Free Cinema

Free Cinema 1952-1963 U.K. British Film Institute (475 minutes/three DVDs) Facets Video, 2006.

Nothing could be less ‘typical’ than a Saturday night at Piccadilly Circus or a Sunday morning at the old Covent Garden flower market in the hands of imaginative young filmmakers seeking their subjects in the ordinary.

This three-DVD set reissued by the British Film Institute includes 14 short documentary films, two short ‘art’ pieces, and a recent documentary which looks back at a group of young British filmmakers in the 1950s who called their movement Free Cinema. 

Hand-held cameras catch revelers at an annual bash for miners in Durham, as well as ‘peepers’ with binoculars trying to spot young couples making out in the bushes. American and British servicemen, civilians and prostitutes look each other over in the heart of a Saturday night. A film editor lays bare a campy amusement park exhibitor’s pretense of torture and death by execution as family entertainment.

Nightlife on Piccadilly Circus in Claude Goretta and Alain Tanner's Nice Time (1957).

An old East End Jewish neighborhood of storefronts and apartments appears through the crosshairs of a developer’s transit. A northern mill town closes down for the weekend. A working shed of Lancashire railway engineers regrets the passing of coal-fired steam to diesel locomotives.

A pair of deaf mutes as Beckettsian clowns is pestered by children as they make their way across the working industrial landscapes and German bomb-devastated postwar vacant lots of East End docklands. A Hungarian refugee newly arrived in London speaks little English and seeks a street address without the postal district code.

Eduardo Paolozzi and Michael Andrews in Lorenza Mazzetti's Together (1956).

A long-suffering ‘vegetable of love’ pursues her narcissistic spouse through artsy-surreal Chelsea where self-absorbed young men smooth sugar obsessively in bowls and umbrella-wielding middle-aged men in bowlers and macs are The Enemy.

London schoolchildren play street games with traditional counting songs, and adolescent girls skip rope and chalk squares across Edinburgh. Their older peers jitterbug to live rockabilly music at a London youth club and to r&b and Dixieland jazz in a pub.

Edinburgh schoolgirls with happy feet in N. McIsaac's The Singing Street (1952)

A local group of five family-owned West Riding weekly newspapers (still in operation) is profiled in the context of the communities they serve, from reporters and advertising personnel on the street, to composing and proofing the galleys and making pages from hot lead, to the early morning delivery boys. 

We also see and hear the distinctive individual voices of many faces in the crowd that marched to Aldermaston in Easter 1958 to protest Britain’s nuclear weapons program. The uncredited unseen narrator is the young actor Richard Burton.

'Ordinary people' protesting Britain's nuclear arms program in March to Aldermaston (1959). 

They called themselves Free Cinema. The original ‘they’ were Lorenza Mazzetti, Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz, and Tony Richardson. It was a start, if not a ‘new wave’; they made their pictures and never looked back.

They called their movement ‘free,’ because their projects, mostly short documentaries, were free from the strictures of studio suits and sponsors. The British Film Institute’s Experimental Film Fund provided them minimal funding to shoot and complete their films as they saw fit. (Reisz worked for Ford’s film unit with the understanding that he could use its facilities for his own work.)

These short films document what had been predominately white urban working- and middle-class Britain in the first era of the Cold War. From today’s perspective, it can be seen as much a look back at a disappearing industrial Britain as a look forward at how these films influenced what followed. The streets feel more open and at the same time more empty with the incredibly few automobiles there used to be on them.

Empty streets on a Friday night in the north in Michael Grigsby's Tomorrow's Saturday (1962).

The young men (and women) who made these films are less notably ‘angry’ than their dramatic contemporaries such as John Osborne; they were more focused on training their limited technology—mostly hand-held, black & white 16mm movie cameras—on their living subjects than training an audience.

