why are 'british' films shit?

Unlike european cinema we expect american production values from our cinema. We make films that have to sell in american, so have to pander to their values to make their money back. Best films already mentioned have been low budget just aiming to make their money back in britain, (life is sweet, shallow grave, land and freedom). Make films for britain in the here and now and maybe they'll be better.

(Oh yeah, Ambrose, you enjoyed chicken run)

Plus lots of great Mike Leigh films, obviously. 'Naked' especially... now that was a film.

Another question to ask is; where are our Marcus Kassowitz, Nanni Moretti, Lars von Trier. There seem to be no young cutting edge directors in england (not that lars and nanni are that young but you know what I mean)

That said I don't think all British films are bad, infact some have been pretty good over the last three years. Stuff coming from Scotland like Ratcatcher and Orphans (easily the the blackest comedy I've seen in ages) were both refreshing and rather moving. Equally some of the newer low key low budget films like The Lowdown or TwentyfourSeven were enjoyable and did not work in the mechanistic way of much overseas film-making. Of course one of the main problems with "British" film-makers is when their films do okay they are easily lured by the money and distribution of America - you can't say why a British film-makers so bad (except for perhaps Simon West).

I think the main problem is - as said above - that our film market is torn between financial success and the longing to make art. Most new films aim at the first without a scant thought that to achieve it on a low budget you cannot completely compromise the later - script quality is about the only thing that does come cheap. Remember mainland Europe churn out loads of films a year of which we tend only to get the cream. Unfortunately the only people who get to see the crap Brit Flicks (not including the hundreds which never get distribution) is Britain itself.

And yes, I quite liked Bridget Jones's Diary as well. Obviously structurally flawed but in the end it was an amusing character piece. Now going to count the number of seperate threads Hugh Grant has been mentioned on.

I think the other key factor is the complete collapse of the British Film industry in the early eighties. The US studios pulled out, the movie making process changed and suddenly became about spectacle - something we do very technically in Britain. But the idea of raising 50 million for a big movie is pretty much unheard of in this country, putting all your eggs in one probably rubbish basket. The sympiotic relationship between the British and American film industries ended and we were left with nothing but technicians.

A good example of doing spectacle on a small scale is the french film 'the rivers of purple' (poss dodgy title trans., Its gone through two languages). Which was an action thriller, much better than a lot of the genre that comes out of the states. I think what the British Film Industry really ought to do is lower its expectations of what can be achieved visually and work on plots. (Basically we could do with a new hitchcock)

Have to say the questions flawed as prob no greater ratio of duffers to gems than in US* (or elsewhere) though when they’re bad they stink (Rancid aluminium, twin town, young Americans, anything with Eddie Izzard or Eric Idle in). Where most would end straight to video in US, they’re given a ‘run out ‘ here with all the attendant hype and bullshit.

There’s a great deal of emotional investment in the UK film industry doing well (what about car manufacturers, farmers, brewers etc) in the US market. Media seems to thrive on the idea that UK work is validated by US success, but other territories just aren’t as important. Bean did ok in US but phenomenally elsewhere in world, though that received little publicity compared to publicity given to the relatively minor successes of UK movies in the US

I haven’t read Mark’s article but I would expect that there just isn’t the money to foster daring and innovative (loss making) works hence if something’s a success you end up getting a number of diluted variants following on Son of Trainspotting, Lock Stock, 4 Weddings etc.

I think cos’ we share a language with the US there is a tendency to skew our movies towards US market e.g. token US star, pandering to national stereotypes, ‘cor blimey guv’ mockneys and Poshos in morning suits with little in between.

However got to stick up for Bridget Jones, despite the upper middle class luvviedom and a truly predictable ending I found it v. funny, plus not many mainstream movies with a joke about anal sex in them. Plus I found Snatch to be funny, pacy and inventive. Monty Python overrated and would have benefited from Sid James being in them (apart from Meaning of Life which is prob darkest, bleakest comedy ever made).

Anyway plenty more great movies knocking around now than in 80’s e.g East is East, Debt Collector, This year’s love

im not really thinking at all of mike leigh etc....

LvT, on the other hand, worked in Danish TV v. productively and daringly, and his movies AND Dogme95 both demonstrate that he has a dynamic philosophy of same. Not that he ever expounds it: in interview he = most entertainly manipulative man who ever lived.

Of course a lot of the established British directors come from the tradition of the the BBC's Play For Today strand which would be stand alone hour / ninety minute dramas. Good training ground for stand alone ninety minute films. This has almost died from TV now - initiatives like Clocking Off (a British Ressources Humaine) and Murder In Mind are welcome.

I for one would watch a Chris Morris movie. His mastery of technique on TV and Radio suggests he could do something very interesting and satirical on film.

Hitchcock was bout by the American Film Industry and thus, the only good thing to ever come out of British Cinema tore up his roots and went American as well -- Thus, an entire generation of American filmmakers grew up stealing from Hitchcock, while the Brits were left with... nohing, really.

Also, picking up what Billy said about the proportion of good films coming out of England versus the proportion from the US, I'm sure there's ten times more tat coming from America.

'Honest' was great, though!

Pete makes the case I meant to make in a far more reasonable and well-informed way.

_________________

'in your dreams'

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0134741/

a bbc tv movie. i remember it vividly.

as for brit flicks, this comes from an old, angry version of me. ive calmed down now. i wonder what i would have thought of love actually back then.

but i am confused as why current output is so gangster-orientated. i am monumentally bored with this topic, which is why i have never seen godfather, goodfellas etc. i might see kidulthood i suppose, but thats about it.

theres loads of good british films obviously. i think that we are not very prolific in putting out good ones, there tends to be maybe 1 or 2 a year, as opposed to other countries which have a higher scoring rate i think.

Only Clive James (and he's Australian).

the bbc2 thing which aired last night on british thrillers was without doubt the worst programme of all time.

i figured it would be bad so i, get this, didn't watch it.

i did watch Daredevil tho...

Didn't see it, but was Helen "I'm a right cockney gangster" Mirren as ludicrous as she sounded on the advert for it?

i'm supposed to watch this sort of thing, for college, like.

helen mirren was one of the less annoying interviewees. the revelation that her grandparents ran tings in the london gangland of the 1940s was interesting.

generally, though, i could do without richard bacon's views on 'the long good friday'.

the problem was it felt pressure to be celebratory. why not just admit that british cinema has been mostly a load of rubbish. 'the third man' isn't really british.

