Alternative voices, new dire ctions
Until the mid-1960s there had been no significant social critique or creative experimentation in British cinema. But students in the art schools and colleges gradually became interested in the potential of film. Soon, a movement began to appear: film co-operatives and collectives were estab- lished and a network of independent cinemas grew up. These were known as ‘art-house’ cinemas and showed films of a less populist, more specialised nature.
By 1976 independent film-makers were becoming more numerous and formed an association – the IFA – to share their resources and ideas. Their freedom from commercial pressures was important: it allowed them to make political and artistic films, which larger organisations and produc- tion companies would not touch. Themes included the radical politics of the ‘new left’ which included an agenda of feminism and anti-racism.
Racial tension escalated in many British inner cities during the mid-
1970s, but it still had not been addressed by black directors in full-length features until Pressure (Horace Ove, 1975). This was an independent production by two Trinidadians: Horace Ove and Samuel Selvon. The story showed the reality of being young and black in London during the 1970s, and chronicles the attempts of Tony, an intelligent black school- leaver, to find a job. It is set against a background of a failing education system, police brutality and black power. It also explores the growing differences between the West Indians who came to Britain during the 1950s and 1960s, and their British-born children.
By 1980 pictures about black British people were becoming much more angry, explicit and partisan. Burning an Illusion (Menelik Shabazz, 1981) explores black love and consciousness, as seen through the eyes of Pat, a black woman. Babylon (Franco Rosso and Martin Stellman, 1980) features young, British-born Afro-Caribbeans in London’s East End. The film is rich in Jamaican creole and portrays an exotic world in which the thoughts and culture of young Rastafarians are expressed within a cloud of cannabis smoke and through a thunderous avalanche of reggae music. Rude Boy (Jack Hazan and David Mingay, 1980) angrily depicts two Englands: one of prosperity protected by large, corrupt police forces; the other of youth with no future, who participate in race riots, support neo- Facists and collapse after cocktails of drink and drugs at punk concerts.
As well as racial issues, films also began to express the new politics of feminism in works such as Maeve (Patricia Murphy and John Davies, 1981) and Doll’s Eye (Jan Worth, 1982). They examined issues such as rape, violence, pornography and the representation of women in the media. These and many others of the time sharply depicted feminist issues and politics in a way that no other commercial medium dared to do.
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During his lifetime, Derek Jarman was one of the most stylish avant- garde film-makers. His film Jubilee (1978) used the punk phenomenon to express the nightmarish reality of life in Britain during 1977, the year of Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee celebrations (commemorating a reign of twenty-five years). The characters, music and film sets together project a horrific collage of shocking metaphors, which include the murder of a rich pop star, the use of Buckingham Palace as a recording studio, an orgy in Westminster Cathedral and the castration of a police officer. The film ignores the politics of left and right, of feminism or racial equality. Instead, it promotes anarchy and nihilism, and subsequently became one of the most important documents of its time, depicting British institutions in crisis.
Although many independent productions were highly original and metaphorical, critics argued they were made by and for a predominantly educated, middle-class audience. They also argued that their stylistic diver- sity sometimes obscured the film-maker’s message. However, their main achievement was to promote discussion and debate about issues which had once been considered minority and peripheral. It also gave new political
issues an intellectual force and credibility, particularly those of gender and race, which helped them to later find expression in mainstream British cinema.
‘The British are coming!’: Film-making and Thatcherism
The early 1980s were times of rapid change and expansion within the film industry. The introduction of video, cable and satellite services promoted a growth of topics and allowed audiences more choice. Advances in tech- nology also made it possible to make films and even set up a studio with relatively modest budgets. Many new production companies appeared and the worlds of advertising and pop music also began to use videos in product promotion.
