Swinging Britain 1963- 1973

Focus Films: Other Films Studied:

A Hard Day's Night (Lester, 1964) Alfie (Lewis Gilbert, 1966)
Darling (Schlesinger, 1965) Performance (Cammell & Roeg, 1970)

The social and economic climate of Britian in the 1960s went through a dramatic change.
The so-called 'baby-boomers' of the population 'bulge' (born soon after World War II) began
to question class and gender stereotypes. While this new generation had unprecedented
buying power, representing opportunities for marketing new gadgets, fashions and styles,
they also resisted doing things in the same old ways. The 1950s had been a time of austerity
with rationing, low employment and little money for luxury items (like cars, fridges, washing
machines and TVs). But all that had changed and Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan,
started the decade by announcing that Britains had "never had it so good."

British pop music in particular was gaining international attention - especially the Liverpool
sensation called The Beatles. The only film musicals with such music were those made with
Elvis Presley but A Hard Day's Night broke new ground by using grainy black and white film
stock and following a narrative that was similar to the real lives of the 'fab four' as they
rushed from stage venue to TV studio. The film presented moments of surreal silliness
mixed with screaming fans who were not simply acting up for the cameras. It is difficult now
to see its radical nature: the mood of the film ushered in a new way of presenting pop music
on film that looked forward to the era of the pop video and MTV. It would change
everything.

Meanwhile 'serious' British filmmakers were busy putting gritty northern realism on the
screen. The success of films like Room at the Top, This Sporting Life, Saturday Night and
Sunday Morning, A Kind of Loving and Billy Liar had attacked the hypocrisy of the old
moralities which trapped ordinary people.

Darling turned the attack on to the media by showing how the ambitions of an ordinary girl
like Diana Scott could be crushed by the twisted values of the new decade. Both this film and
Alfie dealt openly with subjects that would have been taboo only a few years earlier: divorce,
extra-marrital sex and abortion were all open to the scrutiny of the new British film-goer.
But while Alfie became the stereotypical 60s opportunist male, he was ironically a 1950s
creation.

While Darling now looks dated, it was an earnest attempt to address crass attitudes which
accompanied the sound of pop music, fashionable clothes and the long hair of this decade.
But in a way this film, like the more stylish and enigmatic Blow Up, was looking in from
outside - it was another part of the 'establishment' trying to understand what was happening
down at street level. Films like Alfie and Darling implied that going against accepted
behaviours of class and gender could only lead to ruin. Not until the end of the decade could
the formal properties of film (use of music and special effects) start to open the complexities
of gender, class, age and race issues in more thoroughly integrated ways.

Though released in 1970, Performance was filmed in 1968 and represents the dark inside of
the 1960s experimental mix of fame, sex, drugs and pop music. Made by an 'insider' from the
counter-culture (Donald Cammell), it is partly inspired by painting (Francis Bacon) and
literature (Jorge Luis Borges). Its real theme concerns identity and power. Generically it
can be seen as a gangster film mixed with the pop musical. Most of its action takes place over
a very hard day's night indeed!