Social Realism

British Social Realism 

- Shows society at specific place and specific time in a realistic way - a realistic depiction
- also known as kitchen sink cinema

- usually fiction - comes from authors like dickens
- Hue and Cry 1947 shot after WW2 using bombed out houses and neighbourhoods as sets
- state sponsored from Britain to show British society - shine a positive light on Britain, resilient and defiant    
- reflect post war time society, e.g. woman working, collective society
- celebrate mundane everyday life
- collective society vs individualism

 French New Wave and Italian Neo-realist

- actual locations
- documenteray visual style
- avoid neat story lines
- controversial speech, not literary dialogue
- avoidance of fanciness (artifice) in editing, camera work, lighting

- ' Angry young men' of 1950's theatre, the verisimilitude (believability in the world) of Italian Neo realism and the youth appeal of French New Wave
- Emergence of art cinema challenging mainstream aesthetics and attitudes
- importance of individual directors arose
- new wave films tended to address issues around masculinity that became common in British social realism
- These films tended to revolve around an angry young men - a working class male protagonist without bearings in a society in with traditional industries and cultures that went with them were in decline
- High hope (1988) to The Full Monty (1997) have addressed the erosion of regional and class identities amid a landscape rendered increasingly uniform by consumerism
- Full monty, working class men who become increasingly interested in consumerism and wealth - erosion of traditional values and beliefs
- bare bones real looking cinema

Social Realism 

- Depicts British society in a very realistic way - relationships between British people 
- E.g Train spotting 
- Post WW1 consequently lead to a national identity in cinema in social realism 
- 1930's state sponsored documentaries - feed into 1940's mainstream
- The 'quality film' mirrored a transforming war time society - woman now worked in munitions factories and the services mixing with men challenging beliefs about gender roles 
- In the post war period, tensions were growing between the camaraderie of the war years and the individualism of a burgeoning consumer society

History of social realism

- Ken loach and Mike Leigh assessed impact of consumer society on family life, charting the erosion of the welfare state and the consensus that built it
- Loachs work reflects the shift from collectivist mood of the war years to the individualism of post war decades
- Loachs work went from improvised long takes (poor cow 1969) (kes - 1969) to the social melodrama of (raining stones 1993) (ladybird ladybird 1994) - wider social issues explored through emotional and dramatic individual stories
- break down of collective consensus post war Britain seen in Leigh's (life is sweet 1990) (naked 1993) ( secrets and lies 1996) in these films the fractures in domestic and social life plagued by thatcher era policies in an increasingly fragmented and multicultural Britain is explored.
- Woman in Loach and Leigh are often complex and powerful individuals

- losing of the welfare state in cinema 
- 80's films that target Thatcher as the enemy in social realism film
- social realism vouches for the welfare state 
- how the government has let down working class people 

- Channel 4 1980's, pushed British cinema 
- C4 funded British films like 'My beautiful launderette' - first gay kiss on TV and mixed race - very controversial for the time - pushing boundaries 
- also 'letter to Brezhnev' following characters from the margins trying to be successful 
- 1990's formulaic 'triumph over adversity' narrative  combining grit of Britain with feel and good vibes of Hollywood - 'full monty' 
- also really horrific social realism like 'nil by mouth' on the complete other end of the spectrum depicting domestic abuse and 'dead mans shoes' which combines many styles of British social realist and makes it a thriller 
- 

I, Daniel Blake - Ken Loach 

- BFI funding 
- Government persecuting the lower and working class 
- dehumanised, society isolating and dividing 
- Real settings e.g. food banks - no sets 
- basic realistic raw editing 
- documentary style 
- struggle of living as a lower class or working class person - hopeless hustle 
- self esteem and pride and how the government is destroying these in people 
- doesn't offer a satisfying conclusion - leaves a sad ending to drive home his point  


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