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Description
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In 1945, the outlook for Britain, and British films, was summarised by two film titles: The Way Ahead and Great Expectations. By 1958 a new generation asserted its disenchantment with two counter-titles: Room at the Top and Look Back in Anger. In the continuing controversies, between a stoic contentment and an idealistic anger, every aspect of the British way of life is involved: politics, the stiff upper lip, sexual morality, 'anyone for tennis' and all the arts. Raymond Durgnat here takes as his concern the middle-class view of life as expressed in British cinema, its origins, its limitations, and its response to - the often boisterous - winds of change. His sharp yet always sympathetic comments will hone blurred memories and throw a startling new light on twenty years of British films, from In Which We Serve in the mid-40s, through The Blue Lamp and the Hammer horrors, to Our Mother's House in the late '60s. His fair-minded reappraisal shows how, contrary to much critical opinion, British films have reflected British predicaments, moods and myths with an intuitive accuracy which audiences had real reasons, both good and bad, to appreciate as warmly as they did.\ As a result this book not only transforms our understanding of British films, but opens some disturbing new insights into a national character by whose enigmas and contradictions we have so long been perplexed and fascinated.
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Publisher: British Film Institute
Published: 2011-11-25
Format: Paperback 416 pages
ISBN13: 9781844574537
ISBN10: 1844574539
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