scholarly journals The Colour of Social Realism

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-490 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Street
Keyword(s):  
Social Realism ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
Black And White ◽  
The Family ◽  
British Cinema ◽  
Wave Cycle ◽  
The 1960S

During the 1960s Eastmancolor, a relatively cheap, widely available film stock, revolutionised the British film industry's approach to colour. This article discusses the consequences of this major representational and aesthetic shift on social realism, a sub-genre of British cinema primarily associated with black and white cinematography. While colour provided an opportunity for greater realism, critics argued that it distracted audiences with hues considered inappropriate for social commentary. The article examines how a number of notable 1950s and 1960s British colour films navigated entrenched critical positions while deploying colour in distinctive, often innovative ways to reflect their social realist environments and themes. Films examined include A Kid for Two Farthings (1955), Miracle in Soho (1957), Sapphire (1959), Flame in the Streets (1961), Some People (1962), The Family Way (1966) and Poor Cow (1967). It is argued that critics' preoccupation with the New Wave cycle of films, 1959–63, has been at the expense of colour films that extended the range of representation, both aesthetically and thematically. Bringing colour more centrally into scholarship about British cinema contributes to revisionist research on social realism that privileges the foregrounding of style and textual aesthetics. In addition, the article shows how analysing films from the perspective of colour encourages relating them to broader chromatic tastes and trends. By the mid-1960s, as culture was generally becoming more chromatically vibrant, film-makers were able to take greater advantage of the colour stocks that enabled them to experiment with realist conventions.

A ‘New Wave’ in British Television Drama

2005 ◽  
Vol 115 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lez Cooke
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Television Drama ◽  
American Television ◽  
The World ◽  
British Cinema ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Queer As Folk ◽  
The 1960S

In recent years, American television drama series have been celebrated as ‘quality television’ at the expense of their British counterparts, yet in the 1970s and 1980s British television was frequently proclaimed to be ‘the best television in the world’. This article will consider this critical turnaround and argue that, contrary to critical opinion, the last few years have seen the emergence of a ‘new wave’ in British television drama, comparable in its thematic and stylistic importance to the new wave that emerged in British cinema and television in the early 1960s. While the 1960s new wave was distinctive for its championing of a new working-class realism, the recent ‘new wave’ is more heterogeneous, encompassing drama series such as This Life, Cold Feet, The Cops, Queer as Folk, Clocking Off and Shameless. While the subject-matter of these dramas is varied, collectively they share an ambition to ‘reinvent’ British television drama for a new audience and a new cultural moment.

scholarly journals A Changing Visual Landscape: British Cinematography in the 1960s

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-227
Author(s):  
Duncan Petrie
Keyword(s):  
High Contrast ◽  
Cinema Studies ◽  
Black And White ◽  
International Recognition ◽  
British Cinema ◽  
Visual Style ◽  
Visual Landscape ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Gradual Transformation ◽  
Made In

British cinema of the 1960s offers a productive terrain for the consideration of the significance and contribution of the cinematographer, a rather neglected and marginalised figure in British cinema studies. The work of British practitioners certainly achieved new levels of international recognition during this period, with the award of five Oscars for Best Cinematography between 1960 and 1969, equalling the total from the previous twenty years. A survey of the films made in Britain during the decade also reveals a gradual transformation in visual style: from a predominance of black and white to the ubiquity of colour; from hard-edged, high-contrast lighting to a softer, more diffused use of illumination; from carefully composed images and minimal camera movement to a much freer, more mobile and spontaneous visual register; from the aesthetics of classicism to a much more self-conscious use of form appropriate to a decade associated with a new emphasis on spectacle and sensation. This article will examine major achievements in 1960s British cinematography, focusing on the factors noted above and giving particular consideration to the contribution of a small number of key practitioners including Walter Lassally, David Watkin, Nicolas Roeg and Freddie Young, who individually and collectively helped to affirm the 1960s as a particularly creative period in British cinema.

scholarly journals A World on His Shoulders: Nat Cohen, Anglo-EMI and the British Film Industry

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-49
Author(s):  
Laura Mayne
Keyword(s):  
Film Industry ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
Box Office ◽  
The Press ◽  
British Cinema ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Business Acumen ◽  
The 1960S

