All language subtitles for Reel.Britannia.S01E01.The.Sixties.1080p.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-squalor_track3_[eng]

NARRATOR:
When we hear the word "film",

it's hard not to think, "Hollywood."

STIRRING MUSIC

Although many countries have their
own thriving native film industries,

and some eclipse Hollywood
in scale and output,

when we think
of English-speaking cinema,

we rarely think
of the United Kingdom first.

But Hollywood's roots
are inextricably intertwined

with the UK, and, well,
why don't I show you?

RECORD SCRATCHES

SCREAMS

I'm shocked, shocked to find
that gambling is going on in here.

Your winnings, sir.
Oh, thank you.

Yes, the last man who said that
to me was Archie Leach,

just a week before he cut his...
Is that so?

Well...
Well, play something, somebody!

GASPS

You are to shoot the presidential
nominee through the head.

Rogue One.
May the Force be with us.

I'm good, actually.

So, why a modern history
of British Cinema?

Because the years that we're
gonna look at, from 1960 onwards,

are really the ones in which cinema,
as we now know it, was formed.

Despite our rich filmic heritage,

to our modern eyes,
romance doesn't look like this.

Action doesn't look like this.

And this,
as wonderful as it might be...

# And you want
To look your best... #

..doesn't really make us laugh
any more.

# Then you'll know
You've properly dressed... #

So what does make us laugh
these days?

How about this?

There's a wider joke
to Edgar Wright's Cornetto Trilogy

than just the genre-spoofing
slapstick and quick wit

that's so beloved
by British cinemagoers.

The joke
is how preposterous it looks

to see suburban Britain
through a mainstream cinematic lens.

Greater London as the backdrop to
an action-packed zombie apocalypse.

Morning.

A bullet-ridden
John Woo-style cop flick

taking place in Somerset.

A full-on alien invasion
in the Home Counties.

The joke of all jokes here
is the gentle mocking

of the British film industry's
apparent lack of either ambition

or ability to offer
a robust alternative

to the big budget,
high concept American films

which have dominated
our own cinema screens for decades.

Where's Lurch? He's in the freezer.
Did you say, "Cool off"?

No, I didn't say anything, actually.
Shame.

And it's a fair cop.

What even is British cinema?

Is it cinema
which is made in Britain?

If so, can we lay claim
to Star Wars?

Is it cinema
which takes place in Britain?

If so, must we accept ownership
of Three Men And A Little Lady?

I need a drink.

Is it cinema
made by a British director?

If so, can we take Frankenstein?

Is it cinema
produced by a British company?

If so, is The Big Lebowski
to be seen as our own?

What is a British film?

Don't ask me.
I've... I haven't a clue.

How do you define Britishness?

What I don't think it is

is looking to another country
for the impetus.

I think
most filmmakers would say

they're not defined
by their country,

but by their intention
to communicate.

There is Hollywood,
and there is World Cinema.

And World Cinema
is what we are part of.

I think a British film is one
which springs from the culture

and the experiences and stories
and comedy

and way of life
of the people who live in this...

On this land, in these islands.

Can be landscape, can be language.
It's mostly about character.

I think there
is quite a distinct character.

It's about Britain,
it's made by British people,

it's generally
with American money.

I haven't a clue.
I can't do better than that.

Like the conflicting ideas
in every pub in the land

of what makes a person
British or not,

to label a film as British is both
simple and not simple at all.

Whether it's
the international funding

of both the bespectacled
big bastards of British cinema,

Harry Potter and Richard Curtis,

or the fact that
some of the bedrock films

of British cinema
were directed by immigrants.

Or the understanding that
some of our most talented filmmakers

did their best work
in other countries,

focused on other cultures.

What I really want to tell you
is the story of the change.

From the old to the new.

But where to begin?

The River Thames.

The river runs right through
the middle of central London,

and during World War II,

its South Bank there
was bombed to hell.

For half a decade,
it was just rubble and dust,

until Clement Attlee's
new Labour government

ordered a big party there.

NEWSREEL: 'This is the Festival.

'Something Britain devised
halfway through this century

'as a milestone
between past and future

'to enrich and enliven the present.'

The Festival was a huge success,

with a dome of discovery,
pleasure gardens,

and huge displays of arts,
science, architecture and design.

And film.

A year later, when the Festival
packed up and disappeared,

one of the few buildings left
on the massive site

was that Telekinema.

It was given to the BFI

and reopened a year later
as the National Film Theatre.

Britain now had a focal point and
a national base for film culture.

It attracted the greatest filmmakers
from all over the world

to screen their films
and discuss their work.

The programming
was exciting and varied,

and it was a place where cineastes
could revel in film history

and experience
the cutting-edge of modern cinema.

One of the programmers at the BFI,

the people who decide
what's going to be shown,

was this chap, Karel Reisz.

And in his spare time,
he made films.

Karel's filmmaker pals,
some of whom had received bursaries

from the BFI's
experimental film fund,

were making work similar to his,

and one day,
his friend, Lindsay Anderson,

suggested that all of their work
was similar enough

that perhaps Karel
could programme an evening of it.

On that Sunday, in February 1956,

the National Film Theatre showed
a programme of three short films.

This one, O Dreamland,
by Lindsay Anderson.

This one, Momma Don't Allow,
by Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson.

And this one, Together,
by Lorenza Mazzetti.

That bloke right there,
that's Eduardo Paolozzi.

He did that amazing mosaic mural in
Tottenham Court Road tube station.

Anderson, always the disruptor,
gave the event a name, Free Cinema.

He wrote a manifesto
and declared it a movement.