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The BBC began providing technical assistance and finance for a variety of projects. But the greatest impact was made by the new television company Channel 4, which between 1982 and 1997 became involved as producer or sponsor of over 200 intellectually adventurous, low-budget films which dealt with original and challenging themes. They were notable for their realism, their simplicity, their absence of special effects and their originality. C4 also provided a regular television slot, ‘Film on Four’, reserved for its own and other British productions. C4 films are known for their social awareness. High levels of unemployment, social unrest, riots and a war all provided inspiration for directors who portrayed a politi- cally, socially and ethnically divided country.
Heritage and harmony
The beginning of the 1980s saw a strong demand for films showing a rose- tinted, nostalgic view of the past, of an orderly, exclusive, upper-class nation. These became known as ‘heritage’ films and one of the most repre- sentative was Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson, 1981). Based on a true story, the film deals with a Scot and a Jew running for England in the 1924 Olympics. It features several unconventional, rebellious characters who become proud and nationalistic in victory. The attention to period details and the film’s morally satisfying ending, offered a rosy, comforting picture of British life and institutions at a time of increasing social hardship and unrest.
The arrival of Chariots was timed to perfection. Its nostalgic theme of British superiority coincided with the wedding of Prince Charles to Diana in 1981, victory over Argentina in the Falkland Islands (Las Malvinas) in 1982 and the victory of the ruling Conservative Party in the election soon afterwards. It became the film of the moment and won four Oscars. At the Academy Awards ceremony in America, scriptwriter Colin Welland famously declared ‘The British are coming!’ anticipating a revival in the fortunes of the British film industry. His prediction was correct and
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‘heritage’ films, exploiting popular interest in an upper-class, imperialist Britain, were among the most commercially successful of the decade.
Some of the best-known productions were by the team of Merchant- Ivory. Ismael Merchant, James Ivory and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala worked as director, producer and scriptwriter to successfully romanticise historical films of upper-class living. Some of their finest were adaptations of novels by E.M. Forster, including Room with a View (1986), Maurice (1987) and Howards End (1992), while Remains of the Day (1993) was based on a Booker Prize-winning novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. Beautifully filmed, richly costumed and classically acted, they presented an idealised, romanticised picture of elegant, exclusive Britain and received numerous international awards.
These and other films, such as David Lean’s A Passage to India (made in 1984, also from a novel by E.M. Forster), Gandhi (Richard Attenborough, 1982), Another Country (Marek Kanievska, 1984) and Henry V (Kenneth Branagh, 1989) were highly popular with audiences, and even tempted older members of the public back to the cinema. However, critics said they projected an elitist, exclusive version of a cultur- ally homogeneous past, which was heavily romanticised and fundamentally false. At the same time, there was a loss of sensitivity and accuracy to their representations of British history. They argued that ‘heritage’ films were created for the pleasure of overseas audiences, where such imagery was in demand, and made quick, easy profits for the film- makers. But their popularity continued undiminished.
Peter Gr eenaway
One of the most stylish but unconventional of British film-makers to emerge in the 1980s was Peter Greenaway (b.1942). Allegorical stories, symbols, romanticism and games feature in his films. The visual scenes are elaborate and carefully constructed, often with large familiar paintings, which give his work a characteristic style which he mixes with wit and charm.
He began his career in 1966 and, like Derek Jarman, his early work was highly experimental, featuring surreal fantasy, playful narrative and absur- dist titles such as Goole by Numbers and Dear Phone. But later in his career he began to make more conventional feature films. Several took a cynical look at the lives of the professional classes, such as cooks, archi- tects and draughtsmen, which increased greatly in number during the 1980s. The Draughtsman’s Contract (1983) is a humorous costume drama and one of his best-known films. Set in 1694, the comedy begins when an aristocratic Mrs Herbert contracts the services of a draughtsman to make drawings of the house to present as a gift to her husband.
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Modern day Rome is the setting for The Belly of an Architect (1987), where Stourly Cracklite, a wealthy Chicago architect, supervises an exhibition of
architecture with his young wife Louisa. But distracted by illness, he is unaware of a young Italian architect’s jealousy of both his professional life and his wife.