What I miss most are the really visionary british films - the kind made by the likes of Powell & Pressburger, Nick Roeg, Peter Greenaway, even Ken Russell.

What's worse than Hugh Grant is the ghastly influence of Ken Loach - all that fucking worthy, downbeat, dour, social realism.

You can't get a film funded in the UK now if it doesn't feature an asylum seeker being preyed on by paedophiles via grainy CCTV. What's worse is you always doubt the sincerity of the intentions behind these films as you know that they're conceived to ensure all the correct boxes are ticked on the Lottery Fund application forms.

"Issues" films. Bleh.

that's why you find a private investor

Or not, as appears to be the case.

not sure if the lottery fund even exists. but it tended to fund brit gangster films and shitty romcoms, not loach material.

loach et al often get money from abroad. i'm not mad keen on him but there's nothing wrong with films about asylum-seeking paedos or whatever.

roeg is okay, but fuck greenaway and russell. p&P are from a very different era.

> the bbc2 thing which aired last night on british thrillers was without doubt the worst programme of all time.

was ok up until Mona Lisa. plus they gave away the end of shallow grave which i have had on video (ie vhs) for about 10 years and still haven't watched.

all the pre-60s stuff was rubbish. all they had to say about hitchcock was 'some themes familiar from his more famous american films were present in his british films.' everything else was overfamiliar.

best spoiler complaint ever (xp)

"but fuck greenaway and russell."

the devils is a great film.

he did some interesting things (as did greenaway) but so has loach; and as a whole i'd go with loach's body of work over russell's.

http://the88s.blogsome.com/images/if.jpg

british, 'british' and not shit = out on DVD this week.

hurrah!

Peter Greenaway is great

i'm an american and i have to say, I love all your movies about coal miners going up against margaret thatchers.

Strike?

I was just kidding - the "coal miners during Thatcher years" British indie film is kinda cliche here

Frogman OTM, The Devils made me weep. Russell can fuck around inconsequentially as long as he likes, he gets a pass for that one film.

Also, there was once a time in my life when Greenaway was a household god. I'll still go to the wall for Drowning By Numbers, The Cook..., and especially The Falls. Never did get to see that Tulse Luper feature he made a couple years back.

http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2149012,00.html

aight, you know what, fuck it, alex cox otm. it has been a travesty, this "summer of british films".

Get Carter was made in 1971. I was a teenager then, and can assure the promoters of this depressing vision that, despite strikes and IRA atrocities, Albion was a long way from skid row. When I went to college, the government paid for it. I incurred no debt. The state owned the water pipes, the reservoirs, the airline, the lecky, the telephone system and the railways, which ran on time and were reasonably cheap. We weren't engaged in two wars of colonial aggression. Muslims weren't our enemies. And the weather was great!

SAM TYLER WAS RIGHT

UK needs to start making good music again first, then we can talk about film.

he even undermines his own argument there a bit -- ira atrocities were pretty thin on the ground in '71, and nothing was happening on the mainland then.

it's possible for a musician to make a living by selling in the UK market with minimal penetration elsewhere. this is basically impossible with film, and the idea of strictly "british films" has been pretty iffy since, oh, the first world war.

"death at a funeral" is being billed as a british film, i notice, despite being clearly directed by an american (frank oz)

aren't simon pegg / nick frost films and guy ritchie gangster romps, regardless of merit a rebuttal to that nrq?

don't think so. 'hot fuzz' was financed by universal (or whoever working title is a subcontractor for). 'lock, stock' *possibly* was done outside of the system, but 'snatch' would have had been done with the US market in mind.

I didn't know that you read The Guardian.

Also, this thread makes me wonder what happened to Peter Mullan? As a director, I mean.

Wot no love for Thunderpants?

(Srsly - it's really good! And Rupert Grint can act his little socks off - far more than the other guy in that slightly more famous series of films he's been in lately).

Maybe this is why?

Too impatient to train as an actor, and having briefly tried the traditional route of castings and pumping connections, Fucilla decided to buy his way in.

Soon Phil Davis, Paul Kaye and MC Harvey of So Solid Crew were on board, too...

Phil Davis' optimism is a joy.

"Sometimes a film looks fantastic. Everyone's excited and talking about the genius of this and that, how it's going to be a masterpiece, and it turns out to be poop. And sometimes the opposite is true. It seems to be a complete nightmare, but then it all comes together. And no one would be more pleased than me if that happened to The Big I Am."

what underpinned Fucilla's ambition, friends and workmates agree, what made him stand out from every other fantasist and wannabe, was self-belief and a monumental ego

errr

Phil Davis, Paul Kaye and Steven Berkoff

Enjoy the work of these 3 dudes

a young thug's brutal coming of age

oh fuck off

The opening sentence alone!

Brixton-born City trader Robert Fucilla had succeeded in everything he had put his hand to, from selling oil to backing British hip-hop acts, and believed his Italian ancestry gave him a shot at being a British Al Pacino.

It's like the only logical response is "Wow, I hate you."

Also:

"Madsen was to wear silver shoes, Berkoff an aqua blue latex suit. All the stylistic things were coming off."

I'm reading this and all "Wait...it's a superhero movie now?"

And a literal LOL here:

Shooting was just days off when Gregory, the would-be joyrider, confessed that he could not drive.

:-D

I'm gonna let this one slide cos I'm a lazy man but srsly guys the next Brit Gangster flick that comes out I'ma beat the director to death okay guyz?

Vinne Jones stars as Noodle, an internet hardman with a brutal grudge against shit british gansgter film directors. Directed by Guy Ritchie.

When I was in a band some dude in the local paper said I looked like Gazza so rong leading man rilly

what are the funniest british movies ever made? it's occurred to me that 'in the loop' might genuinely be the funniest.

blah life of brian blah withnail and i blah ealing blah blah blah.

No way am I pushing a dinghy out into the tsunami-laden waters of ILXors sensayuma. Brian and Grail are v. funny tho. Nuts in May too, tho not properly a movie I suppose.

