All language subtitles for Reel.Britannia.S01E02.The.Seventies.1080p.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-squalor_track3_[eng]

There were two films released
in 1970

which balanced precariously
on the edge of the two decades.

The first neatly tied up one,

and the second showed us what
we might expect from the next.

One of them starred this chap,
Nicol Williamson.

Die! Screams!

I may die! Screams!

I shall die! Screams!

Good!

Good, good.
End, at last, of part three,

and that's how it was,
end of quotation, how it is.

One of the last great actors.

Back when actors were bigger than
the stage,

and bigger than the screen.

Nicol was both.

In 1970, he starred in this film,
The Reckoning.

He plays Michael Marler,
a working-class Liverpool lad

who has successfully
reinvented himself in London

as a ruthless but suave businessman.

When his father is murdered
back home, he seeks revenge,

but once his inner rage
is allowed out,

his London dream is destroyed.

I never knew you were an Irishman.

Perhaps we are to understand the
dream of social mobility was a myth.

In Cool It, Carol,

a young, naive couple
from a southern village

moved to London with big dreams
of success.

Hey, Joe! What?
Do you see all the Black men?

Their failure to achieve it

triggers a spiral into drugs,
pornography, and prostitution.

Come on, Joe, it's fun!

But it's not the darkness
of Cool It, Carol

which would go on to define British
cinema in the 1970s for many people,

it's this chap.

We've seen him before.

He was a second stringer in If.

Cool It, Carol was not a big film,
but this young man, Robin Asquith,

his face will become iconic
in this new era of British film.

Well, maybe not his face.

In these two films,
in these two actors,

we see the stark dichotomy

that British film
in the 1970s offered us.

Some of the darkest,
grittiest moments of cinema history,

and some of the absolutely
stupidest.

As soon as 1970 clunked into place,

British cinema woke up to realise
that the party was over,

and the come-down had begun.

America had left,
and taken its money with it.

Fresh from his US success
with Midnight Cowboy,

John Schlesinger returned to London
with the last few dollars

and made the ultimate hangover film.

Now tell me if you feel anything
at all.

1971's Sunday Bloody Sunday
was a sober reflection

on the fallout of free love.

You are a silly tart.

A young bohemian artist
juggles his open relationships

with both an older divorced woman
and a considerably older gay doctor.

The film is about the pain
and consequence of its demise.

It's a film about people,

and the lifestyles they choose
for themselves.

I wish they wouldn't cry.

It remains hugely significant

for the part of the doctor
played by Peter Finch.

He is Jewish, respectable,

and unburdened by guilt
regarding his sexuality.

She said it was a calling. It almost
makes me want to be a housemaid!

This is the first affectionate kiss
between two men in film history.

It's not designed to shock,
it's not a gimmick,

it's beautiful.

The prevailing tone

of the low number of British films
being made now

was one of reflection
and stoic regret.

Downbeat, quiet and contemplative.

I mean,
that was the prevailing tone!

But it seemed that the industry

forgot to tell
one particular person.

FANFARE PLAYS

Arghh!

SCREAMS

The one person still spinning wildly
on the dance floor

and going for it
with the energy of a demon

was British cinema's
greatest madman,

maybe British cinema's
greatest genius, Ken Russell.

He'd been the last to arrive
to the party,

getting his first significant film,
Women In Love,

released just under the wire in '69.

In some ways, Russell's 1970s work

is the most 1960s-ish work ever made
in its giddy taboo-smashing.

But he had spent the actual '60s

creating his own private revolution
on television.

It was his great success
in this field,

particularly his biographical films
about the great composers,

which brought him to the attention
of the film industry.

Ken Russell's first
"Ken Russell" film

was an adaptation of the 1920s novel
Women In Love.

And, ever the imp,

he was excited to see what
he could get away with,

and just how much outrage
he might be able to provoke.

The sight of Oliver Reed and
Alan Bates' gently-flopping willies

as they wrestled in Russell's debut

might have been a shocking
and unexpected sight to cinemagoers,

but his 1971 film The Devils

was unlike anything
that had ever gone before.

An assault on religion,

with an intensely realistic use
of harrowing sex and violence

that the mainstream
was not prepared for.

Warner Brothers,
who produced and own the film,

have never made
the uncut version available.

Even now, it's considered
too shocking and controversial

for general release.

In the same year The Devils
was released -

and remember, this is a proper
shocking film

with people being burnt alive
and masturbating nuns -

in that same year,
the exact same year,

Ken Russell put out
The Boy Friend...

SINGING

..a gorgeous pastiche
of stage and screen musicals

of the 1920s and '30s.

It starred Twiggy...
What, me?

..and Barbara Windsor.

And absolutely no masturbating nuns.

This was his range,
and his eccentricity.

Oh, and also in the same year,

he had already released
The Music Lovers,

which was a biopic of Tchaikovsky.

So he had three whole feature films
in the cinemas in just one year.

PIANO PLAYS

The permissiveness of '60s cinema

had begun to erode the notion
of what was possible,

both with the censor,
and the public.

To many, it seemed
that all it would take

was a few daring filmmakers
to push a bit

for the whole construct
of societal morality to collapse.

Once I decided upon the course
to do this film,

then I just had to go along
with the truth as it was reported.

The violence and sexual deviance
in The Devils

was somewhat justified by its claims
of historical accuracy,

but later in the same year,

when renegade American director
Sam Peckinpah

unleashed his latest film,
Straw Dogs,

the boundaries were tested
even further.

Set and filmed in rural Cornwall,

Straw Dogs stars Dustin Hoffman
and Susan George

as a couple returning to her
home village for a sabbatical.

Tensions between Hoffman's character
David and some of the locals swell,

until he finds himself under armed
siege, with grisly consequences.

