1960s: Britain
By the late 1950s the mainstream British film industry appeared to be in terminal decline. Between 1951 and 1960 annual admissions had dropped from 1,365 million to 501 million.
Television, unsurprisingly, had made an enormous impact, especially after the advent of ITV in
1955. Limited state support in the form of National Film Finance Corporation money and the
‘Eady levy' - a proportion of each cinema ticket sold going to notionally British producers - could
not reverse a marked shrinkage of the British film industry. Nostalgic war dramas such as `The Wooden Horse' (1950) and `The Dam Busters' (1955) had occupied much screen time in the fifties as the British empire crumbled abroad and class loyalties loosened at home (Wyver 1989). The failure of the 1956 Suez venture in alliance with France against Egypt , in particular, struck a mortal blow to Britain 's imperialist pretensions. Protests in Trafalgar Square to demand the withdrawal of British troops from Egypt and anti-nuclear marches to Aldermaston were early indications of the insurgent cultural and political forces that would transform Britain in the nineteen-sixties These forces and tensions were barely hinted at in popular escapist comedies by Norman Wisdom, the ‘Carry On’ team and the ‘Doctor..’ series, much less in Cliff Richard musicals.
Paralleling changes in Hollywood a decade earlier, a number of smaller, independent productions emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s, often driven by the initiative of actors and directors. Allied Film Makers (formed by Richard Attenborough) and the Bryanston company (Michael Balcon) were two independents that briefly survived with the backing of Rank. A third new company was WoodfalI, founded by Tony Richardson and John Osborne. Their film versions of `Look Back in Anger' (1959), `The Entertainer' (1960) and `Saturday Night and Sunday Morning' (1960) together with Jack Clayton's `Room at the Top' (1959) began a cycle of films with working class settings which was to distinguish British cinema for the next three years. The directors Richardson, `A Taste of Honey' (1961), `The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner' (1962); Karl Reisz ,`Saturday Night and Sunday Morning' and Lindsay Anderson `This Sporting Life' (1963) had previously organised the Free Cinema documentary initiative in the mid-1950s. Their cycle of films reflected the persistence of the realist tradition in British cinema. Anderson 's subsequent work, however, which includes `If' (1968), `0 Lucky Man !` (1973) and ` Britannia Hospital ' (1982), combined social realism with elements of fantasy.
The extent to which these `new wave' films, as they were soon dubbed, were an authentic representation of working class life, or simply the romantic views of middle class radicals, has been much debated. Nonetheless, this new cinema was seen as serious and committed, addressed contemporary realities, and represented a distinct break from the escapist offerings of most cinema and television of the period. Ironically perhaps, it was to television to which this realist emphasis was soon to shift, while the film makers associated with it began to explore alternative material and styles.
In fact, according to Perry (1974), the movement into bigger budget productions of American finance (which contributed to the production of `up to 90% of the films made in Britain' at this time) was a significant factor in the abrupt end of the realist movement, with the last major feature `This Sporting Life' released in 1963. The American majors had, since the early 1950's, been forming subsidiary production outfits in Britain to take advantage of the limited government funds available to film makers and soak up taxable profits made on American films released in the UK . But American investment in Britain increased massively following the huge success of ‘Tom Jones', `Dr No `and `A Hard Day's Night') for United Artists all in the space of a year between 1963 and 1964. As Wyver (1989) suggests:
`Not only did `Tom Jones' and `Dr No' express a growing acceptance of sexual openness, and translate this into box-office profits, but along with The Beatles they came from a culture which was soon to be at the centre of the world's consciousness.’
The director Richard Lester's film `The Knack' can be seen as the first of the `Swinging London' films which also included John Boorman's `Catch Us If You Can' and John Schlesinger's caustic morality tale `Darling' (both 1965). Foreign directors such as Michelangelo Antonioni (`Blow Up') and Roman Polanski (‘Repulsion') and the investment, in particular, of the American majors temporarily made London an important and appealing film making centre. An early effect of the Americanisation of British production was the abandonment of the `New Wave's' emphasis on regional nuances, strong social comment and lack of star value and glamour. However, expensive flops such as United Artist's `The Charge of the Light Brigade' and Paramount 's `Half a Sixpence' (both 1968) soon dampened American enthusiasm and, pressed by escalating debts at home, investment was slashed. (see chapter British Cinema)