Sixties British Cinema Reconsidered

by Petrie, Duncan; Williams, Melanie; Mayne, Laura

• ISBN13: 9781474443883
• ISBN10: 1474443885
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2020-04-30
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Summary

This collection of exciting new research on British cinema of the 1960s reconsiders and reframes the film culture that emerged from that tumultuous decade. Challenging assumptions around Sixties stardom, the book focuses on creative collaboration and the contribution of production personnel beyond the director, and discusses how cultural change is reflected in both film style and cinematic themes.

With perspectives and insights from established scholars and new critical voices, Sixties British Cinema Reconsidered draws on under-explored archival resources to explore four key research areas: stars and stardom; creative collaborations in filmmaking; developments in genre and film style; and how the cinema of the period both responded and contributed to social and cultural transformation in the 1960s.

Author Biography

Duncan Petrie is Professor of Film and Television at the University of York. He is the author of Creativity and Constraint in the British Film Industry (Macmillan, 1991), The British Cinematographer (BFI, 1996), Screening Scotland (BFI, 2000), Contemporary Scottish Fictions: Film, Television and the Novel (EUP, 2004), Shot in New Zealand: The Art and Craft of the Kiwi Cinematographer (Random House, 2007), A Coming of Age: 30 Years of New Zealand Film (Random House, 2008) and co-author of Educating Film-Makers: Past, Present, Future (Intellect, 2014) and Transformation and Tradition in 1960s British Cinema (EUP, 2019). Duncan has also edited or co-edited a further ten volumes and is co-principal editor of The Journal of British Cinema and Television.

Melanie Williams is Reader in Film and Television Studies at the University of East Anglia. She is the co-author of Transformation and Tradition in 1960s British Cinema (EUP, 2019), and author of Female Stars of British Cinema: The Women in Question (EUP, 2017), David Lean (MUP, 2014), as well as numerous articles on British cinema. She also co-edited Shane Meadows: Critical Essays (EUP, 2013), Ealing Revisited (BFI, 2012), Mamma Mia! The Movie: Exploring a Cultural Phenomenon (I B Tauris, 2012) and British Women's Cinema (Routledge, 2009), and is co-principal editor of The Journal of British Cinema and Television.

Laura Mayne is a Lecturer in Film and Media at the University of Hull. Her research specialism is in postwar British cinema with an emphasis on industrial histories, institutional practices and production cultures, and she has published widely in this area. She is the co-author of Transformation and Tradition in 1960s British Cinema (EUP, 2019).

Table of Contents

Introduction; Duncan Petrie and Melanie Williams

PART ONE: STARS AND STARDOM

Male Stardom in 1960s British Cinema; Andrew Spicer

'Rebel Rebel'?: Oliver Reed in the 1960s; Caroline Langhorst

Carol White: The Bardot of Battersea Margherita Sprio 'The Old Wave at Work': The Transatlantic Stardom of the British Character Actress in the 1960s; Claire Mortimer

PART TWO: CREATIVE COLLABORATION

Woodery-pokery: Charles Wood's Sixties Screenwriting; David Cairns

'Beyond Naturalism': Jocelyn Herbert, If ....(1968) and design for performance in 1960s British cinema; Vicky Lowe

Kes: from page to screen; David Forrest and Sue Vice

'I'd like to remember you as you are - as just a grumpy old man': Joseph Losey and Figures in a Landscape (1970); Llewella Chapman

PART THREE: STYLE AND GENRE

'Wholesome rough stuff': Hammer Films and the 'A' and 'U' Certificate, 1959-65; Paul Frith

Widescreen Pyrotechnics: Shot Composition and Staging in the Cold War Films of Joseph Losey and Sidney J. Furie; Steven Roberts

The Rise and Fall of the Colourful Corporate Fantasy in 1960s British Cinema; Carolyn Rickards

Witchfinders and Sorcerers: Sorcery and counterculture in the work of Michael Reeves; Virginie Sélavy

PART FOUR: CULTURAL TRANSFORMATIONS

'An Impulse of Anger, Instantly Regretted': Rebellion and Reaction in the early 1960s Naval Film; Mark Fryers

Narratives of Race and Identity in Sixties British Cinema; Phillip Drummond

Panic at the Disco: Brainwashing, Alienation, and the Discothèque in Swinging London films; Sophia Satchell-Baeza