I have this fundamentalist notion that funny ought to mean "makes you properly laugh til you hurt", tho, so on that level I don't think most funny films are funny.

I agree. Shaun of the Dead is a modern classic, but that's beyond just the laffs.

Maybe not an obvious choice, but there are many moments of sublime comedy in A Room For Romeo Brass. And it's a brilliant film as well.

x-post - damn straight NV, Nuts In May is hilarious.

Well, my favourite movies (the two late Bunuels with long titles) are only occasionally thigh-slapping laugh-till-cry funny, but have a fundamental, all-knowing humour to them, which makes them profoundly funny IMO (the wit of a man who has lived on a mountain for 80 years), but yeah I'm kinda going more for the outright lols here.

In The Loop made me laugh harder than any other British movie ever. And was the most I've laughed in a cinema.

Ooh, would like to see Romeo Brass and Nuts In May now!

Shaun Of The Dead is very good for almost an hour, very lame for 40 minutes imo.

Paddy Considine's debut in ARFRB is completely beyond my pitiful powers of description - if you've not seen it then the dvd is four quid on Amazon at the moment, for the price of a pint it's an absolute steal.

I'm deeply agnostic on SotD precisely cos I think it's free of belly-lols. But I like lots of comedies that don't make me lol, especially old comedies that tend to be excused by the shifting fashions of what's funny.

Simon del Desierto has got Bunuel's best proper lolz I think.

Gregory's Girl still has its moments. I think Britannia Hospital had some rich, bleak lulz but it's been a long time. The Likely Lads is probably the best sitcom to movie conversion but rollicking laughs is never really that show's point.

I've just gone thru a list trying to remember anything else but jaysus there's been a lot of slightly warm feeling minor smirk shite made in this country.

Gregory's Girl still has its moments.

oh fuck I forgot Local Hero!!!!!

altho Local Hero is one of those not-laughing-a-lot-but-very-good comedy movies to which you allude

I like to think of "Comedy" in a broader Shakespearean sense and "funny" in a "I am actually laughing" sense.

yeah, that works. also means that those bunuel movies are comedies. awesome.

(obscure object might well be a tragedy, come to think of it...gah, definitions)

LJ if you get a chance to see Nuts in May you shd also try and find Jack Rosenthal's 70s classic Another Sunday and Sweet F.A. which features the internal monologue of a severely depressed Sunday league referee iirc.

:D :D :D awesome

A lot of Britain's best 60s/70s/early 80s movies were shot as Play for Today made for TV dealies basically.

wait isn't ARFRB about a psycho dude? considine wasn't funny in that, he was terrifying! iirc.

A Fish Called Wanda? Haven't seen it in years though, so maybe it's actually shit.

Don't rate most of Wanda but maybe the Michael Palin (?) offing random pets scenes are good?

Those are definitely the bits that stick in my mind, pretty funny performance by Palin.

iirc 'wanda' is pretty funny.

>wait isn't ARFRB about a psycho dude?

Sure you're not thinking of Dead Man's Shoes? Considine goes full psychopath in that, his turn in ARFRB is menacing at times but not really terrifying.

no im thinking about the one with the disabled kid... it's been a while but my recollection is considine was scary. n e way he is very good.

'hot fuzz' is pretty fuckin funny.

Considine's kid brother in Dead Man's Shoes is disabled. One of the main kids in ARFRB has a bad back, but that's about it.

Jack Rosenthal's 70s classic Another Sunday and Sweet F.A

See also P'tang, Yang, Kipperbang.

'hot fuzz' has its moments but isn't a top-rank comedy by any means imo

xp Although, again, it's not lough out loud funny. Last British film I saw that made me laugh out loud was Oh, Mr Porter!

Next train's gone!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBMHU1BJXCw

"I'm Alright Jack" isn't bad fwiw but we're getting into Tweeling territory here

Nothing wrong with that.

Love I'm Alright, it's got some pretty sparky/direct satire compared to a lot of the Ealings plus one of Sellers' toppest performances and one of the saddest lines of all time: "I see from your particulars you was at college in Oxford. I was up there meself. I was at the Balliol summer school in 1946. Very good toast and preserves they give you at tea time, as you probably know."

And obv I will rep for all of the Powell & Pressburger comedy-ish movies above pretty much anything else but again comedy not lollery.

It's a long while since I saw it but I remember it being pretty good (re: IAJ).

AMOLAD is a very good film.

are we ignoring carry on, or

far prefer hot fuzz to shaun of the dead

think it's severely underrated. the only thing i don't like is the big gun battle but considine effing kills it in that film.

hot fuzz gets kinda better as it goes along, sotd gets worse, so i'm biased towards hot fuzz...need to see it again but it brings a few lols and hey timothy dalton!!!!1

I'm so glad someone posted the Will Hay clip above because I found Will Hay films (esp. Oh, Mr. Porter!) really funny when I was a child and I still do. I also like Norman Wisdom, too, although he can be unfunny at times.

THE REBEL w/ Tony Hancock is my nomination for the funniest British film

but considine effing kills it in that film

remember being really pissed off by his turnaround at the end, seemed like a cop-out

SOTD beats it (and most 00s comedies) for me

Late last year I finally saw some early Anthony Asquith - Shooting Stars, Underground, and A Cottage on Dartmoor. I was blown away, particularly by the latter which is easiest to find in the States. It's clearly the equal of contemporary Hitch and a galaxy far, far away from, to answer the thread title, shit.

where did you see 'em?

have been doing a phd partly about this guy.

im glad his stuff is coming back out, but the commentary on it so far has been off-base, saying, "hey, it wasn't just hitchcock!" basically, it was common practice since about 1930 till 19?? to say, "british cinema is shit -- except hitchcock and asquith!"

Well, depending on how one finishes 19??, there's Powell too.

To answer your question, while prepping for a course on Brit cinema, I raided a colleague's collection.

With some slight reservations, I like Murray Smith's piece on Dartmoor.

I've seen Hindle Wakes but it didn't hit me as hard as those Asquiths (sounds like the title of the next 6ths album). Would love to see some Stoll Film Company titles or something like Palais de Danse. Have you seen any?

The earliest films are amazing too - Hepworth, Williamson, Mitchell/Kenyon (whose films I never expected to be so intoxicated by but again wow), etc.