The violence was not at the centre
of the controversy.

Peckinpah included two long
rape scenes in the film.

One of the scenes
was particularly problematic,

as there was an ambiguity

as to whether what started as rape
became consensual.

After its initial X-rated cinema run
in the UK,

it would be banned, and would not
surface again for almost 30 years.

Now, it's all very well
for filmmakers

like Ken Russell and Sam Peckinpah
to rattle the cages a bit,

because they were on the outside
edge of the mainstream,

but what would happen

if one of the world's most revered
and respected directors

made a film concerning rape
and violence?

Enter Stanley Kubrick.

A British filmmaker

by virtue of having left
his native America

to direct Lolita in London in 1962,
never to return.

Anthony Burgess' 1962 novel
A Clockwork Orange

was always going to be

a controversial choice of material
to adapt.

It had been written both
as a horrified response

to the emerging culture
of juvenile delinquency

he had observed in the late '50s,

but also a story that displayed
a wariness of the establishment

and its need to crush dissent.

One man can change the world with
a bullet in the right place.

Kubrick cast Malcolm McDowell
as Alex,

leader of the teen gang
the Droogs.

And, as Karel Reisz might have put
it, a suitable case for treatment.

Everything about the film
was heavily stylised,

especially the sequences
of rape and violence.

# Singing in the rain

# What a glorious feeling... #

This scene was like nothing
cinema had ever seen before.

# I'm laughing at clouds... #

The film crystallised the debate
which rages on today

through video games
and YouTube clips,

the chicken and egg debate

as to where violence
in society stems.

Kubrick had no truck with this.

In an interview with the BFI's
Sight And Sound magazine,

he argued that:

Yet a year later, he himself had the
film withdrawn from British release.

The press had been full of reports
of copycat attacks,

and court cases
in which young defendants

claimed to have been corrupted
by the film into such behaviour.

Kubrick had received threats
against his family.

It wouldn't be until
after his death in 1999

that the film would become available
in the UK again.

As we walked along
the flatblock marina...

A lot of the chat around
A Clockwork Orange

is still focused on the violence.

But if you stop and look,

there's something really interesting
going on in the background.

Have a look.

This scene was shot
at Southmere Lake,

on the recently-built
Thamesmead estate.

Part of the huge post-war
cultural shift in the UK

was a revolution in architecture.

Brutalism was a huge aesthetic leap
for a place so steeped in history,

but it was in keeping with a country
pursuing socialist,

or just cheaper ideals.

Gone were bricks, mortar and wood,

and in their place were vast
geometric structures

made of low-cost concrete and glass.

There is an undeniable beauty
in the early modernist visions

of brutalist architecture

as part of a functional, clean,

and socially equable
urban planning vision.

But not everybody was sold.

Especially the filmmakers.

# Sparrows can't sing... #

As early as 1963,

this new architecture was beginning
to play a role in British film.

Here, in director Joan Littlewood's
Sparrows Can't Sing,

we see James Booth as Charlie,
returning from sea

to find his house demolished,
and his wife living a new life

at the top of the newly built
Wycombe House high-rise.

You might remember this one shot

from the opening
of The Small World Of Sammy Lee.

All new and clean,
a high-rise tower.

But is it shown as an aspirational
vision, or a foreshadowing?

The 1960s and '70s

saw one of Britain's greatest
periods of urban renewal.

This moment in history
is captured well

in actor David Hemmings' directorial
effort The 14, from 1973.

The family in transition,
set against a city in transition,

clinging desperately to the security
of their long-condemned house.

The tower blocks were called
"streets in the sky",

as an attempt to convince the
relocated working-class communities

of their great fortune.

But such a radical change
of environment

proved too much for many.

Here is a moment from the comedy.

He won't go up there.

They'll be sorry.

Be sorry when I'm dead.

GLASS RATTLES

Arghh!

1972's Alf Garnett Saga

sees one of the most forthright
and confident voices from television

reduced to a state of acute anxiety.

Not everyone felt this way.

# Concrete city... #

This is Cliff Richard,

celebrating the rejuvenation
of Birmingham city centre

in his "interesting"
1973 film Take Me High.

Filmmakers of the 1970s were not
responding enthusiastically

to the rise of brutalism.

To the artistic eye,
these new landscapes

represented an isolated
dystopian future.

Sidney Lumet came to, of all places,
Bracknell, to shoot The Offence,

starring Sean Connery as a cop who
has finally seen all he can take

and begins to break down.

God...

Bracknell had been a village,

but became one of Britain's infamous
"new towns" in the post-war period.

A huge regeneration, complete with
brutalist housing for thousands,

and a new concrete municipal centre
for them all to mill about in.

To Lumet, this new town was a cold,
alienating place,

and he used it to frame his story
of inhumanity and collapse.

Connery's character lives

in the same real-life tower block,
Point Royal,

as the character of Wynne,
played by Jenny Agutter,

from the film I Start Counting.

They had a location in common,
and a plot point,

that of a series of child murders
in Bracknell.

But in I Start Counting, the
architecture is used differently.

The brutalist building is not
presented so much as sinister

as of the future.

Throughout the film,
Wynne spends time in her old house,

marked for demolition,

and her new, clean,
futuristic family home.

A teenager suspended
between childhood and adulthood,

the past and the future.

This is the Trinity Square
car park in Gateshead.

Here it is being demolished in 2010.

And HERE is its big moment.

Directed by Mike Hodges, another
talent who had cut his teeth in TV

and arrived in cinema fully formed,

and shot by Sammy Lee's
Wolfgang Suschitzky,

Get Carter was a film

which perfectly exemplified
the moment in which it was made.

Again, it deals with a character
who has made good in London

but must travel north
to face his past.

