British Cinema 3

Additional Essay Question (and topic for discussion) Analyse Wendy Everett’s claim that, in Distant Voices, Still Lives, “music is one of the primary ‘voices’ or signifiers in the film” (68). Your essay should include both secondary research and close analysis of the film itself.

Of Time and the City (Terence Davies, 2008) Screenings at BFI: 31 October - 30 November Sunday 2 November, 3:30 NFT1: Screening + Conversation with Terence Davies Filmography: Of Time and the City (2008) The House of Mirth (2000) The Neon Bible (1995) The Long Day Closes (1992) Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988): originally 2 short films. Death and Transfiguration (1983) Madonna and Child (1980) Children (1976)

British Cinema Today Hollywood films account for over 70% of British box-office takings. The most commercially successful British films of the last 15 years Four Weddings and a Funeral, Trainspotting, The Full Monty, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Notting Hill, Billy Elliot, Bridget Jones Diary, Hot Fuzz - have either received funding and/ or distribution from US companies. Working Title films are distributed by Universal. British studios (Pinewood, Shepperton, Leavesdon) frequently provide facilities and personnel for Hollywood films (e.g. Gladiator, Tomb Raider).

UK FILM COUNCIL: Cultural Test Cultural Content: Section A Film set in the UK Lead characters British citizens or residents Film based on British subject matter or underlying material Original dialogue recorded mainly in English language

4 4

Total Section A

16

4 4

UK FILM COUNCIL: Cultural Test Cultural Contribution: Section B Film represents/reflects a diverse British culture, British heritage or British creativity 4 Total Section B

4

Cultural Hubs: Section C Studio and/or location shooting/ Visual Effects/ Special Effects Music Recording/Audio Post Production /Picture Post Production

2

Total Section C

3

1

UK FILM COUNCIL: Cultural Test Cultural Practitioners: Section D Director Scriptwriter Producer Composer Lead Actors Majority of Cast Key Staff: lead cinematographer etc. Majority of Crew Total Section D TOTAL ALL SECTIONS PASS MARK

1 1 1 1 1 1 8 31 16

UK FILM COUNCIL: Cultural Test Cultural Practitioners: Section D Director Scriptwriter Producer Composer Lead Actors Majority of Cast Key Staff: lead cinematographer etc. Majority of Crew Total Section D TOTAL ALL SECTIONS PASS MARK

1 1 1 1 1 1 8 31 16

Key Figures of the British New Wave 1958-1963 Lindsay Anderson: Tony Richardson:

Karl Reisz: John Schlesinger:

Jack Clayton:

This Sporting Life (1963) Look Back in Anger (1958) A Taste of Honey (1961) The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) A Kind of Loving (1962) Billy Liar! (1963) Darling (1965) Room at the Top (1959)

Sex, Class and Realism: British Cinema 1956-1963 (John Hill) There is always a discrepancy between the ‘idea’ & ‘practice’ of realism. Actual realist practices depend on the employment of conventions which audiences are prepared to accept as realistic. The capacity to signify realism is not intrinsic to any particular set of conventions but is relative to the social and artistic circumstances in which they are employed.

Movie (1962) “Five years ago the ineptitude of British films was generally acknowledged. The stiff upper lip movie was a standard target for critical scorn. But now the British cinema has come to grips with Reality. We have had a break-through, a renaissance, a New Wave… All we can see is a change of attitude, which disguises the fact that the British cinema is as dead as before. Perhaps it was never alive. Our films have improved, if at all, only in their intentions. We are still unable to find evidence of artistic sensibilities in working order. There is as much genuine personality in Room at the Top… method in A Kind of Loving… and style in A Taste of Honey… as there is wit in An Alligator Named Daisy… intelligence in Above Us the Waves… and ambition in Ramsbottom Rides Again.” cited in Robert Murphy, Sixties British Cinema

Free Cinema: Documentary Film (Anderson, Richardson, Reisz) Free Cinema films shared: (1) a sympathetic interest in communities (whether of traditional, working-class communities or the new communities associated with cultural forms like jazz) (2) fascination with youth cultures (3) respect for the traditional working-class (4) unease about the quality of leisure in urban, capitalist society Freedom meant: (1) freedom from commercial constraint. (2) freedom to give expression to a personal vision (as opposed to striving for objectivity or journalistic reportage).