Despite being one of the most significant players in the British film industry of the 1960s and 1970s, Nat Cohen remains a curiously neglected figure in histories of that era. At Anglo-Amalgamated he oversaw a varied slate of productions, from B-movies and cheap programmers to box-office successes like Ken Loach’s Poor Cow. He greenlit some of the greatest commercial hits of the 1960, including New Wave dramas ( Billy Liar, A Kind of Loving), pop musicals ( Catch Us If You Can) and horror films now widely considered to be classics of British cinema ( Peeping Tom). After Anglo-Amalgamated was acquired as part of EMI’s takeover of the Associated British Pictures Corporation (ABPC), Cohen headed Anglo-EMI, where his business acumen and shrewd commercial instincts led to him being dubbed ‘King Cohen’ by the press and widely recognised as one of the most powerful men in the British film industry. Drawing on recent scholarly work on the role of the producer, this article will explore links between Anglo-ABPC and EMI through the lens of Cohen’s career and distinctive ‘movie mogul’ persona.

The 400 Blows (1959)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Ionita
Keyword(s):  
Family Life ◽  
School Discipline ◽  
New Wave ◽  
French Society ◽  
French Cinema ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Black And White ◽  
French New Wave ◽  
Poetic Realism

The 400 Blows (Les 400 Coups), a black-and-white French feature film directed by François Truffaut, is one of the most influential works of the French New Wave. Strongly autobiographical, it tells the story of Antoine Doinel, a troubled Parisian boy struggling with an indifferent family life and stultifying school discipline, who is placed in a reform school after he commits a series of petty crimes. Truffaut chose the actor Jean-Pierre Léaud to play Doinel’s character in not just 400 Blows, but in four subsequent films. Influenced by Jean Vigo’s 1933 short Zero for Conduct, the film is notable for its simple, poetic realism and its unsentimental look at childhood, which is a radical departure from the edulcorated symbolism of films like Albert Lamorisse’s 1953 White Mane. Its use of innovative camera techniques, such as long tracking shots, jump cuts, and dissolves reflects Truffaut’s preoccupation with auteurism, in particular with Alexandre Astruc’s notion of the "camera pen" (camera-stylo) as the main expressive tool in the director’s arsenal. The film’s social commentary, though oblique, is unmistakable: Truffaut critiques the conformism, rigidity, and traditionalism of not only French society, but also of French cinema. The 400 Blows is rebellious but hardly optimistic and its iconic final image, of a freeze-frame of Doinel looking directly into the camera places some of the responsibility of his struggle on the viewers.

British New Waif: Rita Tushingham and Sixties Female Stardom

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie Williams
Keyword(s):  
New Wave ◽  
Detailed Case ◽  
British Cinema ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter looks at shifts in the configuration of female stardom in British cinema in the 1960s, making use of a detailed case study of the new ‘quirky’ model of screen stardom represented by Liverpudlian actress Rita Tushingham and how she navigated a career from the British New Wave realist film movement to the phenomenon of ‘swinging London’ in the mid to late 1960s.

Protestants and American Conservatism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillis J. Harp
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Moral Agent ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
American Conservatism ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Federal Authority ◽  
The Family ◽  
Conservative Beliefs ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The 1960S

Protestant beliefs have made several significant contributions to conservatism, both in the more abstract realm of ideas and in the arena of political positions or practical policies. First, they have sacralized the established social order, valued and defended customary hierarchies; they have discouraged revolt or rebellion; they have prompted Protestants to view the state as an active moral agent of divine origin; and they have stressed the importance of community life and mediating institutions such as the family and the church and occasionally provided a modest check on an individualistic and competitive impulse. Second, certain shared tenets facilitated this conjunction of Protestantism and conservatism, most often when substantial change loomed. For example, common concerns of the two dovetailed when revivals challenged the religious status quo during the colonial Great Awakening, when secession and rebellion threatened federal authority during the Civil War, when a new type of conservatism emerged, and dismissed the older sort as paternalistic, when the Great Depression opened the door to a more intrusive state, when atheist communism challenged American individualism, and, finally, when the cultural changes of the 1960s undermined traditional notions of the family and gender roles. Third, certain Christian ideas and assumptions have, at their best, served to heighten or ennoble conservative discourse, sometimes raising it above merely partisan or pragmatic concerns. Protestantism added a moral and religious weight to conservative beliefs and helped soften the harshness of an acquisitive, sometimes cutthroat, economic order.