Michael Caine,
as gangster Jack Carter,

follows a hunch
that his brother's death

was not the drink-driving
accident it appeared to be,

and uncovers a grimy conspiracy

that involves his family
in a terrible way.

Although it doesn't revel
in the gore or delighted violence

that some other films
from the '70s did,

there is a uniquely efficient
brutality to Carter's journey

as he relentlessly dispatches those
involved in his brother's murder.

Get in. In!

The environment of the film is,
like the decade, one of transition.

The dingy grimness
of the old Tyneside

exists alongside brutalist
modern buildings,

and Carter negotiates both
with ease.

Get Carter is one of those rare
truly iconic British films.

It's so well regarded

that Sylvester Stallone re-made it
in the early 2000s.

Even a supporting cast featuring
Mickey Rourke, Martin Landau

and Michael Caine himself

couldn't save the project
from a critical drubbing.

But it shows that the enduring
appeal of the original

is not strictly to do with the plot
and the strong cast.

You're a big man.

But you're out of shape.

With me, it's a full-time job.
So please, sit down.

You're a big man,
but you're in bad shape.

With me, it's a full-time job.
Now behave yourself.

It's something else.

Take me back to London.

Don't you think you ought
to get dressed first?

There is a distillation
of Britishness in Get Carter.

You know you won't use it.
The gun, he means.

Tricky to define, but undeniable.

It's in the grimness,
in the toughness, the dourness.

But it's also in the humour.

Oh!

What are you doing, then,
on your holidays?

No, I'm visiting relatives.
Oh, that's nice.

It would be,
if they were still living.

Perhaps we see something
in Carter that we see in ourselves.

A resilience,
a commitment to family,

a stiff upper lip, and a desire
to just get it done,

even when it ultimately results
in failure.

One truly unique aspect
of Get Carter is the music.

Roy Budd's modern jazz score might
seem at odds with the setting,

but it's an innovation
which feels entirely natural.

Since we're talking about music,

let's see where the music-based
cinema of the '70s has taken us.

So, in the '60s, it was all a bit...

FUNKY BEAT PLAYS

And in the '70s...

ROCK RIFF PLAYS

Written by journalist Ray Connolly

and producer David Puttnam -
remember that name -

That'll Be The Day,
and its sequel, Stardust,

were cold reflections

on the optimism and giddiness

of the late '50s / early '60s
rock 'n' roll explosion.

This brace of films
pulled back the curtains

and showed their truth
of what was happening backstage.

Perhaps most interesting is
the central role of Jim MacLaine,

played by David Essex.

This heart-throb lead singer
is an empty shell of a man.

In That'll Be The Day,
we see him as a child

abandoned by his dad, who has no
time for any form of institution,

be that family, education,
work, or marriage.

Look after your mother for me,
will you, son?

Jim is ruthlessly ambitious
and hedonistic

and eventually leaves everyone
he knows in tatters, buys a guitar,

and heads off to pursue
a rock 'n' roll dream.

Yeah, that'll be all right.

A year later, in Stardust,
we see how that dream plays out.

# I beg you to believe in me... #

What did you think of the group?

Well, you're never gonna
be Buddy Holly.

But you were good tonight.

How his ruthlessness
and ambition isolate him,

and how his isolation
makes him easy prey

for the vultures
of the recording industry.

It's got to be me.

Anything.

When he reaches the apex
of his career,

recording a pretentious,
overblown opera-based vanity album

before buying a castle in Spain
to lock himself away in,

he has neither the soul
nor the support to protect him

and, like so many
of those '60s rock stars,

his ending is not a happy one.

ROCK MUSIC

Also made in 1974, a surprising
film from the band Slade.

Best known for being
the chirpy, crazy,

happy, stomping glam rockers
of the day,

we might have expected a comedic

Richard Lester-type of offering
from them.

But no,

they also wanted to explore
the broken '60s dream,

and offered a vision at least
as grubby as that of David Essex.

Would you mind being quiet?!

Flame is also an autopsy

on what had happened
to rock 'n' roll in the '60s.

In it, Slade play a band who look
set to storm the charts

but instead find themselves
pulled apart

by corrupt management
and corporate indifference.

That wasn't music!

You're just second-rate comics
working on a third-rate audience.

With a fourth-rate agent!

This was not the end
of rock bands making films,

but the next batch
were to be quite different.

We're not there yet.

"Hang on",
you might be asking yourself,

"where was Richard Lester
all this time?

"He was the guy who invented
the very form

"of the rock 'n' roll movie.
What was he doing?!"

The answer
is not what you might expect.

Richard Lester had spent
a considerable amount of the '70s

directing fun historical romps

which soothed the soul
of Middle England.

His Musketeer movies
were a great success,

and he hired man of the decade
Malcolm McDowell

as the lead in Royal Flash,

which was a rare flop
for both of them,

but plenty of bawdy period fun.

I see what the trouble is.

You're still too sober
to play properly.

His most interesting film
of the decade, however,

was Robin And Marian.

There is yet to be a generation
of cinemagoers

who have not had their own
Robin Hood.

Welcome to Sherwood, my lady.

The core story is one
of our greatest national legends.

A man of noble birth turned outlaw

who robbed from the rich
and gave to the poor.

Have you met them at all?
Who? The poor.

Every actor who has portrayed him...

..and filmmaker
who has told the story

have focused on different aspects.

Oh, you're a pretty lad.
And sweetly tempered.

Some are light-hearted and jolly.

# We're great manly men

# We're men in tights... #

Others dark and brooding.

What we would ask, Your Majesty,
is liberty.

Some political.

Liberty by law!

Others spiritual.

Perhaps the interpretation
of the legend

reflects the time
in which it was made.

Which is why Dick Lester's Robin
And Marian is so fascinating.

I want it done.

I fought for you in the Crusades.
I fought for you here in France.