And so Lindsay wrote
this manifesto out,

and Lindsay
was always writing manifestoes.

There was a book called Declaration,

which had manifestoes from Lindsay,
from John Osborne, all those people,

But it... That was very much
the mood of the times.

And it worked.
It worked really well.

Every Free Cinema screening
sold out,

and these unknown amateur filmmakers

were suddenly in all
of the newspapers and on TV.

Britain was ready for something new.

Arguably, British cinema
had not kept pace

with the revolutions in art,
literature and music.

But when Anderson
announced the arrival

of what would become a New Wave,
people listened.

Or watched.

So, what was free about these films?

They were made outside the system,

they weren't designed
to be commercial or reportage,

but they were, in their own way,
political.

Actually, films
should be about serious things,

and they should be about social
values, and they should be personal.

You know, they were attacking,
as it were, the cinema of papa.

The establishment films.

They were concerned
with the marginalised,

the working class and the disabled.

They rejected artifice
and the sentimental.

They portrayed real people
in real-life situations

and gave them a sense of dignity.

Or, at least, set them within
less constructed reality.

Some of these filmmakers
are going to make a big splash

once the '60s roll in.

But the first film of that wave,
the British New Wave,

did not stem from Free Cinema.

These feet
are about to give British cinema

the biggest kick up the bum
it's ever had.

Room At The Top is the story
of a young working-class man

from a northern industrial town

with a determination
to rise above his station in life.

It wasn't until right at the end
of the '50s, really,

with Jack Clayton's Room At The Top,
that there was a sudden shift,

and here was a film,
ostensibly, about real life,

which is to say
about working-class life.

This is Laurence Harvey.
The film made him a big star.

But he seems to be barely remembered
these days.

His performance is charming
in the reckless role of Joe Lampton,

who manages to ascend
to the heights of society,

driven mainly
by resentment and vitriol.

His open pursuit of the daughter

of a particularly wealthy
and influential businessmen

causes much dismay,

and when he finally stakes his claim
at the top,

it's at the price
of losing a different woman.

One he has truly
fallen in love with,

played by French actress
Simone Signoret.

Please walk away now.

The film was nominated
for six Oscars and won two,

Best Adapted Screenplay,
and Best Actress for Signoret.

Think of me.

All of those so-called
British New Wave films

were all adaptations
of plays or novels.

They were not, in that sense,

as far as I was concerned,
pure cinema.

Room At The Top
was adapted from a book,

but the films which were to follow

came from the popular movement
blowing apart British theatre

known as kitchen-sink drama,
and the writers behind it,

who are known
as the Angry Young Men.

John Osborne was very angry.

He was angry about his parents,
angry about his schooling,

angry about politics,

angry that he was living
in a tiny flat in Derby,

and particularly angry about
his wife shagging the local dentist.

It was the dentist situation

which inspired him
to write his first hit play,

Look Back In Anger.

The play premiered
at the Royal Court Theatre.

It was directed by Free Cinema
co-founder Tony Richardson.

It was a huge success,
and Richardson,

hoping to capitalise on this

and try his hand at a feature film,
sought investment.

What he found
was a tubby Canadian producer

called Harry Saltzman,

an old-school hustler
with a hundred crazy schemes

who'd spent his youth in the circus,

and now, in his 40s,
was seeking his fortune in the arts.

He was about two years away from
becoming significantly wealthier

than pretty much anybody else
in the whole of British cinema,

but we'll get there in a bit.

Saltzman, Tony Richardson,
and angry John Osborne

formed a film company
called Woodfall Film Productions

to bring Look Back In Anger
to the screen.

Although Look Back In Anger
would be the catalyst

for the British New Wave
to really take off,

it's never been a favourite,
critically.

Burton was a bit too old and
a bit too established for the role,

and although you can see signs
in Richardson's direction

that he's trying
to do something original

through the use of locations,

the addition of a sub-story
concerning immigration and racism,

it's all a little too pedestrian.
A bit safe.

The following year,
the first of a new decade,

Woodfall would blast the doors
of the British New Wave open

with Karel Reisz'
feature directing debut,

Saturday Night And Sunday Morning.

Albert Finney was an entirely
new kind of screen presence.

Raw and animalistic.

There were no clipped accents
or Queen's English here.

It was set, and mainly shot,
in Nottingham...

Mind what you're doing...

..and was thick
with the voice and culture.

..gonna get a good rattling
one of these days!

Where Look Back In Anger

had shied away
from actually breaking taboos,

this film was heavy with sex
and hedonism,

and tackled the subject of abortion,

which was still illegal at the time
in Britain, head-on.

She made me sit in a hot bath
for three hours

and I had to drink a pint of gin.
I'll never go through that again.

It was terrible.
I thought I was gonna die.

The film was very successful
in many ways.

It remains a British icon,
and its influence is spread wide.

Tony Richardson's next film
was to break even more taboos.

A Taste Of Honey was the first
of the kitchen-sink dramas

to not feel like epic tragedy,
but to dance with spirit.

For a film dealing with the
triple whammy of outsider issues...

Geoff got it.
..teenage pregnancy,

race...

Tell me what you do.
..and homosexuality...

Go on, Geoffrey, I've always wanted
to know about people like you.

Go to hell.

..rather than illustrate
these issues with screaming drama,

Richardson did something
far more radical -

he treated them with lightness.

He allowed a pregnant teenager,
Black man and gay man

to all act with a casual likeability

which challenged the social stigmas
that surrounded them,

yet never shied away from them.

The play which it's based on
was written by Shelagh Delaney,

19 years old at the time.

