The Fifties, sandwiched between British cinema’s golden age and the Sixties’ new wave, is unjustly neglected – but it produced many in the Vintage Classics collection.During the Fifties cinema operators began closing screens as TV ownership grew. Leisure time and spending money also fell as Britain struggled to nurse itself back to health after WWII. Even rationing remained in place until 1954. But despite the difficulties, classics were born.When it came to literary adaptations,the Fifties had it all – from Michael Redgrave in Terence Rattigan’s The Browning Version (1951) and Laurence Olivier’s Richard III (1955) to a critically-acclaimed horror Night of the Demon (1957), a cinematic retelling of an MR James story, directed by Jacques Tourneur.The British trait of laughing in the face of adversity informed much of Fifties cinema [ . . . ]

More at: British films of the Fifties – a decade packed with surprises