And on into the 1930s and beyond. Current obsessions: Gracie Fields, the amaaaaaaazing Tod Slaughter, The Ghost Camera, every Gainsborough melodrama I've seen so far (about five), several positively jaw-dropping 1960s musicals, etc.

Very shit - Cliff Richard musicals

Well, depending on how one finishes 19??, there's Powell too.

yeah. he began to get recognized only in the 1960s – 70s really, is when he had his first retrospective shows. hitch and asquith were seen as dudes upholding the great tradition, ie "russian cutting". now people are beginning to recognize their contemporary thorold dickinson too.

murray smith's piece is interesting -- i haven't read it since i started my phd, which has been about getting rid of the bias towards 'close up' magazine. it wasn't the only source of intelligent ideas about film in the 1920s. im hoping to write about 'underground' and asquith's own writing when the dvd drops n e way.

I've seen Hindle Wakes but it didn't hit me as hard as those Asquiths (sounds like the title of the next 6ths album). Would love to see some Stoll Film Company titles or something like Palais de Danse. Have you seen any?

the real insurmountable problem is that practically everything from the 1920s was destroyed. bits and bobs turn up. but the director who was seen (including by asquith) as the best of the bunch, george pearson -- almost nothing survives. this partly accounts for the low standing of british cinema. truffaut simply didn't have a clue. wonder if he'd even seen any powell.

The earliest films are amazing too - Hepworth, Williamson, Mitchell/Kenyon (whose films I never expected to be so intoxicated by but again wow), etc.

i think every country had its mitchell/kenyon tbh! another sad loss, going on accounts, is all the action films from the 1910s. but that's before my period and the names escape me.

v. impressed you can see all that stuff. i'd have difficulty in the grossly underfunded UK.

my phd, which has been about getting rid of the bias towards 'close up' magazine.

Fascinating! I've been reading about The Film Society and understand that literature was handed out at some screenings. Would love to see what was written.

The only Thorold Dickinson film I know of is Gaslight so I'll seek out more.

Yeah, Truffaut, no cigar for you.

I've been reading about The Film Society and understand that literature was handed out at some screenings. Would love to see what was written.

haha! the phd is also about getting rid of the FS bias! i mean, it's good that that work has been done. buuut it skews things to just have those two, which has been the pattern for ~80 years.

they did a programme at each screening -- actually there was a bootleg of the programmes published by arno (NY) in the 1970s.

basically: it ran from 1925-39, eight times a year. the most important thing it did was show the big russian montage films, starting in 1928, most of which were banned. it is usually credited with showing the other major "art-house" movements of the era, but this is wrong. almost every important german film had commercial distribution. it's basically credited with making possible art-house cinemas, which were established in london, basically, between 1928–35. that case is more complicated.

n e way, asquith was distantly involved with it. it's claimed hitchcock was involved with it. but thorold dickinson really was: he ran the backstage stuff, programming, etc. eisenstein came over in 1929 and gave lectures: thorold dickinson and asquith (contemporaries at oxford) attended. dickinson got in a fist-fight with dziga vertov a few years later.

dickinson's best films (imo) are 'next of kin' (war film) and 'secret people' (kind of like hitchcock's 'sabotage'. the latter has just come out on dvd, with 'the queen of spades' -- which scorsese reps for, and has done an intro on the dvd for.

kevin, you are also better placed to see things like terence fisher's early hammer quota quickies, which are available on dvd in the usa, but not in the uk

v. jealous that hkm got to write some of the booklet material for the BFI's release of HEROSTRATUS, a film i have been obsessed by for years, ever since i saw this grotesque still reproduced in prob the first film reference bk i ever owned:

http://wpcontent.answers.com/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/0a/Herostratus_Pressbook.jpg/180px-Herostratus_Pressbook.jpg

also keen to own the relase of peter watkins' PRIVILEGE in the same series, as well as the lindsay shonteff and pete walker exploiters - shame these discs don't have commentaries, tho

sry!

haha as the booklet says, that film is all part of the Great Tradition im trying to establish, from george pearson thru thorold down to the 60s...

must get privilege. p cheap on amazon.

(is it me or is it hard even to get fisher's major hammer films in the UK?)

I'll also rep for Queen Of Spades, KJB. May be Anton Walbrook's best performance.

Re: The Film Society, the (sometimes deliciously gossipy) material I've been reading on it has been coupled with more current work about the era, e.g. Andrew Higson's brilliant “Polyglot Films for an International Market: E.A. Dupont, the British Film Industry, and the Idea of a European Cinema, 1926-1930” which makes clear that Dupont's scintillating (and German) Varieté was an international hit.

Re: Dickinson, my local vidya store has The Queen of Spades!

Re: Fisher, I'm not a noir fan but I really should plow through some of those Hammer noir collections seeing as how they're so easily available. Fisher's filmography just seems so insurmountable.

Re: Herostratus, all I can say is that I'm glad I didn't know about this remarkable film until moments before actually seeing it else I can very much see myself being obsessed with it for years. Instead, that designation goes to Michael Sarne's Joanna (1968). Why is this film so hard to find???

Other Brit(ish) films of interest:

The Invader (1935) - Starring a somehow game Buster Keaton, this is often upheld as one of the worst results of the Quota. But for the first half at least, it moves into that so-bad-it-doubles-as-a-surreal-art-film zone.

The Holly and The Ivy (1952) - Actorly ensemble drama of family tensions at Xmas.

And I'm deeply in love with (American, I know) Joseph Losey's impossible mid-to-late 1960s Brit films like
Modesty Blaise, Secret Ceremony, and my very favorite Boom!

modesty blaise is classic.

what have you been reading about the film society?

yah variety was a metropolis-sized hit. i've never quite "got" higson. seems to have a bee in his bonnet about "national" cinema?

Dusinberre, Samson, other names I'm forgetting now.

I love Higson's piece for how seamlessly it unites aesthetic and socioeconomic concerns.

yeah... they're ok, those ones. there is MUCH BETTER (AND ACUCRATE) GOSSIP to spread. fucking hell i must get round to publishing on the FS.