She co-wrote the screenplay
with Richardson

and rightly has her name
above the title on the film poster.

That anyone could produce such
an accomplished piece of writing

at the age of 19 is impressive,
but Delaney was something else.

Born in working-class Salford,
she was inspired to write

by what she saw
as the unfair depictions

of sideline cultures within theatre.

Casting unknown Rita Tushingham
in the lead as Jo

was a bold and inspired move.

The lack of formality
in the performance

is replaced with
an emphatic honesty.

This is also the film in which
Richardson came alive as a director.

It was the first British film ever
to be shot entirely on location,

and this backdrop, combined with
the free-moving camera work

and the unstuffy performances,

heralded the true arrival
of the British New Wave.

The principles of Free Cinema were
employed in a narrative framework

and the result was an exhilarating
experience for the audience -

fiction in a documentary style.

British cinema
was absolutely moribund,

it really was, so the things like
Saturday Night And Sunday Morning

and A Taste Of Honey,
they were revelations,

cos here were ordinary people,
you know, who had ordinary...

..problems that you could relate to.

You know, a lot of British films
before that

are, you know,
people with white telephones...

POSH ACCENT: ..and they all talk
like that.

And anybody with an accent,
of course, is low comedy

cos they're too insensitive
and too stupid

to feel, erm, any real feelings.

Room At The Top,
Saturday Night And Sunday Morning,

A Taste Of Honey,
and Woodfall's next film,

The Loneliness
Of The Long Distance Runner,

all performed very well
at home and abroad.

Many in the British film industry
paid attention to this movement

and tried to emulate the success
Woodfall were having.

This oddity is Spare The Rod.

That is, of all people,
Max Bygraves,

as a teacher
who finds himself assigned

to an inner-city London school

where the kids
are a law unto themselves.

Settle down to some work,
and pull your socks up.

LAUGHTER

It managed to raise
a few teenage issues,

but never quite made its protagonist
rounded and human enough.

And, hey, fun fact,
that little brat

ended up playing Boba Fett
in the Star Wars films.

The point is,
inspired either by art or commerce,

other people were trying to emulate
social realism.

Change was happening.

This handsome devil is Dirk Bogarde.

He was, to use the term
lost to film history,

a matinee idol.

He was charming and sexy
and star of the Doctor films,

starting with this one,
Doctor In The House, in 1954.

But come the '60s,

he used his position
to affect genuine social change.

In 1961's Victim,

he plays a respected, respectable
London barrister with a secret.

If I hear from you again,
I shall call the police.

Do you understand?
That's absolutely final.

When his male lover
is targeted by a blackmail ring,

he puts everything on the line
to bring them to justice.

And I remember when they said,

"You do understand that, you know,
Barrett was a homosexual?"

You could've heard a pin drop.

That word was never, never used.

And that was a revelation -

"Oh... God, there are people
like me around."

And it's a wonderful performance,
and it was very brave.

It helped change the law.
How many films have done that?

Joseph Losey
was a Hollywood filmmaker.

He escaped to Europe
during the Communist witch hunt

by the House Committee
on Un-American Activities.

He and Bogarde
had worked together previously

on 1954's The Sleeping Tiger,
but in the '60s,

his work with writer Harold Pinter
and actor Bogarde

would become the most significant
of his career.

In The Servant, James Fox stars

as a young society man
who hires Bogarde as his manservant.

Slowly, the power dynamic
in their relationship shifts,

offering a shocking commentary

on the state and future
of the English class system.

It also displayed
a more ambitious visual language

to the starkness of social realism.

In retrospect,

the... what was called
social realism at the time,

Saturday Night And Sunday Morning,

and A Kind Of Loving,
and This Sporting Life, and so on,

they were set in the North,
Northern working class.

You know, suddenly they'd discovered

there was a working class
in the North

and they were fit, suddenly,
for films.

There were West End actors
going up there,

there were directors
who went off to Hollywood

or back to the theatre.

There was no commitment
to working class life on cinema.

It was a fashion,
and the fashion soon faded away.

Three. Take one.

Bryan Forbes.
Perhaps no single person

better embodies the spirit
and opportunity

of the British film industry
in the 1960s than this guy.

Forbes was an actor
in the '40s and '50s

mainly small roles in war films,

but he was also a writer.

One of his books
brought him to the attention

of an American film producer
who had relocated to London,

Albert "Cubby" Broccoli,

who gave Forbes his first shot
at screenwriting.

His screenwriting career
blossomed through the '50s,

but he knew that,
to really achieve his goals,

he needed to produce his own films.

Richard Attenborough.

As an actor, he played
two of the nastiest characters

in British cinema history -

the acid bath murderer
John Christie,

and teenage gang lord Pinkie Brown.

He even once got punched
by John Wayne.

See?

To a middle-aged audience,
he is the Oscar-winning director

of epic biopics such as Chaplin,

starring Iron Man, and Gandhi,

starring...
the bad guy from Iron Man 3.

I've made the argument,
and I... and I stand by it,

that every single person working in
the British film industry,

and television industry,

a portion of their weekly
or monthly income

is directly related
to the impact and influence

of Richard Attenborough.

He's the one that drove through
the John Major decision.

He's the one,
more than anybody else,

that helped construct
with Gordon Brown

the tax shelter arrangements.

Er, he's the one
that helped save BAFTA.

Pretty remarkable.

Forbes and Attenborough
formed Beaver Films,

named in reference

to that particular mammal's
capacity for work.

Their first film was
The Angry Silence.

Written by Forbes,
produced by the pair of them

and starring Attenborough,
it tells the story of Tom Curtis,

a factory worker
who breaks the picket line

of an unofficial strike and is sent
to Coventry when the strike ends.