Sean Connery plays Robin
as a disillusioned older man,

returning from the Crusades,

which he now understands to have
been a massive waste of time.

I ordered it.

And yes, well spotted, that is
Nicol Williamson as Little John.

This way.

They travel home to Sherwood

to find their Merry Men
as a bunch of old geezers

and Maid Marian whiling away
her days in an abbey.

Good God, it's Marian.

It's a film with plenty of humour
and pathos,

but ultimately, it's a film about
defeat and failure,

and the hollow reality of legend.

The cast is exceptional,

with Ian Holm as King John

and Richard Harris as the demented
last gasp of Richard the Lionheart.

Robert Shaw,
fresh from his success in Jaws,

plays the Sheriff of Nottingham,

and his final battle with Robin
is not the usual high point

of swordsmanship
and acrobatics we've come to expect.

It's a slow, ugly slugfest,

which is every bit as miserable
to watch

as the film's working title
The Death Of Robin Hood promised.

What state must this country be in
if even Robin Hood is done with?

SOBBING

It wasn't just the mainstream films
which were looking backwards.

Horror also took a step away
from the modern and the gothic.

Folk horror is a very small,
very contained subgenre.

It focuses on rural communities,
paganism and superstition.

At its core, folk horror features
just three British films,

made within a five-year period.

Witchfinder General
had been made in 1967.

Yes?

It featured Vincent Price
in a rare moment of non-campyness

as Matthew Hopkins,
the eponymous crusader.

Stalking British villages to purge
them of their non-existent witches,

and making a pretty profit
in doing so.

There is no supernatural element
to this film.

The horror is in the corruption,
violence and sadism.

There is also a horror
in the subversion of the pastoral.

Our romantic notion of the past
is one where all lived happily

in the rolling green countryside,

but here, director Michael Reeves
shows us this beautiful landscape

whilst reminding us it
was inhabited by small-minded people

who were easily lied to
and whipped up into a frenzy,

blaming the perceived outsider
for their afflictions.

The Blood On Satan's Claw
IS a supernatural story,

but also derives much
of its truest horror

from the actions
of the susceptible villagers.

And then there's The Wicker Man.

Routinely identified as Britain's
greatest horror film,

it features no gore, no violence,
no real jumps or scares.

It has songs in it.

# The landlord's daughter

# You'll never love another... #

And yet it haunts the viewer
long after the film has finished.

Because what is so terrifying
about it

is what it suggests
could be possible.

Again, the story is one of a rural
community with a secret.

To say much more is to spoil one
of cinema's greatest surprises.

If you haven't already seen it,
just see it.

Utterly unique, playful, clever,
and gloriously weird.

Perhaps the most shocking entries
to the genre during this decade

came from two filmmakers
you might not have expected it from.

Alfred Hitchcock.

There never has, and never will be
another director like him.

There couldn't be.

This is a guy who started
directing films in the silent era

and made his last in 1976,

featuring stars from the new wave
of American cinema.

He directed films for 51 years,

and, unlike pretty much any other
film director,

his star never dimmed.

The quality of his films

and the public's enthusiasm for them
globally didn't fade.

He stayed relevant and interesting.

He always worked with,
often making, the stars of the day.

For what would be his penultimate
film, he returned to London.

Frenzy was a nostalgic trip
for Hitch,

taking place mainly
in the Covent Garden market.

Hitch's father had been
a greengrocer,

but if nostalgia was on his mind,

it certainly didn't play a part
in his work.

Unlike his classic
and classy thrillers,

this film is violent, graphic
and shocking

in how much delight is given
to the most macabre details.

Jesus, help me! Help me!

It feels, in fact, so modern

that it seems like a forerunner

to the slasher films
of the late '70s and early '80s.

Which encourage the audience to take
enjoyment from death scenes

and, in some ways,
root for the murderer.

Nick Roeg, by this time
celebrated for his film performance,

was carving out
a fascinating career.

His 1971 film Walkabout

showed his true capabilities
as an artist filmmaker.

Narratives which seem simple
become allegorical and complex

as Roeg encourages the audience

to extrapolate their own narrative
and meaning from his work.

Even if one doesn't immediately
understand it in a traditional way,

when the film finishes,
you're left in no doubt

that you've just seen
a true artist at work.

Roeg's 1973 film, Don't Look Now,
is his masterpiece.

What are you reading?
I was just trying to find the answer

to a question Christine
was asking me.

It is incomparable
to any film before or since,

and is almost impossible to describe
to someone who has not seen it

without in some way spoiling
the experience.

The plot is simple,

a married couple grieving
the death of their young daughter

move to Venice
to take on a new project

and grieve away from the home
where she died.

From there, the experience of
watching the film

is unlike anything else.

It can be stark and verite,

dreamlike and rich in symbolism,

protracted and artsy,

or downright terrifying.

But unlike his other films,

which might leave the viewer
speculating on meaning...

..the final shot of Don't Look Now

somehow, incredibly, allows all the
pieces drifting around in your head

to fall immediately into place,

and marvel at the genius
of the storytelling.

British cinema, however,
was about to get even weirder,

in a totally unexpected way.

In this country of ours,

we are facing
the gravest economic situation

that we have known
for a generation past.

From now on, all of us, except
the least privileged among us,

have got to do the shoving
for Britain.

By 1974, new Prime Minister
Harold Wilson

raised income tax
on the top earners to 83%.

Now, these days, we consider
tax exiles to be, well, wankers.

But back then, it became a hugely
exotic counterculture statement

to sod off to sunnier climes

and avoid
a clearly unworkable situation.

Quite a lot of people going abroad,
you know.

If you had any talent,

if the Americans in particular,

if the Americans wanted
you to employ you, you would...

You bailed,
and a lot of people never came back.