Lyndsay Anderson (1957)

“To counterbalance the rather tepid humanism of our cinema, it must also be said that it is snobbish, antiintelligent, emotionally inhibited, wilfully blind to the conditions and problems of the present, dedicated to an out-of-date, exhausted national ideal”.

Realism in the Cinema (Tendencies rather than Criteria) Grounded in the contemporary environment in terms of setting, character, and social issues.* Strong connection between character and place.* Focus on social rather than individual issues and concerns. Expands the range of social experience given cinematic representation. Classical in style with respect to spatial and temporal construction. * Often reinforced through casting and techniques such as location shooting.

Terence Davies Trilogy Children (1976) Madonna and Child (1980) Death and Transfiguration (1983) These three films, all set in Liverpool, are highly autobiographical, centring on the life of Robert Tucker, who appears first as a child, then as an adult, and finally as an old man at the end of his life. Film Clips from

Sir John Davis responding to the poor box-office for This Sporting Life (1962) “We cannot, as a consistent policy, play films which are unacceptable to the public as entertainment. This would lead to disaster for everyone. I do feel that independent producers should take note of public demand and make films of entertainment value. The public has clearly shown that it does not want the dreary kitchen sink dramas”. Carol Reed (1963): Cinemagoers don’t want “to look for an hour or two at a kitchen sink… a one-set movie… the greasy dishes and the mental and moral miasma of certain elements in society”.

David Bordwell, “Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice” Art cinema: • can accommodate violations of classical conceptions of time and space (especially when they are psychologically motivated). • offers psychologically complex characters but not characters who have clear cut desires and goals. • foregrounds the author as a structure in the film’s system. • foregrounds the narrational act by posing enigmas. Spectators are prompted to ask: why is this story being told this way? • is characterised by ambiguity. (in eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings)

BFI Production Board BFI Production Board (1966-2000): provided funding for young filmmakers interested in making short films and features that would (1) lead to successful careers in commercial filmmaking (New Directors Scheme) and (2) be experimental within a mainstream context. Filmmakers who made their first feature films with support from the BFI Production Board include: Terence Davies Bill Douglas Peter Greenaway Mike Leigh

Channel Four (1982) Some of the films produced with support from Channel Four and screened during the Film on Four programme slot: The Draughtsman’s Contract (Peter Greenaway, 1982) Angel (Neil Jordan, 1982) My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985)* Letter to Brezhnev (Frank Clarke, 1985)* High Hopes (Mike Leigh, 1988) Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davies, 1989)* * Films that might be described as social art films. See Christopher Williams, “The Social Art Cinema,” in Cinema: The Beginnings and the Future (1996)

Young British Filmmakers were also influenced by: - avant-garde film and video. From the mid-1960s onwards, there is a vibrant film culture in Britain centred around artists’ film and video. - other forms of visual art. Filmmakers such as Derek Jarman and Peter Greenaway studied painting before they became filmmakers, and Greenaway continues to work in a variety of media.

Question for Seminar Discussion (I): Wendy Everett claims that Distant Voices, Still Lives “can fit equally well into both the European auteur [or European art film] and the British documentary [or realist] traditions” (63). Do you agree that this film fits equally well into both of these traditions?

Question for Seminar Discussion (II): The cinematographer on Davies’s film, The Long Day Closes, has said that in this film he did not set out to recreate 1950s Liverpool. Instead, he says that he “went for a memory realism, which is not the same as realism”. Cited in Everett, 25. To what extent do the formal choices evident in Distant Voices, Still Lives also suggest a form of “memory realism”?