Recognise that beautiful thug?

It's Oliver Reed's
first ever credited film role.

All right, let's get to work.

The Angry Silence
is certainly a working class story

and concerned with the outsider,
but has been widely criticised

for making an enemy out of
the union, often the only thing

the working class could actually
depend on to represent their needs.

Those critics missed the point.

It was the corruption and violence
the unions were subject to

which were being criticised,

but the film remains
unfairly tarnished nonetheless.

Beaver Films' next production,

directed by Forbes, was to become
a perennial British classic,

Whistle Down The Wind.

Alan Bates, as a fugitive
on the run from a murder charge,

holes up in a barn in Lancashire.

Local children, filled with stories
from the gospels,

mistake him for Jesus

and subsequently hide
and protect him.

The style,
as with The Angry Silence,

was on the cusp.

It didn't have the anger
or modern aesthetic

of the other British New Wave films,
yet, in its own way,

it was quietly revolutionary.

I've brought you your book.

It managed to question the role
of religion within modern society

whilst telling a story
gentle and eloquent enough

for a conservative audience.

Whistle Down The Wind was a bridge
from the old to the new,

rather than the chasm
which the Free Cinema brigade

were daring the bold to jump across.

The next Beaver film,
again written and directed by Forbes

and produced by Attenborough,
continued this important approach.

The L-Shaped Room didn't shy away
from the reality of social realism,

but chipped away
at the central taboo -

pregnancy out of wedlock -
with manners rather than hammers.

He's in a hurry,
doesn't want to miss Christmas.

Now, you stay there. I'll be back.

Now, let's get a train
back to Waterloo Station.

A new face
on the British New Wave scene

was TV director John Schlesinger.
His acclaimed short film Terminus

was a little late for Free Cinema,

but was clearly
cut from the same cloth.

He teamed up
with producer Joseph Janni,

an emigre from Mussolini's Italy

with a passion for producing
meaningful cinema.

And they cast Alan Bates in their
first feature, A Kind Of Loving.

They were rather surprisingly funded
by Anglo Amalgamated,

a company more famous in the UK

for producing B-movies
and the Carry On films.

If you don't know what
a Carry On film is, then here we go.

They were a series of films released
between 1958 and - ouch - 1992

with a recurring cast
and recurring very specific tone.

Characterised by
extreme physical comedy

and an inexhaustible supply
of innuendo,

the series was a bawdy look
at British society

and satirised the full spectrum
of cinematic genres.

They were hugely popular
and successful,

but we don't really like
to talk about them now.

Rank stupidity.

But A Kind Of Loving
was very well observed.

It spoke to a generation
of young people

in a rapidly-changing world,

questioning the true values
of old world morals

and the emerging culture
of consumerism

and working class betterment.

This is really important because it
wasn't just film that was changing,

society was changing.

The seeds had been sown
when World War II ended in 1945.

Winston Churchill was decimated
in a landslide election

and Clement Attlee's
incoming Labour government

introduced reform on a huge basis.

The new welfare state,

with its free
National Health Service,

nationalised public services
and National Insurance programme,

created stability.

Then the incoming
Conservative government of 1951

put great focus on the clearance of
the slums and welfare accommodation,

or council housing.

All of this, combined with
the Education Act of 1944,

which opened education up more fully
to all children,

saw a generation of mobilised,

educated and employable
young working-class people

coming of age in the '60s.

They had confidence,
money and aspirations,

and just as cinema was developing
a voice for the working class,

the working class changed.

And as much as they might have
felt isolated and othered,

they wanted to have some fun.

Tony Richardson
was ahead of the game with this,

and in 1963, he had John Osborne
adapt Henry Fielding's 1749 novel

The History Of Tom Jones,
A Foundling, into...

And they did it...
CLICKS FINGERS

..in colour.

Gone was the kitchen-sink,

but despite being draped
in period costume,

it's a film about social mobility
and hedonism.

It's bawdy and fun,

and once again,
Richardson innovated his way through

with characters
talking to the camera... Help!

..and even this.

Albert Finney became both an
international star and a millionaire

due to his profit share.

Tom Jones put British cinema
on the map in that moment.

To make such a bold
and colourful film,

Richardson had put together
a large group of financiers.

The largest part came from
an American studio, United Artists,

and when the film went on to make
almost 40 million at the box office,

Hollywood's head
was turned towards the Atlantic.

Also in '63 came John Schlesinger's
next film, Billy Liar.

There are some films

that you go and see at the cinema

and you have
forgotten about the movie

as you're leaving the cinema.

And then there are other films

where, like, you have seen them once
when you were young

and, like, frames of it
are burned into your brain.

So, Billy Liar is a film
that I have only seen once,

when I was a teenager,

and yet I think, subconsciously,

it's come into so much of my work.

I feel like what he does
in that film,

even just that one scene
of Billy Liar turning around

and miming a machine gun...

WOMAN: Get dressed.

..and that match cut,

that has, like,
stayed in my head forever.

And I think bits in Spaced,

or in all of my movies, like,

you can probably trace it back
directly to that.

At first, it might appear to have

all the trappings
of the kitchen-sink genre -

isolated young man,

played by Long Distance Runner star
Tom Courtenay,

in a grim northern town,
dreaming of better things -

but in Billy Liar, the dreams
were actually shown to us.

It's social realism
doused in hilarious fantasy.

Billy's fantasies are not contained
in his head.

He lies to everyone around him -
his family, his employers,

the two girls he strings along.

Well, have you told
your mother and father yet?