The films’ authenticity derives from the cameras’ go-with-the-flow subjectivity. The cinematographers realized that what they were doing was not strictly objective, though some editors had a heavier hand than others (e.g., campy torture and execution = family entertainment). The subjects speak eloquently for themselves, more often than not.

Images that speak for themselves: Lindsay Anderson's O Dreamland (1953).

The sound technology at this time was primitive and rather limited. A viewer gets to know these mostly anonymous ‘ordinary people’ by their faces. They are fascinating to watch as characters, from the neighborhood children and working people who know each other well to strangers on London streets, as they interact with each other within the contexts of their particular settings.

One of the most intriguing features throughout this collection is watching how expressive people’s hands can be, what they do with their hands, where they put them, and how they use them.

Small Is Beautiful—The Story of the Free Cinema Films Told by Their Makers, the 43-minute, 2006 documentary included at the end of the set, gives a good introduction to the movement and its personalities and places them in a broader context.

Walter Lassally, a Free Cinema cinematographer, said he developed his technique for shooting Every Day but Christmas (1957), a typical morning among vendors at the old Covent Garden fruit, vegetable and flower market, and the short art film Together (1956), from closely observing his subjects and getting used to the rhythms in which they moved in their spaces.    

Covent Garden flower market in Lindsay Anderson's Every Day Except Christmas (1957)

‘I studied this rhythm so that when I was ready to shoot,’ Lassally said, ‘I was able to follow that rhythm and to anticipate. It’s like you’re a fly on the wall, but you’re an intelligent fly, and you’re very well trained, you’ve observed the process and you’re ready to film it in the most effective manner without drawing attention to yourself.

‘There again, like with Together, the result was a film which you can look at fifty years later and be perfectly happy with,’ he said.

Lost in the city in Robert Vas' Refuge England (1959).

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The films are:

DVD #1

O Dreamland 1953 (12 minutes) directed by Lindsay Anderson, filmed by John Fletcher. Middle- and working-class crowds enjoy themselves at an enormous amusement park and pavilion in Margate, England, where campy sexuality and torture and death by execution are part of the entertainment. 16 mm

Momma Don’t Allow 1956 (22 minutes) directed by Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson, filmed by Walter Lassally, edited by John Fletcher; set among young local regulars, including a dental assistant, a butcher, and a train cleaner (and some incidental slumming toffs) who come to dance at Art and Viv Sanders’ Wood Green Jazz Club in the Fishmonger’s Arms (north London), featuring the Chris Barber Jazz Band. 16mm

Together 1956 (49 minutes) directed by Lorenza Mazzetti with the collaboration of Denis Horne and the technical assistance of Lindsay Anderson, John Fletcher and Walter Lassally, among others. Two deaf mutes as Beckettsian clowns (British painter Michael Andrews and the Scottish sculptor and pop art pioneer Eduardo Paolozzi) lyrically navigate the postwar ruins and oversized industrial landscapes of the old East End docklands, pestered by children. 35mm

Wakefield Express 1952 (30 minutes) written and directed by Lindsay Anderson with John Fletcher, filmed by Walter Lassally, commentary by George Potts. A profile of a family-owned local newspaper group told in the context of the communities it serves in the West Riding of Yorkshire (Wakefield, Horbury, Pontefract, Selby and Skyrack, etc.), showing where the news and advertising comes from and how these weekly newspapers are produced and distributed. 16mm

Nice Time 1957 (17 minutes) directed by Claude Goretta and Alain Tanner, filmed by John Fletcher. Throngs of pleasure seekers in Piccadilly Circus on a Saturday night, centered on the statue of Eros. Filmed on 20 consecutive Saturday nights using the natural light, with pieces of movie soundtracks, barkers, a busker, and stray conversations. Shot at night with HPS Ilford 400 ASA 16mm stock.