scholarly journals A portrait of Italian ‘Family houses’: diversified heritage in a redefined territorial and demographic context

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Zanfi ◽  
Chiara Merlini ◽  
Viviana Giavarini ◽  
Fabio Manfredini
Keyword(s):  
Demographic Change ◽  
Demographic Transition ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Property Values ◽  
Italian Family ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Demographic Context ◽  
Family House

AbstractThe ‘family house’ has played a major role within the urbanisation processes that have been transforming the Italian landscape since the 1960s. It is a common feature of the widespread settlements that are part of what has been labelled the ‘diffuse city’ and was the subject of numerous studies during the 1990s. More than 20 years later, this paper returns to the topic of the Italian family house using a renewed methodological approach to describe relevant changes. The hypothesis here is that in order to grasp the tensions affecting ‘family houses’ in today’s context of demographic transition and increased imbalances between dynamic and declining areas, and to contemplate their future, the qualitative gaze adopted by scholars in the 1990s must be integrated with other investigative tools, focusing on demographic change, uses, and the property values of buildings. Using this perspective, the paper provides a series of ‘portraits’ rooted in four meaningful territorial contexts, portraits which may help scholars to redefine their imagery associated with family house and be useful for dedicated building policies.

“Untold Stories of Issei Women: Collective Images and Individual Experiences in Japanese American Oral History”

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-40
Author(s):  
Ryoko Okamura
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
Cultural Consensus ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Audio Recordings ◽  
The Family ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Redress Movement ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This article examines the relationship between the Japanese American redress movement and the oral interviews of two Japanese immigrant women, known as Issei women. Focusing on the shared images of Issei women in the Japanese American community and the perspectives and self-representations of the interviewees in the oral interviews, it explores how cultural consensus produced stereotypical, collective images of Issei women as submissive, persevering, and quiet persons. As the redress movement progressed in the 1960s to the 1980s, the Japanese American community conducted oral history projects to preserve memories and legacies of their wartime experiences. There are dissimilarities between the original audio recordings and the published transcripts regarding the perspectives of Issei women. This article shows how the community’s desire to preserve idealized images of Issei men and women reduced the accuracy and nuances in the women’s self-representations and the complexities of family relations. Also, contrary to the collective images, Issei women demonstrated how they were independent, assertive, and open individuals expressing their perspectives, complicated emotions, and importance in the family.

scholarly journals ‘Pungent Sex’ and ‘Room at the Bottom’: Reframing British Exploitation Films of the 1960s

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
Film Industry ◽  
Early American ◽  
Cultural Currency ◽  
Production Distribution ◽  
British Cinema ◽  
Exploitation Films ◽  
Exploitation Film ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Exhibition Strategies ◽  
Mode Of Production

Eric Schaefer, in his exploration of the American exploitation industry, has argued that exploitation cinema developed in opposition to mainstream Hollywood products. Furthermore, the topics and subject matter presented in early American exploitation films dealt with subjects Hollywood were unwilling to produce. As a result, the production, distribution and exhibition strategies developed by exploitation filmmakers differed markedly from the American mainstream film industry. However, in Britain (amongst critics and scholars) the exploitation film has no similar defining characteristics and is a term that has been applied to a wide variety of British films without regard to their industrial mode of production, distribution or exhibition. As a result, the cultural currency of the British exploitation film, as it is now understood, has no connection to the films they now describe, and often fails to take into account how these films were originally produced, marketed, distributed and exhibited. In the British film industry during the 1960s, the term ‘exploitation’ was used by the industry to refer to a wide variety of films which are now viewed differently by contemporary critics and academics. In other words, the currency of the term exploitation has changed from its original meaning. Therefore, this article is an attempt to reframe the debate around the meaning of the British exploitation film from the 1960s onwards, and to re-evaluate our understanding of the development of British cinema during this period.

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