A tale of greed and revenge, The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover (1989) is set in a smart restaurant. Sex, food and love are mixed together in a critique of vulgar consumerism during the Thatcher years. More playful was Drowning by Numbers (1988) which made Greenaway popular with feminists. It is set in a Suffolk seaside village, in the east of England, where three generations of women aged 19, 34 and 60, each named Cissie Colpitts, murder their three unsatisfactory husbands. But in a humorous twist, the local Coroner agrees to certify their deaths as natural in return for sexual favours.
More challenging and unconventional is Prospero’s Books (1991), an interpretation of Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest. It is built around the twenty-four magic books which Prospero’s friend Gonzalo gives him to take with him on his final voyage back to Italy. Amid much nudity, the 87-year- old Sir John Gielgud reads most of the dialogue, in a role he has played many times on stage. In Greenaway’s more recent film, The Pillow Book (1996), a young Japanese girl grows up with a fetish for calligraphy, demanding that her lovers paint kanji on her flesh, as did her father. Its elab- orate images, computer graphics and superimpositions made it one of the most individual films of its time. An art student, painter, writer and novelist, Greenaway remains one of the most enigmatic film-makers in Britain today.
Pr opaganda and caricatur e
The earlier initiatives of independent studios had done much to bring women’s issues to the attention of mainstream, commercial cinema, which during the 1980s began to represent them in a more populist manner. Several films examined the feelings and frustrations of women unable to experience life outside the home, such as Another Time, Another Place (Michael Radford, 1983) a bleak exploration of domestic repression. Set on an isolated Scottish farm, during the Second World War, it focuses on a young woman’s loveless marriage to a humourless Scot.
But there were also several lighter attempts to portray similar themes. The humorous Educating Rita (1983) was widely praised. Rita is a young, married hairdresser who begins adult-education classes. But gradually she becomes divided between her oppressive domestic life and the attractions of academe. The director was Lewis Gilbert and the writer Willy Russell. In 1989 the duo made Shirley Valentine, a humorous tale about a Liverpudlian housewife and mother who shares with her neighbour a holiday on a Greek island, where she finds happiness with local fisherman Costas Caldes.
As society’s problems grew deeper in the early 1980s, Lindsay Anderson’s Britannia Hospital (1982) offered a humorous tale of a
hospital close to collapse, due to strikes, riots and terrorism. However, the lazy, incompetent staff and their disinterested, insensitive boss only begin to worry when preparations begin for a visit by the Queen Mother. The film is widely seen as a tragicomic allegory of Britain in chaos and is recog- nised as a bitter criticism of the Thatcher society of the early 1980s.
Later in the decade, government policy led to deregulation, expansion and competition in numerous professions. The effects on media and broad- casting were critically examined in playwright Richard Eyre’s film The Ploughman’s Lunch (1983). It focuses on the activities of a BBC journalist and presents a cynical view of news presentation and management of the 1956 Suez Crisis and the Falklands War, showing the hypocrisy and insin- cerity of the mass media. Lighter and funnier was How to Get Ahead in Advertising (Bruce Robinson, 1989), a sharp critique of the advertising world, which also questions its morality.
A major issue of the 1980s was the Cold War, the subject of Defence of the Realm (David Drury, 1985). A highly critical film, it analyses the stationing of nuclear weapons in Britain, the dubious activities of the secu- rity forces and the role of the media in supporting the government. But in Chris Bernard’s Letter to Brezhnev (1986), the Cold War was given lighter, more humorous treatment. It presents two young women who meet two Russian sailors in a Liverpool discotheque. But unlike much of the British news media during the 1980s, the film avoids the stereotyping of Russians as evil and monstrous, and shows them as ordinary folk looking for a peaceful life.
The conspicuous consumption of food and drink became fashionable during the decade and the theme of food was used to make social comment in several films. Malcolm Mowbray’s A Private Function (1984) is a humorous caricature of ambitious middle classes. It is set in a small Yorkshire town in 1947 and, during a time of post-war rationing, an unli- censed pig is being fattened for a civic dinner to celebrate the Royal Wedding of Queen Elizabeth II. More contemporary was Eat the Rich (Peter Richardson, 1987), a satire set in Bastards – a smart London restau- rant. When Alex – a black waiter – is fired, he returns to kill the staff, changes the restaurant name to Eat the Rich and offers human flesh on the menu. Received by critics as cynical, bizarre and offensive, it was one of the most tasteless films of the decade.