A lot of people never came back.

I think the whole concept
of fair taxation,

and I'm a member of the Labour Party
and always have been,

is a delicate balance.

You actually kill off
people's aspirations,

people's instincts
of what they might be

or what they might be able to do
in their lives.

Where would we find
our new film stars?

The producers looked to TV.

Back then,
in the days long before streaming

and even the internet,
TV was massive.

And in the UK, at that time,
there were only three channels.

So pretty much everyone
was watching the same things.

And so arrived a curious genre -
the sitcom movie.

There had already
been a big screen outing

for Alf Garnett
from Till Death Us Do Part,

but from 1971,
the floodgates opened.

Isn't that typical?

To solve the problem

of transposing a traditional
30-minute sitcom narrative

into a 90-minute one,

pretty much every single one of
these films used the same solution.

Send the characters on holiday.

Some chose a camping,
or holiday camp, trip in the UK.

Others chose the more exotic luxury
of mainland Europe, usually Spain.

BEEPING

Oh, your equipment's
working well (!)

I say, fellas, we're British!

Working-class sentiment
is an indulgence of...

But there are moments in these films
with some cultural resonance.

..for people like you have
moved out the Elm Lodge houses...

At the heart of many of them is a
probably accidental contemplation

of the deep malaise
that consumed the males

of the post-war white,
working-class generation.

The Likely Lads were haunted
by the onset of urban renewal,

race relations were explored

in a way that would horrify
most modern viewers

in Love Thy Neighbour.

And the first of three
On The Buses movies

took a stumbling shot
at addressing women's lib.

You stupid nit! I can't get out.

Can't you?
Try driving a bus sideways.

But it should be said,
in all three of these films,

less time was spent
on such contemplation

as on long scenes
of these same men

being locked out of buildings
without their trousers on.

We're going to wave up there.

In 1979, Margaret Thatcher,
now prime minister,

changed the tax laws
in favour of the high earners,

who began
to return to work in the UK.

As polarising a figure as the
new prime minister would prove to be

to the British people, the one thing
we can all now agree on

is that this swift axe drop
on the sitcom movie genre

was certainly for the best.

While sitcoms were getting
all confused looking like films,

there was another sub-genre

in which films
were starting to look like sitcoms.

Remember this bloke?
He was about to become iconic.

By making a silly slapstick film

about a silly young man
getting into silly situations,

who is part of a silly family unit,

it hit the more base comedy tastes
of the era.

Confessions Of A Window Cleaner

was the highest-grossing
British film of 1974.

Yes, this film.

This film made more money

than any other British film
in that year.

There are different
schools of thought as to why.

The first is cultural.

The supporting cast was full
of beloved British character actors,

like Miss Marple, Selwyn Froggitt...
Don't ask.

Oh, and that guy, Tony Booth,

would go on to become
Tony Blair's father-in-law.

The second explanation is,
quite simply,

shed-loads
of full-frontal female nudity.

Because
Confessions Of A Window Cleaner

and all three, yes, three
of its sequels

were not just comedies...

Ooh, cop a load of that!

..they were sex comedies.

Welcome to the strangest genre
of British cinema.

They're big for their age!

Come on, girls, let's get them!

What a way to go.

Stop that at once!

MOANS,
SCREAMS

Those damn woodworm again.

There can be a tendency
to embrace the British sex comedy

for its sheer cheesiness.

But it was pretty squalid,
even at the time.

That's Mary Millington,
the genre's greatest female star.

She was sold as empowered and fun,

but she tragically took her own life
just a few years later.

Many of these films paired the women
with particularly unattractive men

to sell a dream
to their demographic audience.

'I'm very pleased
to be able to do so.'

In the cold light
of the post-Me Too world,

these films are not as charming and
harmless as they thought they were.

The films were marketed
to the mainstream

by filling the cast
with recognisable comedic faces

from the older generations.

He wants you off the case.

Many an anecdote reveals
that these comics

were given scripts
without the sex scenes included.

They had no idea
what they were involved with.

For some of them,
these were their final films.

Anything?

At least in the Confession films,
the women usually had the upper hand

and were generally the ones
using and objectifying

innocent young Timmy Lea.

Compare it to this scene
from the far grimmer

Adventures Of A Taxi Driver,

in which the also far grimmer hero
seduces a suicidal young woman.

Or this scene
from Rosie Dixon - Night Nurse,

in which an 18-year-old woman is
saved from gang rape by a rugby team

and then immediately seduced
by her saviour.

Oh, Tom. You were wonderful.
Ah, yes. Yes, I was, wasn't I?

Audiences and distributors
were complicit

in a false air of legitimacy,

in the questionable notion
that these were just fun comedies

and absolutely not pornography.

The truth would out with the
emergence of home video recorders,

and eventually, the internet.

The age of men
gathering in darkened rooms

under the shared pretext

that window cleaning antics
were hilarious was over.

Ah, come on...
Grim.

It feels like so much of the cinema
of the seventies was grim

in either subject matter
or execution.

So who was gonna turn that around?

Maybe this guy, David Puttnam,

the producer of That'll Be The Day
and Stardust.

Post-war suburban London,
I could walk to five cinemas.

I hated school, I spent as much time
at the cinema as I could.

That was what cinema was to me,
a place of magic and excitement.

I got this graduate trainee scheme,

so I went through the
marketing department and research

and various things,
and it was at the agencies.

The quality of work was terrible,

and I started seeing these ads
appearing that I thought were great,

and tracked them back
to a tiny start-up

called Collett Dickenson Pearce.

And by great,
unbelievable good fortune,

I was taken on as their first,
effectively, their first employee.

Not long after me,
it wasn't a filmmaker,

but Charles Saatchi joined,
Ridley Scott was doing work for us,

he was at the BBC
but was freelancing.

