British Social Realism. MY THESIS Trainspotting is a postmodern, hyper-realistic production that is a response to and a continuance of the great cinematic

British Social Realism

MY THESIS

Trainspotting is a postmodern, hyper-realistic production that is a response to and a continuance of the great cinematic tradition of British Social Realism.

MY THESIS


This tradition began with John Grierson and the British documentary movement of the 1920S -1940s.

MY THESIS



It was refined and fully developed by the directors of the “Free Cinema” of the 1950s (aka the “Angry Young Man,” “Brit Grit,” or “Kitchen Sink Manifesto” movement)

MY THESIS



It was refined and fully developed by the directors of the “Free Cinema” of the 1950s (aka the “Angry Young Man,” “Brit Grit,” or “Kitchen Sink Manifesto” movement)

…and lives on in the psycho-realistic films of Mile Leigh, and the social reform films of Ken Loach.

“European cinema’s defining aesthetic is realism.[It] has pre-cinematic origins in the nineteenth century European realist novel and in pre-twentieth century Western visual arts…as progressive attempts to represent a concrete ‘reality.’ The ideology of ‘realism’ is one of the means by which European cinema has traditionally sought to differentiate itself from Hollywood.”

--Shohini Chaudhuri, Contemporary World Cinema

Social Realism in Crime Films

The Origins of Realism(It’s a European thing)

Late 1800s

Industrialization of Europe

Rise of naturalism and realism in the arts

Questioning of tradition values

Focus of art shifts from “kings and rulers” to the common man

Themes of alienation, oppression, dehumanization, poverty

Birth of existentialism

1900-1950

World Wars I & II

Marxist challenge to capitalism

Oppression of workers and lower class

Imperialism and colonialism

Questioning of traditional worldviews in the arts and science (Freud and Einstein)

Realism & Naturalism

Naturalism: The idea or belief that only natural (as opposed to supernatural or spiritual) laws and forces operate in the world.

Influenced by Darwinism

Focus on common people

Victims of industrialized society

Abandonment of artificial literary conventions

Loss of decorum

Naturalism

Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character.

It was depicted as a literary movement that seeks to replicate a believable everyday reality, as opposed to such movements as Romanticism or Surrealism, in which subjects may receive highly symbolic, idealistic, or even supernatural treatment.

Naturalism is the outgrowth of literary realism, a prominent literary movement in mid-19th-century France and elsewhere. Naturalistic writers were influenced by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. They believed that one's heredity and social environment largely determine one's character.

Naturalism

Whereas realism seeks only to describe subjects as they really are, naturalism also attempts to determine "scientifically" the underlying forces (e.g., the environment or heredity) influencing the actions of its subjects.

Naturalistic works often include uncouth or sordid subject matter; for example, Émile Zola's works had a frankness about sexuality along with a pervasive pessimism.

Naturalistic works exposed the dark harshness of life, including poverty, racism, violence, prejudice, disease, corruption, prostitution, and filth. As a result, naturalistic writers were frequently criticized for focusing too much on human vice and misery.

Wikipedia. And Williams, Raymond. 1976. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. London: Fontana, 1988

Neorealism in European Cinema

Italian Neorealism French New Wave British Social Realism

Andre Bazin (1918-1958)

Liked films that focused on everyday psychological experience

Italian Neorealism (The Bicycle Thief)

Disliked modernist, expressionistic

Disliked films that imposed a political ideology on the viewer

Long takes, of surrounding environment

Impact of environment on people(French determinism)

Italian Neorealism (1940-50s)

Response to artificiality of cinema of the Fascist period

Influenced by French poetic realism and American literary naturalism (e.g., Hemingway)

Experiences of poor and socially marginalized

“Slice of life”; things and facts in time and place (versimo)

Ambivalence of everyday experience

Some took strong social political stance

Marxist, with a hopeful, humanistic dimension


CHARACTERISTICS

On-location shooting

Long takes

Natural light

Medium and long shots

Non-professional actors

Working class protagonists

Environment as important as actors


CESARE ZAVATTINI

“Some Ideas on the Cinema” (1953)

1. Portray real or everyday people, using nonprofessional actors in real settings

2. Examine socially significant themes

3. Promote the “organic” development ofsituations--the “real flow of life”--in which

complications are rarely resolved


CESARE ZAVATTINI

“Identification with the common man in the crowd.”

“Take dialogue and actors from the street.”

“Reality in American films is unnaturally filtered.”