Northern Ireland
Frictions in politics and social life were common during the 1980s, but nowhere were they more violently expressed than in Ireland. Following its election in 1979, the Conservative Party and the Labour opposition both expressed their wish to continue defending the six counties of Northern Ireland and the rights of the Protestant majority living there. In compar- ison with other issues, relatively few films dealt directly with Ireland’s
troubles. Their delicate nature, the difficulty of treating issues in a balanced and fair way, and their limited appeal to audiences outside the province, has deterred many film-makers. Early cinematic interest in Northern Irish politics developed during the 1930s with Brian Hurst’s Ourselves Alone (1936), the title a translation of the Irish-Gaelic Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Party.
Since then, the majority of films have been thrillers, with spying, conspiracy, violence, and murder, set amid guerrilla warfare and terrorism. The majority of films have been made by American or English directors, but in 1982 Irish film-maker Neil Jordan made his directorial debut with Angel, the first of several highly praised works. It examines how a quiet, passive civilian becomes involved in murderous terrorist activities following the death of his friend. In 1992 Jordan returned to exploit a similar theme with The Crying Game, which examined the formation of political and national feelings in Britain and Ireland, and Michael Collins (1995), the story of a man whose belief in guerrilla violence against the British forces is changed into a desire for peace after he witnesses the horrors of civil war.
Several films of the 1980s took a similar perspective on the role of the security forces. Boy Soldier (Karl Francis, 1986) argues against sending soldiers into the streets. But more explicit in its message is Ken Loach’s Hidden Agenda (1990), which alleges conspiracy, corruption and ‘dirty tricks’ in Ulster.
The role of women within the Republican movement is explored in several films and short documentaries, such as Maeve (Patricia Murphy, 1981), while Pat O’Connor’s Cal (1984) considers the life events which lead a peaceful young Catholic man to become involved with the struggle of the Irish Republican movement. But not all films about the tension in Ireland were sombre in their treatment. In the tragicomic No Surrender (Peter Smith, 1986) Protestants and Catholics in fancy dress, arguing punk rockers, a gay comedian and an incompetent magician, all meet in an ener- getic and occasionally farcical scenario, set in a Liverpool nightclub on New Year’s Eve.
Ken Loach
Realistic films dealing with social problems and issues have become one of the main strengths of British cinema. One of its leading exponents is Ken Loach (b.1937), a critically admired director who has established a reputa- tion for political awareness in his films. He was born in the English Midlands and went via Oxford University to the BBC During the 1960s he worked extensively in television, directing plays for the weekly drama series The Wednesday Play. These frequently dealt with some of the most controversial social problems of the period, such as drugs, teenage preg- nancies and domestic violence. Their frank, realistic portrayals challenged
the complacent, literary interpretations which were then common in televi- sion drama.
The struggle of the underprivileged against an uninterested society is a theme common to many of his works. These are lightened by humorous incidents, witty scripts and a message of optimism about people’s ability to conquer their problems. His early film Poor Cow (1968) is a sensitive exploration of an impoverished single mother’s search for a decent life, and since then his work has critically commented upon varied social issues. One of the most highly regarded of his works is Kes (1970). It is set among a coal-mining community in Yorkshire, and looks sensitively at how a baby kestrel gives a young boy’s life a sense of meaning.
Since the 1980s his films have engaged more closely with politics and society. Looks and Smiles (1982) considers the desperate choices open to two young school-leavers at a time when employment opportunities are few. For greater authenticity the cast members were all amateurs, drawn from the South Yorkshire community of Sheffield, the setting for the film. Raining Stones (1994) is a tragicomic view of the effects of unemployment on a Catholic family in Manchester, while Ladybird, Ladybird (1993) looks at a single mother who is badly treated by men in general and by the social services in particular. In Riff Raff (1994) Loach humorously depicts the ‘regional’ personalities of a gang of labourers and their reactions when they are ordered to convert a much-needed hospital into a block of luxury flats.