Puttnam produced
each of their first films.

The TV in the early '60s,

we were plugged into daily events
in a way that was very formative.

And I think that may have been
one of the divisions

between us
and the advertising guys,

like Parker and Hugh Hudson
and people like that.

And there was distrust
between those two camps.

They were rich and we weren't.

They were very, very fashionable,

they were wrong about us and we were
quite certainly wrong about them.

And there was
a kind of misapprehension

of each to the other.

The one person that they
had in common was David Puttnam.

Most of Puttnam's first forays
into film were music-based.

We've already looked
at the two David Essex films.

He'd also produced two composer
biopics directed by Ken Russell.

Puttnam's own first film
as a producer

had been with Alan Parker
as first-time screenwriter.

Melody reunited the two child leads

from the hugely successful film
Oliver, Mark Lester and Jack Wild.

We are gathered here today
in the sight of God

to join together this man and woman
in holy matrimony.

Melody is a fantastic oddity
and a true cult film.

It is intensely loved
by those who saw it as children

when it was released.

Puttnam's next film with Parker,
who this time wrote and directed,

was Bugsy Malone.

You'd be hard pushed to find any
British person

who grew up in the '70s or '80s

who doesn't remember it
with great fondness.

An Englishman's pastiche
of the American gangster films

of the 1930s

with a cast made up entirely
of children playing adult roles.

..than there is time in the day!

Listen, Honey,
if I didn't look this good,

you wouldn't give me
the time of day.

On top of this, it's a musical

with the kids lip-syncing
to adult vocal performances.

They have guns
which fire whipped cream,

and travel everywhere in pedal cars.

It shouldn't work,
but it continues to.

Dragoona...

The 1970s was an interesting period
for British children's films.

Disney made quite a few live action
kids' films in the UK at this time.

Bedknobs And Broomsticks
saw some British kids join a witch

to defeat a Nazi invasion
of the British Isles.

Oi! You leave that alone.

One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing

was a spy romp around London
with many famous faces.

Dinosaur!

And that dinosaur skeleton
would end up making a cameo

in a very unexpected place
two years later.

There goes the 12:20.

Candleshoe saw the
improbable transatlantic team-up

of sassy young LA street kid
Jodie Foster

and British butler David Niven
in a hidden treasure caper.

One area of cinema in which the UK
was well provided was kids' films.

Since 1951,
the Children's Film Foundation,

a non-profit group funded
by a taxation on cinema takings,

churned out a constant stream
of intriguing fodder

for the Saturday morning audience.

The '70s were quite a heyday
for the CFF,

in which they were producing as many
as eight new films every year.

There are common themes.

It seemed, sometimes,
like every film they made

was about a bunch of plucky kids

scuppering some kind
of grown-up heist.

But there was also
some really interesting stuff.

That's a French bird all right!

Amazingly, the legends of
British cinema of the '40s and '50s,

Michael Powell
and Emeric Pressburger,

made their last ever collaboration
for the CFF.

And the film that resulted,
The Boy Who Turned Yellow,

was a surreal highlight.

An opportunity
of talking about film...

Also producing films for kids
was the government's

Central Office of Information,

which produced public information
films on many subjects

and offered employment to many
British filmmakers over the years.

Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz,
Peter Greenaway and Hugh Hudson.

'But no-one expects to find me here.
It seems too ordinary.'

For a brief moment in the 1970s,

the COI launched a bizarre bid to
save the lives of British children

by scaring the living shit
out of them.

'Only a fool would ignore this.
But there's one born every minute.'

Here, Donald Pleasance
uses reverse psychology

to keep kids away from water
for the rest of their lives.

'Hidden depth,
it's the perfect place...'

Help!
'..for an accident.'

Oi, look,
there's someone in the water. Quick!

John McKenzie,
who would go on to direct

the classic British gangster film
The Long Good Friday,

offered this film, Apaches, in 1975,

which illustrated to children
every scenario

in which they were likely to die
on a farm.

CHILDREN CHEERING

BOY SCREAMS

Yes, they actually showed this
to children.

Back in the cinema,

the surviving members of
this emotionally frazzled generation

were then offered
the British rite of passage

which is Watership Down.

..has joined the thousand,
For my friend stopped running today.

Watership Down is a British-funded,
British-made animated adaptation

of a British book which,

despite being
a sublime piece of filmmaking

and being, hey, about bunny rabbits,
is categorically not for children.

Yet, it shaped a generation
with its graphic bunny deaths,

visions of fields running with blood

and ultimately, a far too
premature moment of rumination

on the concept of mortality.

Give me a moment,
I've got something in my eye.

This is the film Punk In London.

Punk was a cultural revolution,

a backlash against
pretty much everything,

and it didn't take long
for it to reach film.

There were pre-runners to this.

A Clockwork Orange has been credited
as having inspired punk

by offering young people
a vision of their ability

to burn down the society
which has rejected them.

There is also a strong
precursor to punk element

in 1975's Rocky Horror Picture Show,

which presents a very punk aesthetic

and possibly cinema's
most progressive take

on gender and sexuality
at that point.

I could show you
my favourite obsession.

In the white heat of punk,

the Sex Pistols
starred in Julian Temple's

The Great Rock 'N' Roll Swindle.

It's a glorious mess of a film

which pretty well
sells the musical silliness

of the Malcolm McLaren orbit.

Mary Millington and
train robber Ronnie Biggs show up,

and ultimately, Johnny Rotten,
who'd left the band by then,

described it as "a pile of rubbish".

The Clash's film Rude Boy
is a bit more interesting,

if a lot less energetic.

It tells the fictional story of
a young man who becomes their roadie

and his story is filmed alongside

what was actually happening
with the band at the time.

