Picspam - Girl on Approval (1961)

[lost_spook]

I watched this the other day and felt the need to picspam (though it's in b&w and doesn't even have David Collings). Anyway, it's a film starring Rachel Roberts and James Maxwell and it's one of the British "kitchen sink" oeuvre. (Or New Wave, the booklet calls it.) So, just think, I can painlessly give you a piece of British film and social

Comments

[robot_mel]

That actually sounds really interesting.

[lost_spook]

Thanks. I liked it, but then I'm strange like that. ;-)

[vilakins]

That sounds incredibly progressive for the time!

I don't know Rachel Roberts, but she shines out of these caps.

[sallymn]

The only thing I've seen her in is Picnic at Hanging Rock... which of course meant that I expect her to turn nasty in everything :)

[vilakins]

I've seen that, but years ago.

[lost_spook]

It was incredibly progressive, yes. Not only tackling a topic like that in a realistic way, but just in showing an ordinary lower-middle class couple who struggled to pay for their house and couldn't afford a television. (That just didn't happen on screen, outside of comedies). It's part of a relatively small group of films that were revolutionary in British cinema, because they showed mundane and lower-class families, were often set outside of London and the Home Counties, and were about difficult issues. It partly came out of theatre (those I've seen before - Saturday Night & Sunday Morning, Room at the Top and A Taste of Honey - were all originally plays, and two of them part of the 50s 'angry young man' thing as well) and the growth of independent studies after the break-up of Ealing (so I understand). Of course, they all look pretty stilted and mild these days

[sallymn]

Haven't seen the film but I do like the screencaps, they have that wonderful somewhat creepy coziness British films of that time have for me...

[lost_spook]

Creepy coziness is a v good description of that, yes. And thanks, glad you enjoyed the picspam!