LYCOS RETRIEVER 
British Cinema
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Notable original contributions to the 60s British Cinema were made by two Americans Joseph Losey and Stanley Kubrick. A Clockwork Orange (1971) was Kubrick’s only comment on British society but his other films of the 60’s: Lolita (1962), Dr Strangelove (1964) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) greatly enhanced the international standing of British actors (notably Sellers) and film crews. Losey fled America in 1953 to avoid being blacklisted and directed several low-budget but notable films such as The Sleeping Tiger (1954) frequently using a pseudonym. In The Criminal (1960), a stylish prison film with a script by Alun Owen , Losey introduced toughness and authentic dialogue previously lacking in British crime films that was to influence future gangster films such as Robbery (1967), Performance (1969), Get Carter (1971) and The Long Good Friday (1979). However, it is Losey’s The Servant (1963) that is arguably one of the best British films of the decade. Based on Robin Maugham’s 1949 novella, Harold Pinter’s screenplay looks at the corrupting class system of Britain through the master-servant relationship of Tony (James Fox) and Barrett (Dirk Bogarde).
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The British Silent Cinema Festival fulfils a research and development function for the BFI. For the Archives curators the Festival is an ideal opportunity not only to get to know the films in the Collection but ... to plan the further dissemination of individual films by seeing how they play with a modern audience. Thanks to excellent facilities provided by the Broadway Cinema, the films are shown in as near as possible their original form, to the highest possible technical standard, on 35mm film and with accompaniment from expert musicians all of whom are internationally acclaimed silent film pianists.
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In-depth review of the three short film DVDs from Cinema 16, with volumes dedicated to British, American and European cinema. Includes early short films by Ridley Scott, Asif Kapadia, Lynne Ramsey, Christopher Nolan, DA Pennebaker, Tim Burton, Todd Solondz, Jean-Luc Godard, Tom Tykwer, and Lars von Trier.
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[T]he faltering development of British film production, under-investment, and inadequately developed scripts, needs to be seen in the wider perspectives of distribution and exhibition that have bedevilled British cinema for decades. Films without adequate distribution and exhibition guarantees frequently languish unseen; without adequate publicity a film, no matter how good, is unlikely to appeal to potential audiences and will therefore attract little interest from distributors and exhibitors. Relatively inexpensive and admired miniatures, such as Mrs Brown and The Full Monty (1997), despite their arrays of well-established British actors, stand little chance of succeeding on the international stage unless they are taken up, publicized, and distributed by one of the larger conglomerates such as Miramax.
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The course begins by examining critical approaches to a history of British cinema and the dominant ways in which this cinema and its characteristics have been understood. It then moves to an examination of British cinema from the 1920s to 1980, beginning with the factors which shaped it, in particular the debates about the social and cultural importance of a specifically British cinema against the background of the massive influence of Hollywood, and the representations of ‘Britishness’ which this produced. The later weeks of the course examine in more detail British cinema’s attempts to deal with the various forms of ‘otherness’ which it has sought both to define and to contain in the changing cultural and political climate of the post-war years, and with the different ‘British cinemas’ which this produced.
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Mayer's addition to Greenwood's "Reference Guides to the World's Cinema" series is a subjective guide to British cinema, 1929-2000. It focuses on the best films, award winners, and on films that were socially or politically significant at the time of their release..... Recommended. Undergraduate and graduate collections on cinema studies.
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British Cinema