So it's a documentary narrative
from a fictional perspective,

which is interesting.

Punk accelerated change,

and perhaps the biggest result
of this to British film

was the emergence of Derek Jarman.

Jarman was an artist and a stage
designer for the Royal Ballet.

His first move into film

was as a production designer
on Ken Russell's The Devils.

And his next
was to raise 100% private funding

to finance his own
directorial debut,

one of the most important moments
in queer cinema, Sebastiane.

Important because it presented
homosexuality as art and as fact

in a narrative film
playing in cinemas.

This was the first time graphic
male nudity and sexuality

had appeared in anything
but specialist pornography.

His next feature film
could probably lay claim

to being the only real punk film
that wasn't documentary.

Jubilee, released in 1978,
was more art film than narrative,

with Jenny Runacre
as Queen Elizabeth I,

summoned by John Dee to witness her
London in the 1970s.

Thought you bought it
from the liquidator.

The cast and soundtrack
are full of punk icons

like Jordan, Wayne County,
and Siouxsie and the Banshees.

And it even gave the world their
first view of Adam Ant and Toyah.

All right, girls.

Although the 1960s and '70s

had seen a strong movement in art
and experimental film,

it was somewhat of an enclosed
community.

Jarman's films were on public
release in cinemas,

and were influencing and inspiring

both filmmakers
and audiences who watched them.

In 1978, filmmaker Ron Peck
brought Nighthawks to the screen.

The first feature film

to really explore the contemporary
world of the homosexual experience.

MUSIC PLAYS

How was it?

There is almost a mundanity to it

as it brilliantly normalises
the gay experience

and essentially shows us a very
normal young man making a living

and looking for love or connection.

It's not a film of bitterness,
or high drama,

more a character study.

It does contain
this electric scene...

Yes, Christopher?
Is it true that you're bent?!

LAUGHING,
JEERING

..in which the main character
is outed by his students

and attempts to turn it
into a learning opportunity.

Are you queer?

CHILDREN SHOUT

There's been a rumour going round
the school that you're a queer.

Come on, admit it!

Yes, it's true.

It still, and always has been,
a rarity

to find a British film
which is centred around anything

but the white, English,
heteronormative culture.

Of the few films covering any
of Britain's minority cultures,

it's even harder to find any

actually made by filmmakers
of those minorities.

Somewhere in the background
of this film

is one of Britain's most important
filmmakers.

One of the thousands of extras
used in 1963's Cleopatra

was Trinidad-born Horace Ove.

Elizabeth Taylor moved the whole
production to Rome.

When I got to Rome, I got interested
in all the other filmmakers.

You know, De Sica, Fellini,
Antonioni,

and suddenly my approach
to filmmaking had changed

from the Hollywood, you know,
the Hollywood film.

Here I was introduced to the realist
cinema, the surrealist cinema.

Working mainly in documentary,
and having built a good reputation,

it was surprising how difficult
it was

for Ove to raise finance for his
very low-budget feature film debut.

Eventually, the BFI's production
board and consortium of filmmakers

put the money up.

Everybody looked at me as though
I was sick or crazy or something

to try and to make a film about such
a heavy Black subject.

And then, coming out of film school,

and hanging out with a lot
of filmmakers,

white filmmakers,
who I got to know in school,

and Black filmmakers,
and people coming up...

We all came together,

and they said, "All right, Horace,
we like this story,

"we're into the politics
of what's going on today,

"we will help you,
we'll give you four or five weeks.

"After that, we're gone,
cos we've gotta live."

And that's how it was put together.

Pressure, released in 1975,
was the first British feature film

to be directed by a Black filmmaker.

Hurry up, boys! Breakfast's ready.

The story follows Tony,
a bright, well-educated

young, English-born Black man,

and the pressures he faces
from society.

It was nice of you to come in
and see us.

His inability to find work,

despite being better qualified
than his white friends,

the subservience of his parents'
Windrush generation

to the indigenous white dominance,

and the reactionary anger

of the Black Power group
he finds himself drawn to.

It's a really well-made film,

which is just as relevant today as
to when it was eventually released.

It took Ove three years to get
the film distributed

after it was finished,

as the scenes of police brutality
were considered too incendiary.

SHOUTING

Ove only made one other feature
film, and that was a decade later.

He was an artist, a photographer,
a documentarian,

and a theatre director.

His achievements across
the other arts are cinema's loss.

It would be a couple of years later

before Britain got another
feature film

about the British Black experience.

And this would be
from a white director.

Your passport. Mr...?

Benjamin Adolphus Ignatius
Samuel Jones, sir.

Black Joy is less
politically charged,

and the kind of film that would
be regularly produced

in a more representative
film industry.

It's a fun, knowing film

about a young man arriving
fresh off the plane from Guyana,

learning to negotiate life,
and the local characters

in 1970s Brixton.

Although the main character of Ben
is played by Trevor Thomas,

the film is dominated by the raucous
presence of Norman Beaton.

And yes,
that is Dame Floella Benjamin.

Her portrayal of Miriam, a strong
woman, mother and business owner,

is worthy of a film all of her own.

He don't give a fuck.
He only want to fuck.

Anyway, Black Joy has faced
criticism over the years

for presenting the British Black
experience

in a stereotyped comical way.

Having a middle-class
white man behind the camera

and a mainly white production team

provoked calls of inauthenticity

and fetishisation
of the ghetto culture.

Ultimately, it's up to the viewing
audience to decide for themselves.

The screenplay was written
by Guyanese-born

Brixton resident Jamal Ali,

and the Black cast of actors
have all stood by the film.

Oh, God, the damn thing is black.

Perhaps it was the notion
of a comedic tone

when depicting a very oppressed
sector of society

which upset certain critics.

But isn't it also valid to depict
the resilience and spirit

that go along with such oppression?

