Smashing the cinematic fixation with perfection and illusion

Until the late 1950s, the British working class were represented in cinematic tradition as either criminals or comic relief.

In May 1956, Look Back In Anger, a play written by John Osborne, opened at the Royal Court Theatre in London.

When the curtain went up on the first act the audience was shocked to discover a dirty squalid set of a one-room flat in the Midlands, complete with kitchen sink and ironing board.

Jimmy Porter, the main character in the play, personified the anger, boredom and frustration with the political climate and British cultural life that many working class families felt at the time.

His character would be the model for the angry young man, and the play would be the genesis of what would soon become the British New Wave Free Cinema movement, or kitchen sink drama – named because of its focus on the interior and domestic emotional lives of ordinary working class people.

British film director and critic Lindsay Anderson was a leading light and one of the architects of the free cinema movement.

In an interview with the Daily Express in March 1959, he launched a scathing attack on the film industry.

He opined that the British cinema was outmoded and out of touch with the times.

He raged: “British films today are snobbish, emotionally inhibited, wilfully blind to the social conditions of the present, and dedicated to an out-of-date exhausted national idea.

“In creating the New Wave Cinema our intention is to pave the way to a breakthrough and new concept in British films depicting previously taboo subjects that challenge the conservative films of the times.

“By presenting abortion, homosexuality, and extra marital and racial affairs, our style is focused on social reality to counter attack the studios’fixation with perfection and illusion.”

The huge success of this new trend in British cinema was largely due to the brilliant plays and literature that existed at the time.

Alan Sillitoe, John Osborne, Shelagh Delaney were just some of the talented writers who provided inspiration for the new wave phenomenon.

Innovator The first “angry young man”, playwright John Osborne, whose Look Back In Anger launched the British New Wave in cinema