanie WIlliams
From Script to Screen: Film Censorship and Serious Charge - Tony Aldgate
Housewife's Choice: Woman in a Dressing Gown - Melanie Williams
Adaptibility
Too Theatrical by Half? The Admirable Crichton and Look Back in Anger - Stephen Lacey
The Cold War and A Tale of Two Cities - Robert Giddings
Value for Money: Baker and Berman, and Tempean Films - Brian MacFarlane
Adaptble Terence Rattigan. Separate Tables, Separate Entities? - Dominic Shellard
Personal Views
Archiving the 1950s - Bryony Dixon
Being the Film Reviewer in the 1950s - Isabel Quigly
Michael Redgrave and the Mountebank's Tale - Corin Redgrave
Index