Er, we'll announce it when you come
for your tea tomorrow. All right.

The idea of the fantasist in movies

goes back to, like,
Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd

and Charlie Chaplin
and so many others,

or other things that I remember
as a kid,

watching The Secret Life
Of Walter Mitty,

but what Billy Liar does
is it starts to bring in

that kind of British New Wave,
like, style,

and it's starting to bring in,
like, jump cuts.

Like, you know, there's obviously
a lot of British filmmakers

who have seen
something like Breathless

and had their minds blown

and start to then
bring elements of that

into things that are very British.

Like, Keith Waterhouse's script
is quintessentially British

and yet it's got this kind of,
like, cutting-edge,

new European influence in it.

Then along comes Julie Christie.

She'll become an icon of the decade,

and this is the moment
the world discovered her.

Will you marry me?
Yes, Billy.

Julie's character, Liz,

offers Billy
everything he dreams of -

marriage to a beautiful,
free-spirited girl

and an escape from his humdrum life
to the excitement of London.

But what happens
when they get on the train?

Wait a minute, er,
there's a milk machine

on the station.
I can go and get you some.

I don't really want any.

No, it'll only take a minute.
Save my place.

Well, hurry up, Billy!

TRAIN HORN BLARES

We'll come back to this moment,
but the point right now is that,

three years into the decade,
social realism had moved on,

which was a bit of a shame
for Lindsay Anderson

because when he finally made
his great kitchen-sink drama,

This Sporting Life,

the genre was, for now,
kind of done.

That said, it's generally regarded
as the best of the lot.

It made a star
of Richard Harris, too.

Of course, social realism wasn't
the only thing going on in cinema.

Although it was becoming
more mainstream,

the actual mainstream
had plodded along happily

until one day, in 1962,
this happened.

GUNSHOT

An iconic opening to the most iconic
franchise in British cinema history.

Now, maybe you recognise
those two names.

Harry Saltzman,
co-founder of Woodfall Films,

and Cubby Broccoli,
Bryan Forbes's first champion.

These two North American hustlers
had joined forces

when they discovered
they both had a passion

to bring Ian Fleming's
James Bond to the cinema screen.

In some ways,

Connery's Bond spoke to
the Billy Liars in everyone.

Bond.

James Bond.

Young British men didn't necessarily
want to see the grim realities

of their daily lives
on the cinema screen.

This was their big escape.

It was international,

it was sexy,

it was huge.

Although Connery was a more
old-school model of sophistication

at 32,

it spoke to an audience of all ages.

The post-war baby boom generation,
who were in no hurry to grow up,

were reminded of
the Saturday matinee serials

they saw as children.

This had all of the thrills,
spills and cliff-hangers,

but it also had the adult overtones
of genuine danger, violence and sex.

Bond was an instant cinematic icon.

Dr. No was released in October 1962.

In March 1963, British pop culture
was about to be rocked once more.

It's not exactly original

to point out that The Beatles
changed the world in many ways,

but they also had a big impact
on cinema.

When it came to make their film,

the obvious choice was an
American director living in London,

Richard Lester.

What I love about his '60s movies,

A Hard Day's Night,
Help!, The Knack,

erm, Petulia, The Bed Sitting Room,

How I Won The War,

is just, like,
this explosion of ideas.

And he's one of
those directors who...

There's no sort of boundaries
to anything.

It always feels
so gloriously untethered,

that anything is possible.

A Hard Day's Night, although
a scripted, fictionalised film,

was infused with the influence
of cinema verite

with hand-held cameras
and spontaneous-feeling action.

It almost felt like documentary
at times.

The film, designed to merely exploit
the recent success of The Beatles,

was, in itself, a triumph.

Lester's technique of editing
the footage to the beat of the music

was a revelation.

The entire grammar of how
music videos were constructed

has been credited to it,

and a spate of similar films
followed.

Every big band would want one.

Ferry Across The Mersey,
starring Gerry And The Pacemakers.

Catch Us If You Can,
starring The Dave Clark Five.

This one was directed
by John Boorman.

More from him later.

But one of the biggest impacts
A Hard Day's Night would have

was to contribute to
a growing global realisation that,

with the best music,
the best fashion,

the hippest photographers
and writers and clubs,

London had become swinging.

This notion that London
was the coolest

and most happening city on Earth
was to fuel the cultural economy.

With the massive success
of Tom Jones and Billy Liar,

and the world's focus on London,
American movie studios

began investing heavily
in films made there,

aimed at a young adult audience.

The perception of swinging London
fuelled the reality of it.

From all over the world,
and especially all over the UK,

young people flocked to the capital
to seek fun and fame.

When Julie Christie got on
that train at the end of Billy Liar,

she took British cinema with her.

She left behind the drab
kitchen-sinks of social realism

and arrived in the hedonistic
fantasy of Carnaby Street.

Her next film,
directed by John Schlesinger,

was Darling...

..and saw her cast
as a jet-setting model

living life on the edge.

ENGINE REVS,
TYRES SCREECH

There she is with Laurence Harvey,

whose previous alter ego,
Joe Lampton, from Room At The Top,

was also now living
in swinging London

in the film's sequel,
Life At The Top.

Oh, they're not such a bad lot.

They're shallow, gross and selfish.

Christie was becoming an icon,
a face of the era.

She was influencing fashion.

And, of course, swinging London

was finding
its own male film stars, too.

London-born Terence Stamp

had wowed audiences
with The Collector...

I want you to be my guest.

..whilst fellow working-class thesp
Michael Caine

created the era-defining title role
of Alfie.