"Modesty Blaise" is classic, yes. I saw it on TV a loong time ago (I think before CH4 started even) and can still remember loads of it, I'd love to see it again. For some reason the inflatabe bow & arrow sticks in my mind the most.

A couple of old brit films I like would be:

"Cash on Demand" (1961) w/Peter Cushing as a bank manager - his family is abducted by robbers who try to blackmail/lever him into emtying the bank vaults. Again, I saw it on TV years ago, I watched a little bit just because it was Peter cushing, and good grief did it grip! Very tense, w/a really excellent performance from Cushing. I'm not sure but I think it's actually a Hammer production.

"Valley of Song" (1953) a small-scale, vaguely ealing-ish piece about a rivalry between 2 factions in the choir at a Welsh pit village. Really quite magical & atmospheric, I wd love to see it again, it's an unusual film that I saw once probably 20 years ago and I still get a bit of a lump in my throat when I think about it.

(I must pick up that Gracie Fields DVD set, as an aside)

i rescreened MB only a few weeks ago. just incredibly photographed, and i think it was losey's second colour film (and his first was in like 1948).

how about 'radio on (1979)' then

this is wenders' english franchise

haven't seen it in the best part of a decade so

but i don't entirely get the love

or like wenders very much

people want it to be "the post-punk of movies", very badly

oh well, perfect example of what im talking about:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/exclusive/grey_area.php

penultimate par particularly choice

It isn’t only the poor and the non-white who are edited out of Notting Hill, for example – it’s also the Westway, west London’s Ballardian flyover, which now stands as a relic of “the modern city that London never became”.

well, obviously we all hate notting hill, but the westway is just a gd flyover. it doesn't represent the modern city london could have become. a city comprising flyovers would be what?

is it a modernity we even want? i always enjoyed the ride over the westway. nice view. but it is still just a flyover.

people want it to be "the post-punk of movies"

Not the worst thing to be - I know with Reynolds et al. that has probably changed.

Anyway, love Kings of the Road and this is a nice companion piece.

Need to check out Flipside.

notting hill was pretty ok i thought

yeah well the thing with it being post-punk and krautrock is... there isn't any post-punk iirc. no cool stuff ne way the s/t was produced via an apparently very innovative deal with, erm, stiff.

xpost

yeah im being sarky re notting hill -- it's basically the softest (and in this case most random) target going, british cinema wise. not a whole lot of black or poor people in 'radio on'.

why are 'british' films shit?

At one point in Chris Petit’s haunting new film Content, we drive through Felixstowe container port. It was an uncanny moment for me, since Felixstowe is only a couple of miles from where I live – what Petit filmed could have been shot from our car window.

Still half an hour of one of the worst British films ever on ITV right now. Chris Rea IS Harry Sterndale in Michael Winner's Parting Shots. Watching it now it's incredible to believe it's only 10 years old. It looks like a sitcom spinoff from the 70s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKh85PJtb04

That was fucking unbelievable.

hahahahaha oh god that trailer

come on, fucking EDVARD MUNCH y'all

Herostratus, all I can say is that I'm glad I didn't know about this remarkable film until moments before actually seeing it else I can very much see myself being obsessed with it for years.

Just screened this one and holy shit its great! The BFI DVD has a terrific radio interview with Don Levy. Comes across as frighteningly intelligent, humble, willing to explain his ideas (if not plots, but this is understandable).

Really blown away by this and Munch. A great year for my own discovery of Brit Films.

oh man, the booklet in that dvd is just str8 fiyah

You mean on the Munch DVD?! Yeah that's ok :-)

Just C+P a flipside list:

001 - The Bed Sitting Room
Richard Lester

002 - London In The Raw
Arnold Miller

003 - Primitive London
Arnold Miller

004 - Herostratus
Don Levy

005 - All The Right Noises
Gerry O'Hara

006 - Man Of Violence
Pete Walker

007 - Privilege
Peter Watkins

008 – That Kind Of Girl
Gerry O’Hara

009 - Permissive
Lindsay Shonteff

010 - The Pleasure Girls
Gerry O'Hara

011 - The Party's Over
Guy Hamilton (although he removed his name from the film due to the controversy it caused)

What's good?

haven't seen enuf of these but... whether it's good or not you have to see 'privilege'

Herostratus looks *awesome*

It really isn't that great, but it is interesting

To me the real unsung hero of 'british' film is one Bill Douglas, but I'm sure history mayne will tootle along soon to say he isn't all that

If you dig Milligan/Python/Stanshall type humour then The Bed-Sitting Room is worth seeing.

heya julio - herostratus, privilege and (to some extent) the bed sitting room kinda stand apart from the other titles in the bfi flipside series. the rest are mostly ultra-obscure british softcore exploitation/action flicks from the 60s - interesting as historical artefacts, lovingly restored, but prob not stuff you wld want to watch more than once, imho. the bfi got kim newman to do a bargain dvd guide to the whole series that is prob all you 'need':

http://www.play.com/DVD/DVD/4-/13869129/Kim-Newman-Guide-To-The-Flipside-of-British-Cinema/Product.html

pete walker's best films are the proto-torture porn horror flicks that he made in the early 70s, most of which were collected on this excellent region 2 set from anchor bay:

http://www.play.com/DVD/DVD/4-/570208/The-Pete-Walker-Collection/Product.html

Has anyone seen 'Bronco Bullfrog'? From the piece in the Guardian it sounds interesting http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jun/03/bronco-bullfrog I see its got a BFI restoration.

bill douglas isn't really 'unsung'!

i really, really, really wanted to like 'comrades', but didn't coz it's terrible, didactic, ech

'herostratus' itself needed... further editing imo; levy's shorts (also on the disc) are amazing tho

Bill Douglas wasn't mentioned on this thread until now.

it's because he isn't terrible. i love comrades but i find the trilogy pretty much unwatchable.

I love the trilogy!

he has a whole ilx thread! that's how sung he is

I'm sure he's chuffed about that

Finally saw some Stoll Film Company (Stoll Picture Productions Ltd., to be precise) titles - a series of Sherlock Holmes shorts. Two were Maurice Elvey productions. Pretty workaday stuff but nonetheless fascinating that they even exist.

yeah stoll's stuff survived somehow, or a lot of it did by comparison

david lean came up under elvey, who was by most accounts kind of a hack, but it's said he could create an action sequence (in a film about the charge of the light brigade in particular)

he got lean into the editing room

Thx all.

