Feel good brit flick of the year...

except for the mavericks, everybody ends up in Hollywood- maybe this is part of the problem?

k-punk said:

Given that the only viable alternative is mockney gangster (although Guy RItchie's new film sounds so gloriously preoposterous that I'm almost tempted to see it, something that I would never have said of any of his other flicks),

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Ha! Lets salvage Gritchie's critical reputation!

k-punk said:

it's pretty clear that British films have never been worse, with no prospect of any improvement. Which prompted the question in me: apart from the odd mavericks (yeh, the usual suspects, Powell, Roeg), hasn't British cinema always been pretty poor really?

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Much celebration of the fact that government subsidies haven't been in vain and it's made some decent profits. Lord knows how, but......

Lynne Ramsay...? Seem to recall interesting discussion of her work on this here site a while back.

Andrea Arnold's short film 'Wasp' is pretty stunning, profoundly depressing...and incredibly British.

The Brothers Quay studied here!

Ok, we can do better than this....

i blame ken loach

'britain is inherently uncinematic' said francois truffaut

but i'd rather see a film by lindsay anderson or humphrey jennings or robert hamer or lynne ramsay than any of his later films

i agree with all this obv but don't other countries have their tedious national cinematic hobby-horses? eg innumerable french romantic comedies about authors having affairs and whatnot

Possibly the greatest living filmaker is a Brit...
http://www.luxonline.org.uk/articles/essays/patrick_keiller/detail4.html

damn labrat, you're so right - watched London and Robinson Space recently and they are just unbelievably, astoundingly good....the way he makes Britain alien, strange, sympathetic and melancholy all at once...can't be recommended highly enough...

and France do seem to make millions of absolutely abysmal existential rom-coms involving middle-aged men lusting after teenagers, e.g....not much to be proud of there, tho I guess they do have chris marker...

oh yeah....both remarkable, the way 'robinson in space' makes post-industrial crapness look almost mystical...my first blog post was about 'london' as it happens- can't believe i forgot about him- actually does anyone have/know about any of his later stuff?

his latest is called The Delapidated Dwelling but i've not seen it yetf his earlier work i really like The End but that doesn't get the shown that often.

'The Germans have given us the paranoid depths of Expressionism, the Italians created Neo-Realism, the French have perfected brooding Melodramatic Existentialism, while the British bask in the bathetic glow of a plucky little yokel, a couple of nude scenes and a happy-clappy sing-song finale.'

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This is insane superficial, for example in italy we have had Pasolini or Fellini or Bava or Massacesi and please don't call them neorealist....

and for you english, you give to the world Peter Sellers! isn't enough? And "the wicker man"! And also add '70 Hal Ashby, "A Zoo and two Nought", David Lean, "Come play with me", Hammer Films....
but yes, compared to Japan or USA or Italy or India, UK cinema is poorest, but with some great exception. But UK beats quite every other country for others forms of art, like music.

Don't forget Keiller's spiritual father Chris Marker, who is also a brit (who, er, made most of his films in France).

There's always the "Carry On" films

have you seen bullet boy, mark? it's really engaging, a good story, pretty conscious and moral without being preachy and features an absolutely scintillating performance from so solid's asher d. it is a good british film.

Chris Marker was born in Mongolia apparently, of French descent. Marker wasn't his real name, it was a pseudonym of some sort.

British film, if we can say that there is such a thing, seems to me to always work best with small casts, small spaces. This goes for TV too. Big blockbusters, sprawling gangster flicks, action thrillers, 'event' movies, this sort of thing we can't do. But this in no way limits the options open to film makers: it's ideal for comedies, horror, psychological thrillers, character driven stuff, etc. The interesting thing about this is that if you look at British TV and film exports that have been most successful critically and financially they tend to fit this profile. I'm not saying any of this is necessarily top-drawer film-making (although I enjoyed all of these), but 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead, and the Office all did well in reviews and sales; and our pedigree is in this sort of stuff - Tinker Tailor was mentioned on another thread and this is exemplary British film making, and it's the sort of thing no one else really pulls off. As is Withnail of course, and what about Hitchcock. American funded, yes, but his instincts were British. I think Hollywood could be a problem here - the temptation is too great to make big expensive films, and all the identity (and appeal) of them is lost, so why bother.

Guy Ritchie, who understands Get Carter like Noel Gallagher 'understands' the Beatles, can piss off.

Yeah, I like all the Caine classics, especially Funeral in Berlin.

BTW Mark, a crack team of Mossad frogmen have been dispatched to address your Wallace and Grommit cultural treachery. [It wasn't you who... you know... lit the blue touch-paper was it?]

I think Patrick Keiller has been mentioned upthread but I want to second that emotion.

Rambler said:

American funded, yes, but his instincts were British.

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I agree with this, but it might be worth working out what it means. One one of the big factors in the structure of feeling in H's films is Catholicism, which sits uneasily with sweeping ideas of 'Britishness'.

I see what you're saying Melmoth, but I don't completely buy it - Catholicism may have been constitutionally expunged from British life for a couple of centuries (amazingly it wasn't that long ago that Catholic MPs were allowed once more), but to pretend that it's nothing to do with 'Britishness' is a bit spurious I think: certainly my concept of 'Britishness' needn't exclude Catholic sensibilities (or Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, etc.), just as it needn't be particularly Anglican-Protestant (or indeed aetheist or agnostic).

Thinking about it again, the features I think are 'British' in British film are related to the particular circumstances of British dramatic arts. Firstly, we have one of the best (the best?) theatrical traditions in the world: this means that there is a high proportion of good script writers and, even more so, outstanding actors. And these are actors who at some point in their lives have been on stage, and have read Shakespeare and so on (obviously this is all generalising, but I'm talking about proportions: more Brit actors have played Shakespeare than actors from other countries), and on screen work best in tight, stage-like settings, with good lines that need strong delivery.

The other factor is that the British film (and TV) industry never has any money. So there is an accumulated knowledge in the industry from people who have learnt to make more from limited resources; combine this with the aspects of our acting tradition mentioned above, and that explains, I think, the 'Britishness' I've suggested. And those are qualities that I think Hitchcock always carried with him - that's what I was getting it. I don't see how this should conflict with any Catholic sensibilities (and, let's be honest, Catholicism is full of potent imagery, so why not draw from it?).