Rita Tushingham dazzled

in Dick Lester's
The Knack... And How To Get It

and then exploded into colour
with Lynn Redgrave

in this film, Smashing Time.
Oh, we're here, we're here!

Wake up, Brenda, we're here!

Smashing Time's evocation
of swinging London

is perhaps the ultimate realisation

of the fantasy
that London was selling

and the world was buying.

But another film
was set to adrenalise that fantasy

and take it a lot further.

Modesty Blaise could have,
should have

been the biggest British film
of the '60s.

Produced by Joseph Janni,

with Joseph Losey
in the director's chair,

it starred Terence Stamp
and Dirk Bogarde

alongside Italian actress
Monica Vitti in the title role.

Everything '60s is here.

The James Bond influence is obvious.

It had the biggest budget,
the greatest director,

the hottest stars
and the wildest realisation

of the fantasy of swinging London,

but it wound up
a barely-remembered footnote.

Perhaps the notion of a female
James Bond was too challenging,

or perhaps the pendulum

was swinging away from
the heady joys of swinging London,

towards the darker side
of those same streets.

One thing of note
about the end of Smashing Time

is that the two young
pleasure seekers go home.

I've still got them, Yvonne.

Still got what, Brenda?

Our return tickets.

Smashing. Let's go home, then.

The reality of London after hours

was a shock for many
who arrived looking for the party.

This is a different view
of swinging London.

Soho, nine thirty in the morning.

Look at this cinematography.

Documentary style
to ground the fiction,

it was shot by Austrian immigrant
Wolfgang Suschitzky,

a socialist Jew
who fled Austria in the 1930s

and made a home here.

He brought to British cinema
the gritty, unflinching eye

of a long-time photographer
and documentarian.

This film,
The Small World Of Sammy Lee,

was written and directed
by Ken Hughes,

but it was elevated by Suschitzky's
tense, knowing photography.

In this film, the glamour of Soho
is a thin veneer

and instead,
we see it as a claustrophobic,

cynical collection
of clubs and cafes

where everyone
knows everyone else's business.

Anthony Newley
plays the title character,

and when his spiralling
gambling debts are called in...

Of course, I'll get it.
I don't make jokes, mister.

..he has five hours to beg, con
and worm his way out.

No, I'll bet you don't.

The Safdie brothers claim
not to have been influenced by it

for their film Uncut Gems,
so we'll call it a coincidence,

but here it is,
almost 60 years earlier -

a more realistic portrait of Soho.

The seedier side of Soho

was not immune to the profits
promised by cinema.

Sex films, or stag films
as they were known,

were being churned out
from its upstairs rooms

and windowless basements.

Somewhat bridging the gap
between porn and the mainstream

was this film,
1968's Her Private Hell,

awarded with
the questionable accolade

of being the UK's first sex film
with a narrative.

You did it.

It's far from being a great film,
but it wasn't supposed to be.

It was profitable.
And this was the feature film debut

of Britain's
own exploitation maestro,

the Gentleman of Terror,

director Norman J Warren.

Argh!

Remembered fondly by all
as a polite, encouraging

and avuncular figure,
he would go on to create

some of the seediest horror films
of the '70s.

And talking of exploitation,
what did the 1960s have to offer

in terms of horror and sci-fi?

We did get, from Jack Clayton,
director of Room At The Top,

The Innocents,

an adaptation of Henry James's
The Turn Of The Screw.

Look at the photography

by the legendary cinematographer
Freddie Francis.

CLOCK TICKS

The way he uses space and light
in the huge CinemaScope frame.

The incredible use of deep focus.

I can't, I can't! I plead it! She's
dead. You know you can see her.

I can't, I can't!

Look at these bizarre,
yet effective, cross dissolves

created by the editor, Jim Clark.

At times, up to four separate images
superimposed over each other.

A huge technical achievement for
the era of photochemical processing,

long before digital.

You must remember, it's a secret.

And the sound design.

A very early appearance
of synthesised electronic sounds

by Daphne Oram,
one of the co-founders

of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Coinciding with,
but very much removed from,

the social realism movement
had been this film,

Village Of The Damned.

Originally developed
as an American film,

and very in keeping

with that Cold War era
sci-fi threat of the unknown...

You're going to have a baby.

Whose baby?

..MGM transferred
production of the film to the UK

due to pressure
from religious groups

unhappy about its inclusion
of virgin births.

Handsome, isn't he?

It was rewritten
to be located in the UK

and became very much
its own unsettling thing.

But like The Innocents,
this very much remains

an isolated, interesting piece,

rather than part of
a movement of change.

MGM also gave us The Haunting
in 1963.

Still acknowledged by some as
one of the scariest films ever made,

and a masterpiece
in less-is-more directing

from Robert Wise,
whose next film was...

..The Sound Of Music.

Oi!

Not exactly scary,

but perhaps the most
unfairly overlooked exercises

in British terror
remain Britain's only ever attempt

at the kaiju genre,

Gorgo and Konga, ripping off
Godzilla and King Kong respectively.

Has London ever been destroyed in
a more enjoyable manner than this?

There goes Piccadilly Circus.

Cinema was certainly
getting stranger.

One of the most curious films
of the decade,

probably one of the best,

was the next film
from Free Cinema's Karel Reisz.

Morgan - A Suitable Case
For Treatment

is a complex film
disguised as a silly film.

On the surface,
a wacky comedy about a crazy man

trying to win back
his estranged wife,

it's also a film about mental health
and how a rigid society

both creates and rejects
any form of neurodiversity.

It is, in fact, a film
many decades ahead of its time...

Fire!
..and at the heart of the film

is darkness.