French New Wave (1958-64)

Response to French “tradition of quality” (“staged” literary scripts)

Cahiers du Cinema

Auteurism

Rebellion against authority & convention

Existential outlook (post-WWII)

Zeitgeist: France, Late 1950s

The Fourth Republic

20 governments between 1946-58

Algerian War for independence (people questioned colonial policies)

More Algerians killed by French than French killed by Germans (ironic occupation)

Failed occupation in Indochina

Threat of nuclear war (Cold War)

French “Tradition of Quality”

“Le cinema de papa”

Producer-controlled studio system

Required certification from national film school (Institut Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques)

Highly institutionalized (15 studios, unions, apprentice system)

“Beautiful images to illustrate screen plays”

A “highly mannered style removed from everyday reality”

Zeitgeist: Culture & Popculture

Sartre and Camus (existentialism)

Influence of avant garde, “Beatnik” culture on society

Hedonistic “youth culture”

All-night dancing at jazz clubs

Rejection of bourgeois values

Fascination with things American:

Hollywood

Coca-Cola

Blue jeans

Origins

Sociological survey on the values of postwar French youth

Clothing, habits, morals, values

Generation wanted to be liberated from traditions of the past

Obsession with the “new” (TV, appliances, automobiles)

Emergence of the “new liberated French woman” (Bridget Bardot)

New Generation

Candid attitude toward sex

Young women identified with the Bardot image

Rejection of parent’s values

Accent of individual freedom and expression

Infusion of American culture(jazz, cars and Rock-and-Roll)

Young Film Makers

“40 who are under 40”

Rejected French “tradition of quality”

1959 Cannes Film Festival(Existential novelist Andre Malraux was the Minister of Culture)

La Napoule colloquium of young filmmakers

Cine clubs in the Latin Quarter of Paris

Cahiers du Cinema

Godard and Truffaut started as critics

Met Andre Bazin

Bazin was the “founding father” of film theory and New Wave cinema

French New Wave

UNDERLYING PHILOSOPHY:

Personalized existential visions

Stressed “the individual, the experience of free choice, the absence of any rational understanding of the universe and a sense of the absurdity in human experience”

French New Wave

UNDERLYING PHILOSOPHY:

Characters seek to act authentically, taking responsibility for their actions, instead of playing roles dictated by society

Marginalized anti-heroes, who act spontaneously and often amorally

French New Wave

FILM AESTHETIC:

“Low-budget” anti-Hollywood look

Casual, natural appearance

Location shooting (not studio)

Ambient sound and light

“Real,” often improvised dialogue (overlapping)

Improvised scripting

French New Wave

FILM AESTHETIC:

“In the streets and cafes”

“Bored couple having meaningless conversation in Paris café, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and absinthe” (Skutski)

Mobile camera (tracking & panning)

Jump cuts, “free” editing

Admired Hitchcock & Italian Neorealism

French New Wave

FILM AESTHETIC:

Auteurism: the personal stamp of the director

Long takes

Flux and flow of time

Breaks with common expectations of cinema

Loose plots

Self-referent

French New Wave: “Left Bank”

More experimental & cerebral

Philosophical investigations

Fascination with memory

Play with time and space

Political left

“Pre-postmodern”

French New Wave

Jean-Luc Godard

Francois Truffaut

Alain Resnais

Eric Rohmer

Claude Chabrol

Agnes Varda

Louis Malle

Alain Robbe-Grillet

Five Periods of British Social RealismDOCUMENTARY

John Grierson

BRITISH NEW WAVE

Angry Young Men

Saturday Night, Sunday Morning

SWINGING LONDON

Blowup

CONTEMPORARY (Mike Leigh, Ken Loach)

Secrets & Lies

HYPERREALISM

Trainspotting

A Question of National IdentityTHEMES / EMPHASIS

1930s – 1955: Nostalgia for Old England, the EmpireCommon heroes and myth

British heritage films & literary adaptations“Englishness”

British New Wave: Questioning of government’s visionProtest against consumerism,

suburbanism and Americanization Class struggle (Angry Young Men)

1960s-70s: Counter-culture experimentation

1980s: Deindustrialization, unemploymentChanges in social roles, masculine

identity

1990s – 2000s: Multiculturalism, alternate heritagesHyperreality

John Grierson (1889-1972)

MODERN DOCUMENTARY REALISM

Father of the documentary film

Film as an effective means of communications between individual and the state

Purpose is to create social unity and encourage reform

John Grierson (1889-1972)

MODERN DOCUMENTARY

Focused on poverty, hunger, unemployment, and other social problems

Intuitive/experiential films can enable people to understand social issues better than rational, cognitive analysis

Use of realistic and naturalistic images to signify abstract realities

Launched British Documentary Film Mob Movement (1940s--100 plus films)

Part 2Part 1

British Social Realism

ZEITGEIST OF THE 1950s

Collapse of British Empire

Suez Canal crisis

Cold War (Ban the Bomb)

Working class / student protests

Materialism and consumerism

British Cinema: 1945-54

“Several pressures prevented films from adopting more radical social positions in that period. Foremost was the industry's fear and suspicion of involvement in controversy. Behind this was the repressive form of censorship imposed at that time by the British Board of Film Censors. Attacks on the establishment were not only discouraged, they were actively forbidden. Social criticism, at least of things British, tended to be retrospective. Hence the flurry of historical costume pieces. It was all right to discuss the bad behaviour of the Victorians .