Ward - will get onto Priviledge next. Don't know Watkins but I wonder if he's the kind of guy who could 'get' pop culture in the way that he loves something like Munch.

Herostratus was probably a bit long but it has that tight cyclical narrative that justifies it.

Today I was just thinking about how much I loved those scenes of Gothard running about early in the morning, all the different shades of light and fade outs. And so much to admire: great sounds, love the carefully selected footage (apart from perhaps overdoing on the Ginsberg) and truly *wired* performances.

The whole thing made me think of Kubrick. If he was good.

Get onto the Levy shorts next.

Today I was just thinking about how much I loved those scenes of Gothard running about early in the morning, all the different shades of light and fade outs. And so much to admire: great sounds, love the carefully selected footage (apart from perhaps overdoing on the Ginsberg) and truly *wired* performances.

yeah, amazing quality of light in this film, even if u don't think about how much of a shoestring it was shot on. think levy erred in filming the dramatic scenes. he had a very elaborate intellectual rationale for it, but imo it didn't land. in the wake of the worldwide sales of 'chelsea girls' one or more of the major studios bid to give it a commercial release, on condition he chop it down. which he didn't.

history OTM. Privilege is unmissably weird, compelling and of its time. Worth it for the nutso musical setpieces alone. That Kind of Girl is a 90-minute public information film about STDs of interest only because every line sounds like it should be sampled on a St Etienne album and one sequence was shot at an Aldermaston march. Permissive is possibly the most depressing rock movie ever made - morose hippies, catatonic groupies and A-roads in the rain.

I don't know if I found it overlong, or whether it gave me that sense of exhaustion which I love and seldom get after watching a really great film. The bedroom scene you could say does run on and on but I just loved the way it was shot. Real rollecoaster, that one.

Not too surprised Levy didn't compromise. In the end, almost everyone looked so exhausted and tired. From that interview he just sounds like a guy who doesn't give a shit anyway. Don't know the reasons but totally unsurprised he didn't make another film.

haven't seen this -- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066236/ -- but wd love em to do it

John Latham DVD per HKM

heh more like shittish films

don't watch john latham while operating heavy machinery nahmsayin

i hope your editor isn't reading

or you'll be chained down on the basement of Flat Time House

pressing eject on the arbor, it's shit

haha just about to watch it!

This bodes well actually

lol

i liked 'rita and sue and bob too'

guess im not in the mood for 'people shouting at each other'-style drama

You didn't watch it all the way through?

history mayne didn't watch it all the way through

Ten when her mother died, Lorraine was subject to racist insults as a result of having a Pakistani father, became a drug addict and slipped into prostitution to pay for her habit. She was jailed for manslaughter after her two-year-old son died after consuming his mother's methadone, but is now out of jail.

you're making me feel guilty. it's probably a really important statement about race and poverty in britain today.

thinking abt the uk 'underclass' today actually

looking through old threads

old ilx' coverage of said topic = lol

the production manager for k3n l0ach's next film is coming round tomorrow to check out my flat in glasgow to see if it might be suitable for filming in. there are stacks of dvds in the living room, not a single KL movie amongst them.

The Telegraph lists the “75 best British films ever made.” The top five:

Alexander Korda‘s The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933).
Alfred Hitchcock‘s The 39 Steps (1935).
Hitchcock’s Sabotage (1936).
Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938).
Thorold Dickinson’s Gaslight (1940).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/best-british-films-ever-made/

No P&P in the top 5 is gtfo territory

was going to say...

Third man?

irish tho

wait no it isn't

Think I would rate "Odd Man Out" over "Third Man", is that challopy?

The top five

the films aren't ranked, they're listed in the order they were made in

No P&P in the top 5 is gtfo territory chronologically correct

Ah, couldn't tell on phone

clouds you were thinking of odd man out maybe? Which also isn't Irish but is set in Ireland, and xps its close between that and 3rd

yeah and for some reason thought reed himself was irish, incorrectly

"Edge of the World" should be on there then, guessing there's a bunch of inessential shit later on

No inclusion of Went the Day Well? at all is another howler, and loads of Chariots of The remains of the day type filler in the higher numbers.

Cavalcanti disqualified for Brazilianism, Marxism

I stopped clicking

UK "Man Who Knew Too Much" better than at least 2 of the Hitchs they picked

Normally I don't do this but

No My Beautiful Laundrette

hey teh beatles made it

sigh

The Torygraph's War Film list has lots of predictable stuff as well, but also it has Elem Klimov's "Come and See." which sounds great from reviews.

sorry about the confusion on chronological listing rather than ranking, that's what i get for pasting from Keyframe i guess

"Come and See" is brilliant, yes. Bet they didn't go with "Battle of Algiers" tho

- more interesting than the boring Telegraph list -

Fopp in the UK have been selling off DVDs from this enormous list of Brit film obscurities for £3 a go -

http://networkonair.com/shop/103-the-british-film

I have been buying, not so far watching very much. Among the highlights - The Cracksman (Charlie Drake comedy directed by Peter Graham Scott, who also directed Children of the Stones); French Dressing (Ken Russell's first film, additional dialogue by Johnny Speight); She'll Have to Go (Bob Monkhouse meets Anna Karina, from Hammer cinematographer Jack Asher); Slayground (Richard Stark adaptation with Mel Smith, Billie Whitelaw and Peter Coyote); Spanish Fly (Leslie Phillips and Terry-Thomas together in one extremely tawdry softcore comedy); S.P.Y.S (UK-funded M*A*S*H rip-off w/ Gould and Sutherland - made by Empire Strikes Back director Irvin Kershner); The Terrornauts (Amicus SF cheapie w/ Charles Hawtrey, screenplay by John Brunner!)

I didn't know there was a Slayground film. That's one of the best Richard Starks.

Yeah, Network is kinda daunting, they release so much stuff and little of it has a reputation outside of very small niches.

Enjoyed All The Way Up, an early 70's social climber comedy with Warren Mitchell.