But Loach has not restricted his work to films about England. Hidden Agenda (1990) considers the role of the British army in Northern Ireland and in Land and Freedom (1995) he focussed his attention on the Spanish Civil War. This intelligent and powerful film looks at contemporary social issues through the experiences of unemployed Liverpudlian David Carne, who goes to Barcelona to fight for ‘land and freedom’ in 1936. Carla’s Song (1996) also dealt with political struggle. It is set in Nicaragua in the mid-1980s during the overthrow of the Sandinista government by the right-wing, US-supported Contras and tells the tragicomic tale of a Glaswegian bus driver and his Nicaraguan sweetheart. Loach’s most recent film, My Name is Joe (1998), deals with the life of a recovering alcoholic – a widely admired work which brought him recognition as a major British director.
Black British film
During the 1970s and early 1980s the only films dealing with the experi- ences of ethnic minorities were made by relatively unknown film-makers with small budgets. Because their films did not have great commercial appeal, they could only be seen in small, independent repertory cinemas. But between 1985 and 1991 more finance became available and there was a renaissance in black film-making. This was thanks to grants to improve
conditions which had been approved following the race riots of the 1970s and early 1980s. As a result, several black film co-operatives appeared, such as Sankofa, Black Audio and Ceddo.
One of the founders of Sankofa was Isaac Julien, who made several films expressing the anger and frustration felt by many black Britons. These include Territories (1984), Remembrance (1986) and Looking for Langston (1989), based on the black American poet Langston Hughes (1902–67). Another notable work dealing with the experience of black Britons is Handsworth Songs (John Akomfrah, 1986), a critical examina- tion of racial conflict in modern Britain. It was filmed in Handsworth, Birmingham, during the riots of 1985.
But black film-makers were few in number and their themes gradually became incorporated into the commercial mainstream. One example is Playing Away (Horace Ove, 1986) a light, humorous observation of hypocrisy and prejudice in an English rural community, when a cricket team from Brixton visits a small country village for a friendly game as part of the village’s ‘Third World Week’ celebrations, an encounter which has comical consequences both on and off the field.
In contrast, some of the most highly praised explorations of life in the inner cities came from a white British director, Steven Frears, in collabora- tion with Hanif Kureishi, a British-born Pakistani who has written several novels and film scripts. Frears’ films brought to public attention the increasingly diverse nature of British society and the problems suffered by ‘outsiders’ and marginal groups. They offer a powerful critique of the Conservative Government’s economic and social policies, but at the same time provide an optimistic message about people’s ability to triumph over adversity in their lives.
His portraits of British life are set in suburban London. The enter- taining, exotic My Beautiful Launderette (1985) deals with the adventures of Omar, the son of an Asian businessman. He opens a launderette in a tough area of the capital, together with Johnny, an old friend from school, who has now become a fascist punk. Both have their own problems, which intensify when they become lovers. The film explores themes of racial tension, youth, class and sex, in one of the most highly praised films about British Asian culture.
In 1987 Frears directed Prick Up Your Ears. Its theme is homosexuality in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s, when it was still a criminal offence, and tells the story of gay playwright Joe Orton, who was tragically murdered by his lover Kenneth Halliwell in 1967. It shows a repressed nation, divided by hypocrisy and a rigid class system, tensions which inspired Orton’s angry plays and mirrored those of Britain in the 1980s. Frears and Kureishi again collaborated on Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987), which presented a satirical interrogation of British Asian society. Sammy and Rosie are a mixed-race couple who live a bohemian lifestyle in a marginal area of London. Theirs is a happy, ‘open’ marriage in which
both have lovers, but when Sammy’s father, a Pakistani gangster appears, there is mutual disapproval of each other’s lifestyle, politics, class and culture.
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