GRITTY SHITTY POST-WAR BRITAIN

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There has long been a class war conducted by the rich and powerful in Britain. So it is natural that “social realism”, addressing the lives of the working and under class, would become a strong identifying feature of British cinema. Precursors can be found not only in the 50s Free Cinema movement (e.g Lindsay Anderson’s O Dreamland), but in “Angry Young Men” plays and literature, “noirish” 40s films (e.g It Always Rains on Sunday, They Made me a Fugitive), and the earlier documentaries of Grierson (Drifters), Cavalcanti (Coal Face) and Jennings (Fires were...