She'll Have to Go (Bob Monkhouse meets Anna Karina, from Hammer cinematographer Jack Asher)

lol what

I don't give Network as much custom as I'd like but I'm glad they're doing their thing

I wrote a thing on 'Beast' and tried to do something about what happens in British films in general, and... yeah, why does it always seem as if nothing is happening in British film? I mean, a lot of films are coming out each year, and they definitely have things in common, but it just never seems as if there's any excitement surrounding British film. Compare it to music, and it's remarkable.

I realized I could say the same thing about British literature, btw.

Dunkirk and Paddington Bear not enough for you?

Nothing wrong with Paddington.

the honest answer is that most uk filmmaking talent works in tv which, in spite of everything and regardless of what Tom D is about to say, is still pretty incredible in terms of volume and quality of output.

it's very sad that most of the younger generation of british filmmakers have shifted focus to the US. Lynn Ramsay, Andrew Haigh, Andrea Arnold. Steve McQueen is a shit filmmaker but him too, I guess.

was the last Ben Wheatley thing set in the US?

yes, but he'll be back

although iirc his next thing is also us-based

anyway there's loads of hype-worthy uk cinema

Did anyone see Apostasy? It looked excellent but only played here while I was away.

that was a debut too - so there's that and God's Own Country, Lady Macbeth and I am Not a Witch (haven't seen that one yet) all highly-regarded debuts.

I did its good in the sense that most things as made by bbc films is good. But there's also a lack. Xp

I've only seen God's Own Country and I am Not a Witch, but if that's the best new things that are happening, then I'd say it underlines my point. They're good to very good, but they aren't really exciting. There's always loads of highly-regarded debuts, and 'hype-worthy' films, but it's also never amazing. It's solid but it's hard to get excited about.

Not amazing to you maybe

I mean sure they're no Toni Erdmann but very few films are. I Am Not A Witch is an absolutely insanely brilliant debut imo

Meh. It's good but feels like something that has been done before.

always good to set a nebulously impossible bar then watch stuff not meet it.

I've got I think seven debut films on my 2017 ballot that passes that bar.

I am Not a Witch is really good but it's aesthetically fairly ordinary arthouse style without a lot of surprises.

i'm not defending any particular movie here but i srsly distrust any aesthetic with "novelty" central to its values and wondered if you could make clearer what you think "amazing" or "exciting" means

there's an irony here when you argue with imago cos i think both of you value "the new" pretty highly

spooky magic realist witchcraft tone poem meets genuinely hilarious zambian corruption farce, you bet nothing like that's been done before

although in saying that I'm reminded of Arabian Nights which was another recent favourite. maybe surreal political allegory is my thing idk

was asking Fred but yeah thanks for answering imago. one of my big problems with novelty is that "nothing like that's been done" breaks down to "i'm not aware of other things like this" at some point, in any sphere.

and that's before we get to "sure, but was it worth doing?"

what do people like about ben wheatley?

first 3 or 4 movies were nicely opaque/wyrd. he might've jumped the shark now tho.

-_-

Still rate Kill List as just about the best British horror movie of the last X years, but High Rise - so so bad - pointed to the limits of his (and Amy Jump's) abilities. Don't think making American-set films will help him, either.

high rise...madly overwrought retrofuturistic dystopian melodrama, last days of rome to portishead covering abba, feminist magick undercurrent rising to overwhelm, whole thing is basically a punk movie...the goddamn fall over the end credits...I mean sure you can call it bad or weirdly paced but it is compelling, fun, kitschy brilliance imo

Whether its good I don't know however I am not a witch sounds like a few things Sembene has done, as well a couple of African filmmakers.

(but mainly I like wheatley/jump because they made 'a field in england' which is a truly superior treatise on this little benighted nation)

xyzzzz feel free to recommend!

It's exactly like the plot of 'Xala'

think I've discussed this elsewhere but I can't remember a film that has disappointed me more than a field in england

A Field in England and Kill List are both superb. “Compelling” is the last word I’d use to describe High Rise but it does have some good images.

we also haven't mentioned joanna hogg's last two films yet, both of which i think fred likes? idk *shrugs* they're p great

I dare say there's an extent to which you can say ________ is making some really exciting films at the moment but i suspect all or nearly all of those countries are in east asia so i'm not sure why you'd single out britain as lacking excitement.

x-post: Haven't seen them. Really want to!

My favorite British film from the last few years - apart from the Paddingtons! - is probably Ben Rivers' 'The Sky Trembles and the World is Afraid and the Two Eyes are Not Brothers'.

And other countries that excites me: Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Portugal, Romania (still), Italy, etc. Lots of countries make exciting things. Russia is probably the one big one where I feel as confused about how little is going on as with Britain.

This is a weird complaint (and lol @ listing Denmark, Sweden and Iceland). Britain just doesn't (odd filmmaker aside) embrace the sorts of aesthetics in places like Romania or Argentina or Iran or parts of East Asia, say. Of the current bunch I think Hogg probably engages with it (given her interest in Akerman) but I haven't seen her films.

What we come out with is stuff like Apostasy and God's Own Country, and they are fine debuts that speak to things locally. There probably is something to be said for the aesthetic of BBC Films, which is illustrated by this pair - they are accomplished, well-acted, with nuance in their treatment of subject and yet they lack a scene that pushes it over the line. But that isn't to say that the people involved won't do something really great in future.

Overall a bunch of filmmakers are making good stuff, it feels like they are supported. xp

Lady Macbeth perhaps has that quality you can't quite pin down. GOC has it at times, the way the story expands to say or show something broader, more poetic or more widely relevant than what is being explicitly addressed on screen.

Maybe, anyway!

Well, I guess that's as comprehensive an answer to the question as can be.

I do get a bit sad at the idea that there's something inherently exotic about modern experimental film aesthetics. Most films from Romania and Iran and East Asia is just as drab and conventional as everywhere else, in most countries it's just a couple of weirdoes. (And the traditional East Asian film nations has kinda declined recently, which iirc has to do with China's rise as a film nation crowding out local industries. The flipside to that is that China has made a lot of great films recently, with that Elephant Sitting Still being the latest example)

But if what you say is right, perhaps it's the film system in Britain that makes it more samey than should be? Does BBC perhaps have too much power? The reason Danish cinema is so great at the moment is due to a specific political prioritization of low-budget cinema which has led to a bunch of young directors getting the chance, resulting in festival winners like Winter Brothers, The Guilty and Holiday the last year. And they've probably killed that by giving the power over the purse back to the tv-stations, who don't care about that.

jed - agree that it isn't as straightforward with GOC, just loved the sequence of the main leads working the land and building their r/ship. I enjoyed Lady Macbeth enough, that was an unexpected adaptation of a story I really like.