My name is...
WOMAN: Alfie!

..Alfie.

Alfie seems to be remembered
as a more jolly film than it is.

It's one of Michael Caine's
iconic roles.

Although we find him at first
embodying the young male fantasy

of hedonistic detachment,
the fantasy turns dark

as he finds himself
physically and mentally unwell,

lonely and empty.

I got a bob or two,

some decent clothes, a car.

I got my health back,
and I ain't attached.

By the end of the film,
he's had a philosophical awakening

and, like so many of his generation,

was starting to realise
what was truly important.

But I ain't got my peace of mind.

And if you ain't got that,
you ain't got nothing.

1968's Up The Junction

tells the story
of a Chelsea socialite

who longs to experience real life.

She gets a job in a sweet factory,

only to find herself
trapped in a world of malaise,

backstreet abortions,

fights, crime and punishment.

Ultimately,
she sees the man she loves

get jailed for stealing a car

in an attempt
to appear good enough for her.

Oh, I'd much rather have gone
by bus.

Yeah... that's your trouble.

And in the same year,

Lindsay Anderson
returned to the cinema

for the first time
since This Sporting Life

and burnt the bastard down.

If.... was unlike anything
that had gone before,

a bellowing howl of pain and fury

against the establishment
he had grown up in.

It shows how
three public schoolboys,

sick of the system,
launch an armed insurrection

against the school.

It's a film giddy with fantasy,

and by the time of
this mass shooting at the end,

the viewer is left unsure
as to whether what they're seeing

is supposed to be happening or just
in the mind of its protagonist.

Recently, I watched If....

and thought the fantasy sequences
were rather good,

better than I'd realised.
So that very much came from him,

so it wasn't sort of
part of a wider movement.

But it was a vivid, angry
and unique film

which would launch its star,
young Malcolm McDowell,

into a long and illustrious career.

If the fictional characters
were getting sick of the myth

of swinging London
and the wonderful '60s,

imagine how actual filmmakers
were feeling.

This is Charlie Bubbles,

a work of sheer exasperation

from writer Shelagh Delaney

and, for the only time
in his career,

director Albert Finney.

Finney plays Charlie, a best-selling
young author who is bored of it all.

Bored of the money,
bored of the fame,

bored of the business
and bored of London.

He is utterly disconnected from
his emotions and numbed by life.

He decides to drive up north -
Liza Minnelli there -

to see his home town and visit
the wife and child he abandoned.

It's an odd film.

Part '60s swinger,
part road movie,

part heavy kitchen-sink.

It has perhaps the most
insouciant ending in cinema history.

Charlie just walks out of
his wife's house,

sees a hot air balloon,
climbs into it and flies away.

Charlie wasn't the only one
getting rich and flying away.

By 1968, 90% of all British films
released in British cinemas

were American-financed.

British talent
was starting to cross the pond.

John Schlesinger was on his way over
and would, by the end of the decade,

win an Oscar for directing
Midnight Cowboy.

Whilst British style
was popular in America,

the studios kept funding films here,

but, generally, these films
weren't making them much money.

These were the burning embers.

America was about to have
its own pop culture revolution,

and 1967's Bonnie And Clyde

was finally the catalyst
for Hollywood's own New Wave.

The last of the '60s
British films Hollywood funded

were often predicated on the cachet
of the artists involved,

rather than the quality
of the productions themselves,

which were getting... stranger.

Remember Sammy Lee?
Well, Anthony Newley,

now a very successful
singer-songwriter,

was given free rein as
a writer-director-composer-producer

on his opus - deep breath -

Can Heironymus Merkin
Ever Forget Mercy Humppe

And Find True Happiness?
# Piccadilly Lilly of my own

# Yes, sir

# So when... #

Look at it!

Here's another bit.

FAIRGROUND MUSIC PLAYS

It gets worse!

It has been said
that the film was so bad,

Newley's wife, Joan Collins,
left him because of it.

Maybe due to him casting her
in a part named Polyester Poontang.

He barely appeared
on a cinema screen again

until his final starring role in...

My God.
Long time, no see.

NARRATOR SIGHS

..The Garbage Pail Kids Movie
in 1987,

and that was far worse
than it sounds.

See also the ultimate
British power couple,

Liz Taylor and Dick Burton,

and when their power
was let run wild, Boom.

Boom has long since passed

into the hallowed halls
of kitsch cult.

These films were not hits.

American studios began selling off
their British assets,

shutting down
their sound stages here,

recalling their executives
and downsizing their London offices.

So, as we find ourselves
at the end of the decade,

Charlie Bubbles
drifting away in a balloon

seems a fitting occurrence

as numbness, dissolution,
surreality and burnout

all hang heavily in the air.

But that's not quite
the end of the story.

We haven't talked about
the last film of the '60s.

It's the last film

because the studio itself
found it so shocking,

it didn't release it until the '70s.

Nicolas Roeg, a camera operator
and cinematographer of some repute.

He'd shot sections
of Lawrence Of Arabia

and Doctor Zhivago,
and had worked with Tony Richardson

on his adaptation of
Far From The Madding Crowd.

In 1968, he co-directed Performance

alongside Scottish artist-turned-
filmmaker Donald Cammell.

Performance is a mind-bending
'60s swinging London story

in which the worlds
of Soho criminals

and hippie rock stars
mix in a haze of sex, drugs

and lost identities.

Co-star James Fox
was so rocked by the experience,

he took a lengthy sabbatical
from acting

and became an evangelical Christian.

We'll see more from Nic Roeg
in the '70s,

but look how far we've come.

