Movies

David Lean, Mike Leigh, Terry Gilliam, Stephen Frears , Terrance Davies, Ken Loach, Danny Boyle

Prostitutes, nurses and maids: no gain for British actresses in 100 years

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LONDON, Sept. 21, 2017 – Women are cast in less than a third of roles in British films, often in nameless parts like prostitute, housekeeper and nurse, data showed on Wednesday, with no gains in more than a century.A peep behind the camera explains why: only one in ten writers and directors are female, the British Film Institute (BFI) said as it released an archive of more than 10,000 British films dating back to 1911.

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British films of the Fifties – a decade packed with surprises

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Alec Guinness and Joan Greenwood in The Man in the White Suit
Alec Guinness and Joan Greenwood in The Man in the White Suit

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 [ . . . ]

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Getting Naked Again: Revisiting Mike Leigh’s Naked

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Tom Jolliffe takes a look back at Mike Leigh’s 1993 film, Naked

The other day I attended a special screening at The Prince Charles Cinema in London.
It was part of a specially curated selection of films (from NFTS) devoted to the vile and unlikeable. The first film of the series was Mike Leigh’s 1993 masterpiece, Naked. Leigh was there himself to introduce the film. It was a passing gesture more than anything, as I always feel of the self-effacing Leigh, that blowing one’s own trumpet isn’t his bag.

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