European Film Studies

As the 1960s beckoned, a new mood swept through Britain and then around the world. With anger growing at an out-of-touch establishment, the era was reflected on screen by Woodfall Films, founded in 1958 on the back of the phenomenally successful Royal Court Theatre production of “Look Back Anger”. Writer John Osborn, director Tony Richardson and producer Harry Saltzman formed Woodfall Films Co., making an incendiary brand of social realist films. In A Taste of Honey or Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (both by Tony Richardson in 1961/62) and This Sporting Life (1963 Lindsay Anderson), working-class life was suddenly in the spotlight with an unheard of honesty. The same risk-taking spirit led the company to find a new generation of actors such as Albert Finney, Rita Tushingham, Richard Harris and Tom Courtenay. Films like Tom Jones (1963 Tony Richardson) then expanded Woodfall in an irreverent and colourful direction that led to ‘swinging London’ films —further securing Woodfall’s extraordinary chapter in the history of British film. From 1958 to 1984 Woodfall produced twenty award-winning, often genre-defining films. They are all here.

Bond, Bailey, Blow-Up, British New Wave, a radical Royal Court Theatre, Free Cinema, Kitchen Sink and Swinging London films were The Sixties—an exciting, exploding period for British cinema, producing critically applauded New Wave films and actors, and popular box-office genres.

During the Sixties, a different type of film and a greater number of significant films were made in Britain than at any time before or since, from Look Back in Anger (1959 Tony Richardson) to From Russia With Love (1963 Terence Young) and from Darling (1965 John Schlesinger) and Alfie (1966 Lewis Gilbert). There was a fresh and new visual extravagance. The cinema came alive.

Focusing on environmental realism and ordinary lives, British crime cinema offers a quite distinctive cinematic experience. Explore British crime cinema from 'quota quickies' such as They Drive By Night (1939) and noir informed gothic thrillers such as They Made Me a Fugitive (1947), to low budget 'B' movies of the 1950s and 1960s, and, later, tough, 'gritty' films, such as Get Carter (1970).