Why are British Films so bad‪?‬ Return to Form

In this episode, Ralph and Owen journey into the spectral wastes of British film, asking: what went wrong, and what is to be done? Through kitchen sink realism, folk-horror spooks, socially-engaged documentarians, materially-inclined avant-gardism, and more than a handful of oddballs, the situation seems as underwhelming as it was in 1927, when Kenneth Macpherson opined that “it is no good pretending one has any feeling of hope about it”. Ninety-seven years later, is the landscape still as dispiriting – and why did ‘we’ never get our own New Wave – and why are we still stuck in the kitchen sink? Through cash, ‘character’, class, and capital, there’s a lot to unpick. Regardless, the boys do their best to keep the aspidistra flying.

Who do they discuss? Who don’t they! Anderson, Macpherson, Grierson, Hogg, Keillor, Reisz, Clark, Watkins, Jarman, Brook, Greenaway, Powell & Pressburger, Reed, Lean, Hitchcock, Loach, Leigh. The lot.


00:00:00:00 Intro
00:04:20:04 Early Silent British film
00:05:27:03 Talent leaving Britain for America
00:06:52:14 British documentaries and municipal filmmaking
00:09:09:17 The Studios of the interwar years
00:12:01:16 Powell and Pressburger
00:15:22:14 Class and politics in film
00:17:56:16 Free Cinema movement
00:24:30:13 Woodfall
00:28:15:05 The Third Man
00:30:37:10 60s-70s studio films/Merchant Ivory
00:31:54:13 60s counterculture
00:35:12:00 Folk horror
00:37:04:09 London Filmmakers Coop
00:48:04:15 Playwrights
00:55:27:00 The Paternalism of Social Realism
01:00:11:03 Pedro Costa as a counterpoint to social realism
01:04:16:13 Peter Watkins
01:09:47:05 Lindsay Anderson making an arse of himself
01:10:55:10 Peter Wollen's 1963 essay on the British New Wave
01:13:10:09 Kenneth MacPherson's 1927 article about British film
01:19:02:16 TV's influence in the 70s-80s
01:19:16:09 Alan Clarke
01:23:05:18 Sally Potter
01:30:10:24 Peter Brook
01:31:47:19 90s
01:32:34:21 British art film/essay films
01:37:09:20 00s and 10s
01:40:06:10 Joanna Hogg
01:43:08:18 Borderline (Kenneth Macpherson)
01:48:13:19 Peter Greenaway
01:55:09:09 Top 5 worst tendencies
01:57:31:14 Alternative Top 5 British films
01:59:59:23 Conclusion



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