There is nothing about Performance,
from the acting to the camerawork,

to the story,
to the music or the editing,

nothing which could have
been predicted

as part of British cinema
ten years previously.

Is this the end of our story?

Almost, but not quite.

Because in the last year
of the decade,

there were some new seeds growing
in the fertile soil

of these monumental times
for the British film industry,

and they're coming from somewhere
slightly less radical

than their predecessors' routes.

A generation of new film directors
is springing up from television,

some from drama,
some from documentary.

But as the revolutionary directors
of the New Wave are now commanding

unfeasibly large salaries
and exploring careers in Hollywood,

producers are looking for competent
and affordable replacements.

Now, there is this guy, Ken Russell,

but... I haven't got the energy

to even begin to explain
Ken Russell to you,

so... let's save him for the '70s.

This might be a familiar face.

It's the other Ken
of British cinema, Ken Loach.

Loach had come from regional theatre
and got his break with the BBC,

directing films for
The Wednesday Play series.

His films for the series

were heavily weighted
with a social message.

The most famous of them is this one,
Cathy Come Home.

It shocked and surprised audiences.

A young couple who descend through
the system as they lose their jobs

and have more children,

until they find themselves
at the desperate edge of poverty

and lose everything.

A shocking story,

erm, and it caused, erm,

quite a... quite an uproar.

The fact that children
were taken away

because people were homeless

caused an outcry.

There were questions in Parliament,

and we were asked to go and see
the Minister of Housing,

erm, a Labour man.

Labour was in power.
It was Harold Wilson's government.

And the man, erm...

You know, he said,
"Oh, it's a great contribution

"to understanding the problems
of homelessness."

So Tony Garnett and I went

and, erm... we said,

"Well, what are you going to do
about it?"

And he said,
"Well, on the one hand, you know,

"you have the problems of this,

"and on the other hand,
you have the problems of that."

And it became clear
he wasn't going to do anything.

It starred Carol White,

a tragic figure in British cinema

who also appeared in Loach's
first cinema film, Poor Cow.

Carol was brilliant,
and very, very touching.

Because she was young and pretty,
she was called the Battersea Bardot.

She did some films here,
and then she went to America.

They do what Hollywood does.
You know, they exploited her,

they... destroyed her, really,

and she died very young, erm,

in a motel in Florida, I believe.

And we were in touch
from time to time

and I kept saying,
"Carol, come home.

"They don't know who you are,
and they don't care."

Poor Cow also starred Terence Stamp

and tells a familiar '60s story
of disillusionment and abuse.

Argh!

What's particularly interesting
about it is Loach's approach.

What you're filming should look
as though it's just happened,

just happening
in front of your eyes.

It should be like a good musician,
a good pianist,

who sits down and plays...

Well, there's a word for it.
Sits down and plays an impromptu.

And it should be like the pianist
that sat at the...

sat on the piano stool and thought,
"I'll just play something."

And he just plays, and it comes
straight from their mind

and their imagination.

And a film should be like that,
if it's purporting to be real.

And so to improvise

and just slightly
shift the words around sometimes

will help you to capture
the sense of the spontaneous.

We changed the way of making...

of making what the BBC called drama

and what we ended up calling films.

We wouldn't have put the camera
in the streets.

And TV drama was like theatre,

in studios, with big, heavy cameras
that trundled around.

And it didn't have the flexibility
and the vitality... that we wanted.

In Poor Cow, we can see traces
of Free Cinema,

and in some ways, it was picking up
the baton of social realism,

but Loach was doing something more.

The original social realists,

Anderson, Reisz, Schlesinger
and their cohorts,

had been keen to give a voice
to the outcasts of society,

but they had largely moved on
to explore their own art.

Loach, and his producer,
Tony Garnett, wanted to do more.

They wanted
to actually effect change.

They were not content to evoke
a feeling of isolation.

They wanted to show the reality
of what happens to the people

who fall through the cracks
of society,

in a harrowing,
realistic documentary style,

and shock people into actually
doing something about it.

Loach and Garnett's last film
of the '60s

remains one of the most beloved
films of British film history.

Kes is one of the rare moments
of Loach's career

in which he swaps literal
for lyrical.

In telling the story of a young
working-class lad in Yorkshire

who finds escape from
the pressures of family,

school, poverty and society,

through his friendship
with a wild kestrel,

Loach tells the story of
the working class experience.

The story was just, erm...

..just absolutely central to
everything we wanted to do, really.

A working-class lad,

erm, a talent no-one could see.

Erm, the mining village,

the countryside,

the, erm... the school,

which we weren't so far out of
at that time.

Erm, everything rang true.

Very funny writer,

but absolutely truthful to his call.

It's a beautiful, brutal film,

and the genius in it
is the simplicity

of both the storytelling
and the message.

Nobody who has ever seen Kes

has walked away from it in any doubt
as to what Loach is saying -

that a whole section
of British society

is damned from the start,

and that even the dream of escape
or beauty is ultimately futile.

And perhaps that is the story
of British film of the 1960s.

A spark of light which looked like
it was going to change everything,

and did, but, ultimately,
having burnt down

everything which went before,
was left in a place of darkness

and disillusion.

The '70s would be
a very different decade for cinema.

In some ways, darker.

In some ways, far, far lighter.

But look at what was achieved
before that.

Look at the beautiful camerawork...

..the spontaneity and life
of location filming.

No!

The crackling performances
of a new generation of actors

who could reject the formality
of what had gone before

and be allowed to truly shine.

The colour and the anger.
Shut up, will you?!

And the desire to kick in the doors
and knock down the walls

and move cinema somewhere else.

Somewhere better.

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