I should read that.

I know most local films in those countries are purely conventional made for the market and we are looking at things that travel on the festival circuit. But it isn't just a couple of weirdoes. Like, quite a lot of Romanian films in the last decade or more by quite a few directors, enough for the bfi to recently have a whole month retro.

Can't comment on how UK film is funded rn but there is more of (massive generalisation alert) a realist tradition going on here. That isn't bad at all, there is variety to this, its just not what you might count as exciting. It used to be that a lot of the talent was snapped up by TV as well -- which totally scanned when I watched a lot of it -- but that view is not something I've re-visited recently.

Romania is the big miracle country, but that's still only four really great ones (Puiu, Porumboiu, Mungiu and now Jude) and they've been greatly helped by the fact that the local cinema distribution system is still, well, pretty fucked if I understand it correctly. It's not as if there's something in the water in Romania that makes them see things differently, and that Britain couldn't equally easily get back the adventurousness from the Greenaway/Jarman/Potter period.

There was more than four of those directors in that bfi retro (and its a range of good to great - your "only really great ones" is part of the problem with your initial complaint - Romanian New Wave is a bit of marketing and scene/myth making making but it wouldn't stick if the films weren't there). Equally some countries just have that kind of arthouse cinema scene with ppl exploring similar types of aesthetics and issues (ppl that seem to know one another too) and its an interesting story of how the legacy of 60s/70s cinema took over in countries like Argentina or Romania (Iran is more 60s/70s but its definitely gone on and on).

Greenaway and Jarman seem totally diff sorts and again it never added to a kind of movement (and I don't like either, especially have very little time for Jarman). There was definitely more exciting stuff in Taiwan in the same period.

(iirc Jarman and Terence Davies got a lot of their funding from Channel 4 so there is a cinema/TV continuity there maybe to current BBC films era)

How could I forget Terence Davies!!! Tbf he made the best film of the last few years, so... perhaps not that shit.

The, relative, strength of British TV, historically anyway, is definitely a factor. Maybe the theatre too, it's generally shit but it has had exaggerated respect in the UK imo.

Thanks to someone's recommendation of the BFI Flipside documentary, I ended up buying one of the films profiled: Privilege by Peter Watkins.
It's about the british government using a pop star to seduce his fans into religious nationalism. I thought it was slightly too long and occasionally too on the nose but the portrayal of the pop star's anxiety, frustration and the way he has been infantilized was quite powerful. The advert for apples and the anarchist character were quite fun too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_dZEky0KAw

I've had that on my wish list forever, seems quite unWatkinslike in some ways. There's a fair bit of on the noseness in most of his films but he's so good at moving his camera and creating an authentic sense of documentary that it never bothers me

It's about the british government using a pop star to seduce his fans into religious nationalism.

Gotta say this doesn't appeal to me. But he is one of the greats and he made an appearance to introduce a screening of La Commune, which was a great way to go. Edward Munch is also fantastic!

I was not at that screening, sadly.

I didn't know there was a Flipside documentary - only know it as a BFI sub-label for brit grindhouse stuff. I own two releases: The Pleasure Girls (really good, surprisingly feminist movie about a flatshare of young women in 60's London - also has Klaus Kinski as a love interest, if you can believe that) and The Party's Over (about the dangers of bohemian nihilism - preachy, whiny moral majority bollocks. Good Oliver Reed perf tho!). I also saw Man Of Violence, which is in that collection too, on the telly once - terrible movie, but kind of fascinating in its total incompetence, and fwiw it does feature a male protagonist who has sex with a dude, which is pretty progressive for 1970's British genre cinema.

Other Flipside discs I would recommend:

Herostratus, Duffer/The Moon Over The Valley, Deep End, The Black Panther, the BS Johnson anthology You're Human Like the Rest of Them, Symptoms and Psychomania.

Privilege is Watkins' most conventional film, and yes, suffers a bit from didactic obviousness, but it's interesting too to see a 60s 'youth' film express disillusionment with the notion of popular music as a form of subversion.

I really enjoyed Black Panther, Donald Sumpter is tremendous in it.

He is. And yes, I loved the grimy banality of the 70s settings - brought to mind other, similar shabby British serial killer texts like the film of 10 Rillington Place, or Gordon Burns' Happy Like Murderers.

I have a lot of the Flipside films on DVD/BD; one of the few rewarding parts of my job around 2008-11 was getting these as freebies for working on the subtitling (yearned after all the COI / Free Cinema / Humphrey Jennings compilations too, but didn't have enough input on those to blag anything). Deep End might be the best.

I'll also rep for Queen Of Spades, KJB. May be Anton Walbrook's best performance.

― the clones of tldr funkenstein (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, February 2, 2010

This is newly released on disc by Kino Lorber in the US, and I recommend; superbly crafted, a Scorsese favorite.

Walbrook's antihero hisses with such reptilian duplicity that I couldn't help but see Peter Lorre in the role, and sure enough, he played it in a radio adaptation of the Pushkin story.

The Railway Children Return, fuck this let's take off and nuke the British film industry from orbit

Wonder if I need BFI Player to watch Queen of Spades again.

hey look it's the guy who has bad, wrong, smug opinions on TV for money

Like all 1970s British movies, great cast shit film.

— David Quantick (@quantick) July 17, 2022

i just watched dirty pretty things with my kids and 3/4 of the way through they asked why it was so boring and i wanted to throw them both through the window

IT’S FUCKING ART YOU CRETINS

DPT is grebt but it's also a very "keep these spaces liminal!" film

now that i’ve settled down i have had to admit it is not really a movie for kids

but yes it is full of liminality isn’t it - a minicab backroom, a hotel kitchen, an airport, an shared apartment with only one key, a mortuary… the river styx is even invoked at one point

the way the gang joined up at the end to pull off a plan made me think of kaurismaki