What is British cinema?
What makes a British film?
- British characters
- British actors
- British settings
- British production
BFI and their requirements
12 years a slave
- British director - Steve McQueen
- British actors
- Funding from Film 4 (British film production)
- Baftas opinion - wasn't British as it is an american book, filmed in US, mostly non British cast and crew, mostly produced by US production companies
Gravity
- Clooney and Sandra Bullock - American
- Mexican director
- Filmed in the UK
- Groundbreaking visual effects made in Britain
Star Wars (both new and old)
- Filmed in Britain - production team based in the UK
BFI criteria and Baftas
- Significant British involvement
- British creativity
- Telling a British story is the most important part
- Being shot in the UK
- Cultural criteria
- important for finance e.g tax incentives
Uk film genres
- Sci- fi, Action, Fantasy - most exspensive genres
- British filmmakers mostly make Dramas, Comedies and Documentaries
- British films don't have the same budgets as big American films so do worse at British box office
- Cheap genres are most British produced like dramas and documentaries - cheap dominates British production - smaller marketing budgets and production budgets
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, 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
Romcoms
- Richard curtis directs - four weddings and a funeral, notting hill, love actually
- Hugh grant - what americans think of when you mention British actors
Notable British directors
- Alfred Hitchcock - rear window, vertigo, north by northwest, psycho, the birds - he was the master of the suspense and highly regarded as one of the greatest directors of all time
- Michael Powell - life and death of colonel blimp, a matter of life and death, black narcissus, the red shoes and the controversial Peeping tom (1960) a controversial film for the time depicting a serial killer
- Danny Boyle - Shallow grave, trainspotting, the beach, 28 days later, slum dog millionaire, 127 hours
WE ARE STUDYING FISH TANK (Arnold 2009)
- The baftas say to be eligible for best best British film a film must include 'significant British creative Involvement'
- BFI cultural test, if a film passes it British tax reliefs are given
Directors in British social realism
Ken Loach (Poor Kes)
- very bleak, British and cheap
- Not belonging in society (being an outsider)
- Hitting kids in school (casual violence)
- Escapism (being with the kestrel to escape bad home and school life)
- Poverty
- 'The lost boy' - archetype of British social realism - has no direction in life - society doesn't want him
- Strict authoritarian characters - usually bullies but are weak people
- Very realistic sets (shot in real places E.g. schools)
- Very conversational dialogue + accented + colloquial - very different from posh accents of the time on TV
- Raw camera work + documentary style (deliberate) to add to realism
Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies)
- Documentary realist style
- Everyday social interaction (Quite dull)
- Difficult relationships
Paddy Considine (Tyrannosaur)
- Charity shop setting
- Christianity
- Difficult relationship
- Coloquial dialogue
- 'Lost boy' - grown up with alcohol addiction
- Domestic abuse
- SMALL STORY- small scale about little people
Train spotting
- Fast cuts - connote drug use
- More humour
- More stylised and abstract camera work unlike usual documentary style
Romantic Comedy - Richard Curtis
- Started with Black adder
- 'Four Weddings and a Funeral', 'Notting Hill', 'Love Actually'
- Saccharine - overly sweet films (at the point of sickening)
- Improbable - very unlikely
- White washed - No consequence or real tragedy + Lack of ethnic diversity - doesn't represent what Britain really looks like
- Middle class - antithesis of British social realism
Hugh Grant
- Foppish - charming and daft - good looking
- Curtis rom coms based around a foppish man
- About Time - antithesis of British Social Realism
- Jolly hopeful tone
- Happy cheerful train station with busker
British social realism and rom coms aren't massively successful
- Critics feel Curtis films damage British image
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)
- Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds
- Auteur - Significant body of work, influenced cinema significantly, specific style and aesthetic
- Vertigo's dolly zoom - Dolly moves backwards are forwards but camera zooms in opposite way - very abstract feelings and feeling of inertia
Michael Powell + Emeric Pressburger
- Powells career ended with Peeping Tom
Danny Boyle
- British socialist director but presented quite abstract
"How useful has an ideological critical approach been in understanding the narrative resolution of you chosen films?'
"How useful has an ideological critical approach been in understanding binary opposition in the narrative of your chosen films"
- "how useful" making a judgement
- "critical approach" how helpful has critics reviews been e.g left wing approach - bigger social idea's
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, 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
Romcoms
- Richard curtis directs - four weddings and a funeral, notting hill, love actually
- Hugh grant - what americans think of when you mention British actors
Notable British directors
- Alfred Hitchcock - rear window, vertigo, north by northwest, psycho, the birds - he was the master of the suspense and highly regarded as one of the greatest directors of all time
- Michael Powell - life and death of colonel blimp, a matter of life and death, black narcissus, the red shoes and the controversial Peeping tom (1960) a controversial film for the time depicting a serial killer
- Danny Boyle - Shallow grave, trainspotting, the beach, 28 days later, slum dog millionaire, 127 hours
WE ARE STUDYING FISH TANK (Arnold 2009)
- The baftas say to be eligible for best best British film a film must include 'significant British creative Involvement'
- BFI cultural test, if a film passes it British tax reliefs are given
Directors in British social realism
Ken Loach (Poor Kes)
- very bleak, British and cheap
- Not belonging in society (being an outsider)
- Hitting kids in school (casual violence)
- Escapism (being with the kestrel to escape bad home and school life)
- Poverty
- 'The lost boy' - archetype of British social realism - has no direction in life - society doesn't want him
- Strict authoritarian characters - usually bullies but are weak people
- Very realistic sets (shot in real places E.g. schools)
- Very conversational dialogue + accented + colloquial - very different from posh accents of the time on TV
- Raw camera work + documentary style (deliberate) to add to realism
Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies)
- Documentary realist style
- Everyday social interaction (Quite dull)
- Difficult relationships
Paddy Considine (Tyrannosaur)
- Charity shop setting
- Christianity
- Difficult relationship
- Coloquial dialogue
- 'Lost boy' - grown up with alcohol addiction
- Domestic abuse
- SMALL STORY- small scale about little people
Train spotting
- Fast cuts - connote drug use
- More humour
- More stylised and abstract camera work unlike usual documentary style
Romantic Comedy - Richard Curtis
- Started with Black adder
- 'Four Weddings and a Funeral', 'Notting Hill', 'Love Actually'
- Saccharine - overly sweet films (at the point of sickening)
- Improbable - very unlikely
- White washed - No consequence or real tragedy + Lack of ethnic diversity - doesn't represent what Britain really looks like
- Middle class - antithesis of British social realism
Hugh Grant
- Foppish - charming and daft - good looking
- Curtis rom coms based around a foppish man
- About Time - antithesis of British Social Realism
- Jolly hopeful tone
- Happy cheerful train station with busker
British social realism and rom coms aren't massively successful
- Critics feel Curtis films damage British image
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)
- Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds
- Auteur - Significant body of work, influenced cinema significantly, specific style and aesthetic
- Vertigo's dolly zoom - Dolly moves backwards are forwards but camera zooms in opposite way - very abstract feelings and feeling of inertia
Michael Powell + Emeric Pressburger
- Powells career ended with Peeping Tom
Danny Boyle
- British socialist director but presented quite abstract
"How useful has an ideological critical approach been in understanding the narrative resolution of you chosen films?'
"How useful has an ideological critical approach been in understanding binary opposition in the narrative of your chosen films"
- "how useful" making a judgement
- "critical approach" how helpful has critics reviews been e.g left wing approach - bigger social idea's
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