The overriding sentiment you feel

when watching either Pressure
or Black Joy is,

"Why aren't there more films
like this?"

There were more films in
the Robin Askwith Confession series

than there were feature films
about the Black British experience

in the '60s and '70s put together.

How's that for a sobering thought?

It's a funny thing to ask,
but are you from India or Pakistan?

India.

The immigrant experience
was also at the heart

of 1974's A Private Enterprise,

which finally presented
a British Asian story

to the cinema audience.

Sitting somewhere
between the anger of Pressure

and the charm of Black Joy,

A Private Enterprise follows Shiv,
an Indian immigrant

with aspirations of financial
independence and love.

At a crossroads point in his life,

he is discovering what certain
things mean to him.

Community, progressiveness,
spirituality,

family, the past and the future.

Pay the legal minimum wage!

Against a backdrop
of industrial action

in a bleak 1970s Birmingham,

it's an intelligent
and heartfelt film,

with a keen eye
for certain human frailties.

What about other immigrant cultures?

Any British films from the 1970s
about Jews?

Apparently not.

Oh, hang on.

I'm a kike, a yid, a heebie,
a hooknose. I'm kosher, Mum.

I'm a Red Sea pedestrian
and proud of it!

Oh, yeah, welcome to the next group
of filmmakers

who would arguably go on to be
the most influential club

since the Free Cinema brigade.

Monty Python's Flying Circus

had exploded onto British TV
in the late '60s.

Filthy! Gaston,
find out who washed this up...

What the Beatles were to music,
they were to comedy.

Not just in the public perception
of it as a revolutionary force,

but also in the work

actually being the most perfectly
distilled version of its influences.

The humour of Monty Python
was an evolution

of the irreverence of The Goons

and the cultural dismemberment
of Beyond The Fringe.

After four series
of their TV sketch show,

the ambitions
of the six writer/performers

could not be contained
in a mere box.

Their first real feature film,
Monty Python And The Holy Grail,

was funded
in a suitably bizarre manner.

When we got the chance
to make a movie,

ie, Monty Python
And The Holy Grail,

Terry Jones and I both wanted to be
film directors by that point.

Convinced we could do it better
than the TV director, or anything.

And we were also at a time

when the taxation in this country
was very, very severe.

Pop groups were making a fortune,
you know.

Elton John, Led Zeppelin,

Genesis, Island Records,

there were a couple of others...

They wanted to deal
with their tax problem,

and we were a tax loss opportunity!

We failed them.

Unfortunately,
the film did incredibly well.

It is a totally,
utterly British film,

and it was ignored as such,
practically.

The one thing I remember from that
period was Alexander Walker,

he wrote a book about British cinema

for, I think it was for the '70s...

which we had a couple of films in,
Python did.

And we were a footnote.

We were not considered cinema.

We were a bunch of TV guys
telling jokes.

But it was their next one which
would be the most influential

in relation to British cinema
and society.

1979's the Life Of Brian
is the story of Brian,

a Jew, in Roman-occupied Judaea,

who just happened to be born
on the same night,

and just across the road from Jesus.

The film tells the story
of his parallel life,

in which he, too,
gets feted as the Messiah

and suffers a similar,
albeit more song-and-dance fate.

There was a notable pushback
in the UK.

Screenings of the film were
picketed by religious groups,

some town councils refused

to allow the film to be shown
in local cinemas.

The Pythons attempted to defend it,

but came up against situations
like this.

You keep making the basic assumption
that we are ridiculing Christ

and Christ's teaching.

And I say that we are not.

Do you imagine that your scene,
for instance,

of the Sermon on the Mount,

this scene in your film
of the Sermon on the Mount,

is not ridiculing one of the most
sublime utterances that...

The Pythons quite rightly contended

that what they had made
was not blasphemy.

We're making fun of the guy
who's remembered it wrong,

and of the people who don't
understand it and miss the point.

From the Sermon on the Mount, it's
treated absolutely respectfully.

It was heresy. What they were
satirising was religion itself.

Yes, we were provoking, a lot.
And that's very important.

Because I think provocation

is one of the jobs of,
at least some, cinema.

And that's what I've tried to do.

And that's what Python was doing.

Because if you provoke people,

hopefully it makes them
start thinking.

Life Of Brian is a film that should
be watched right now.

Everything it's saying is about
the world we're living in now.

And I keep trying to encourage
people to go and watch it,

those who haven't seen it.

We were way ahead of the curve,
folks!

Its crucifixion finale

was an attack on the iconography
of Christianity.

Monty Python took down the last big
taboo, religion, with laughter.

And ultimately,
with a song and a dance.

It was 1979.

Lord Lew Grade.

Look at this guy dance!

It would be wrong to wrap up without
at least mentioning him.

King of independent TV,

and self-proclaimed saviour
of the British film industry.

He was based in Britain,
and he did make a lot of films,

but they were just a bunch

of not-very-well-remembered
international films

starring the big Hollywood names
of the day.

There wasn't much British
about them,

and they don't deserve
a place in this story.

But he still deserves
a little shout-out.

Without him,
we might never have had The Muppets.

So, dance on, you crazy bastard,
we love you.

Well, now, what did we have
at the end of the '70s?

We had some incredible films
made by incomparable artists.

Oh, leave the guy alone!

We had some hilarious
softcore pornography.

Get undressed!

We had some pretty good kids' films.

KIDS SHOUT

We had the beginnings
of a representative film culture

for minority groups.

Thank you so much.

We had some blistering
and committed performances.

We had fun.

We had drama.

Madness.

Weirdness.

And horror.

And we had lost most of our
indigenous stars to Hollywood,

and fuck all British films
were actually being made.

But that was about to change.

And the person who was about
to change it

is someone you might never
have expected.

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