The Singing Street 1952 (30 minutes) written and directed by N. McIsaac, J.T.R. Ritchie and R. Townsend. Edinburgh schoolgirls singing traditional songs while skipping rope and chalk squares and playing sidewalk games. 16mm

Every Day Except Christmas 1957 Ford of Britain’s Look at Britain!-1 (39 minutes) directed by Lindsay Anderson, filmed by Walter Lassally, edited by John Fletcher, music by Daniele Paris, narration by Alun Owen (who later wrote the screenplay for A Hard Day’s Night). A typical morning among vendors operating stalls at the 300-year-old Covent Garden fruit, vegetable and flower market (closed 1974). Shot inside at night with then-new HPS Ilford 400 ASA 35mm stock.

DVD #2

Refuge England 1959 (27 minutes) directed and cowritten by Robert Vas, filmed by Walter Lassally and Louis Wolfers, with Tibor Molnár as a Hungarian refugee of the failed 1956 uprising against the Soviet Union, new to London, trying to find a London address without a postal district code. 16mm

Enginemen 1959 Unit Five Seven (17 minutes) directed and written by Michael Grigsby and his team, colleagues from his day job at Granada Television, among railroad engineers and rolling stock at a locomotive shed at Newton Heath, near Manchester, England. Unit Five Seven’s first film. 16mm

We Are the Lambeth Boys 1959 Ford of Britain’s Look at Britain!-2 (49 minutes)   directed by Karel Reisz, filmed by Walter Lassally, edited by John Fletcher, music by Johnny Dankworth and the Johnny Dankworth Orchestra and the Mickey Williams Group. A lively profile of activities offered at Alford House, a youth club in Kennington in south London, among a core of its local 350 young men and women members. 35mm  

Food for a Blluuusssshhhhhh! 1959 (30 minutes) directed by Elizabeth Russell, filmed by Alan Forbes, edited by Jack Gold, with Elizabeth Russell, Nicholas Ferguson, Felicity Innes, Brian Innes. A long-suffering ‘vegetable of love’ pursues her narcissistic spouse through artsy-surreal Chelsea where self-absorbed young men smooth sugar in bowls and middle-aged men in bowlers and macs are The Enemy. The story ends on the threshold of The World’s End pub. 16mm

DVD #3 Beyond Free Cinema

One Potato, Two Potato 1957 (21 minutes) directed by Leslie Daiken, filmed by Peter Kennedy, edited by Morag Maclennan. London schoolchildren larking and playing street games among postwar bombed out blocks to a soundtrack of traditional rhymes and counting songs.

March to Aldermaston 1959 (33 minutes) an anonymously-made collaborative effort about the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament-organized, four-day march during Easter weekend 1958 from Trafalgar Square to the hydrogen-bomb producing factory at Aldermaston, about 50 miles west of London, with an uncredited narration by Richard Burton.

The Vanishing Street 1962 (19 minutes) directed, written and filmed by Robert Vas.  The ‘street’ is Hessel Street, high street of a soon-to-be-razed old East End Jewish neighborhood of storefronts and apartments, a synagogue, a Yiddish newspaper and kibitzers, viewed through the crosshairs of a developer’s transit.

Tomorrow’s Saturday 1962 Unit Five Seven (17 minutes) directed and written by Michael Grigsby, filmed by Chris Faulds in the summers of 1959 and 1960 among the working populaces of the industrial mill towns Blackburn and Preston, Lancashire, closing down the mills and mines for the weekend. The broad empty streets without automobiles feel unnaturally eerie.

Gala Day 1963 (25 minutes) directed by John Irvin with several teams of cameramen, shot among revelers and paraders at the Durham Miner’s Gala on July 21, 1962. Irvin got into hot water for including scenes in which men, some with binoculars, appear to be ‘peeping’ at couples making out in the shrubbery.

Small Is Beautiful 2006 (43 minutes) directed by Christophe Dupin. A concise, expository film about Free Cinema, including interviews with cameraman Walter Lassally and directors Michael Grigsby and Alain Tanner. 

Making whoopee in Lindsay Anderson's O Dreamland (1953)