--www.britmovie.co.uk

British New Wave (1950s-1960s)

FREE CINEMA

“Free” from the dictates and restraints of the commercial film industry and UK studio system

Comparable to French New Wave rebellion against “cinema du papa” and tradition of quality

Title of film program at National Film Institute in 1956: Anderson: O Dreamland Reisz/ Richardson: Momma Don’t Allow Mazzetti: Together

“Kitchen Soup” Manifesto


FREE CINEMA

Sight and Sound and Sequence magazines

“The camera eye they turn on society is disenchanted, sad, occasionally ferocious and bitter.”

Signed films, with a point of view (not documentaries)

Make films “in the streets”


Lindsay Anderson O Dreamland (1953)

Reisz / Richardson Momma Don’t Allow (1955)

Jack Clayton Room at the Top (1958)

Tony Richardson Look Back in Anger (1958)

Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962)

Karel Reisz Saturday Night, Sunday Morning (1960)


Soup Kitchen Manifesto (1956)


ANGRY YOUNG MEN

Protests by college students and working class

Questioning of the “myth of the British Empire”

Frustration over lack of class mobility

Loss of traditional moral and cultural values

Females depicted as “clinging, entrapping” individuals, forcing men to stay in home town, raise family and buy new consumer products

Alienated youth


ANGRY YOUNG MEN

New Left Review

Called for a fundamental restructuring of the British economic system

Attacked:

Unfair labor practices

Middle class values

Immoral popular culture

Class structure


ANGRY YOUNG MEN

Part of a larger social movement, assailing the British class structure and calling for the replacement of bourgeois elitism with liberal working-class values.


ANGRY YOUNG MEN

Frank approach to sex and other taboos

Protest against the mechanization of life

The “sadness of urban life”

Found Board of Censors overly-protective and obsolete


“The film coincided with the upsurge of

discontent with Britain's direction, distaste for

the government and anxiety over nuclear

involvement which produced the CND and the

Aldermaston marches. Room at the Top, with

its opportunist hero screwing the

establishment of his northern town and the inn

owner's daughter, provided a readily

identifiable index of reaction for the suburban

filmgoer. “

--www.britmovie.co.uk

Room at the Top


The People D. H. Lawrence

Ah the people, the people!

surely they are flesh of my flesh!

When, in the streets of the working quarters

they stream past, stream past, going to work;

then, when I see the iron hooked in their faces,

their poor, their fearful faces

then I scream in my soul, for I know I cannot cut

the iron hook out of their faces, that makes them so drawn, nor cut the

invisible wires of steel that pull them

back and forth to work,

back and forth, to work

like fearful and corpse-like fishes hooked and being played by some malignant

fisherman on an unseen, safe shore where he does not choose to land them

yet,

hooked fishes of the factory world.

Swinging London

London center of counter-culture revolution

Music, fashion, art, film

Recovery of the British economy from the post World War II austerity

Creation of alternate view of reality(beyond rebellion of “angry young men”)

“Don’t get angry, get crazy”

Swinging London

Emphasis on hedonism, free-love, drugs, experimentation, mysticism and “the East” (vs. West)

Also focuses on the lost, isolated individual alienated from tradition and convention, out of touch with Swinging London values (e.g., Alfie, Morgan, Georgy Girl)

Georgy Girl

Swinging London

http://

www.youtube.com A Decade to Remember-The Sixties

Current British Social Realism

MARXIST SOCIAL REALISM

Expose social injustices, poverty, crime, etc.

Economic determinism

PSYCHOLOGICAL SOCIAL REALISM

People forced to live in horrific conditions

Society dealt them a bad hand

Still human beings with free will


KEN LOACH (Marxist)

Film as medium for social reform

Location shooting & non-professional actors

Class inequality, unfair labor practices, child welfare, poverty, crime

Marxist political perspective

“Not an exemplary example of cinematic realism”

“Characters tend to be innocent victims, often cardboard figures” (Skutski)

My Name is Joe


MIKE LEIGH (Psychological)

“Master of psychological cinematic realism”

Social commentary without sermonizing

“This is the way life is, the way people are”

Characters are the key

Unique approach to filmmaking

All or Nothing

Mike Leigh: “All or Nothing”

Opening

Toilet scene

Scotland scene

Final scene

Brazilian Cinema

1960’s Cinema Novo: political themes

Government withdrew support in 1990

Restored in mid 1990s

Globo Television created commercial film division (partial support of City of God)

Co-productions/US distribution

Common themes:

Police corruption

Favelas

“General malaise in society”

“Unviable nation”

Source: Nagib, Lucia, ed., New Brazilian Cinema

"a…celebration of violence-for-good that plays like a recruitment film for fascist [police] thugs.”

Weissberg, Jay. Variety, 2008.

Documents

British Social Realism. MY THESIS Trainspotting is a postmodern, hyper-realistic production that is a response to and a continuance of the great cinematic