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Billy Liar (film)
''Billy Liar'' is a 1963 British CinemaScope comedy-drama film based on the 1959 novel by Keith Waterhouse. Directed by John Schlesinger, it stars Tom Courtenay (who had understudied Albert Finney in the West End theatre adaptation of the novel) as Billy and Julie Christie as Liz, one of his three girlfriends. Mona Washbourne plays Mrs. Fisher and Wilfred Pickles plays Mr. Fisher. Rodney Bewes, Finlay Currie and Leonard Rossiter also feature. The Cinemascope photography is by Denys Coop and Richard Rodney Bennett supplied the score. The film belongs to the British New Wave, inspired by both the earlier kitchen sink realism movement and the French New Wave. Characteristic of the style is a documentary/'' cinéma vérité'' feel and the use of real locations (in this case, many in the city of Bradford in Yorkshire). Plot Billy Fisher lives in Yorkshire with his parents and grandmother. Billy wishes to get away from his stifling job and family life. To escape the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Schlesinger
John Richard Schlesinger ( ; 16 February 1926 – 25 July 2003) was an English film and stage director, and actor. He emerged in the early 1960s as a leading light of the British New Wave, before embarking on a successful career in Hollywood, often directing films dealing frankly in provocative subject matter, combined with his status as one of the rare openly gay directors working in mainstream films. Schlesinger started his career making British dramas '' A Kind of Loving'' (1962), ''Billy Liar'' (1963), and ''Far from the Madding Crowd'' (1967). He won the Academy Award for Best Director for '' Midnight Cowboy'' (1969) and was Oscar-nominated for '' Darling'' (1965) and ''Sunday Bloody Sunday'' (1971). He gained acclaim for his Hollywood films '' The Day of the Locust'' (1975) and '' Marathon Man'' (1976). His later films include '' Madame Sousatzka'' (1988) and '' Cold Comfort Farm'' (1995). He also served as an associate director of the Royal National Theatre. Over ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rodney Bewes
Rodney Bewes (27 November 1937 – 21 November 2017) was an English television actor and writer who portrayed Bob Ferris in the BBC television sitcom '' The Likely Lads'' (1964–66) and its colour sequel ''Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?'' (1973–74). Bewes' later career was of a much lower profile, but he continued to work as a stage actor. Early life Bewes was born in Bingley in the West Riding of Yorkshire, to Horace, an Eastern Electricity Board showroom clerk, and Bessie, who was a teacher of children with learning difficulties. His family lived for a few years in the Crossflatts district of Bingley, before they moved to Luton, where he attended Stopsley Secondary School. Because of his early ill-health (he suffered from asthma and bronchitis), one of the reasons the family moved, his mother tended to keep him off school. His illness receded, and the family eventually returned to the north. Having seen an advertisement in the '' Daily Herald'', Bewes auditioned f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethel Griffies
Ethel Griffies (born Ethel Woods; 26 April 1878 – 9 September 1975) was a British actress. She is remembered for portraying the ornithology, ornithologist Mrs. Bundy in Alfred Hitchcock's classic ''The Birds (film), The Birds'' (1963). She appeared in stage roles in the United Kingdom and the United States, and had featured roles in around 100 motion pictures. Griffies was one of the oldest working actors in the English-speaking theatre at the time of her death at 97 years old. She acted alongside such stars as May Whitty, Ellen Terry, and Anna Neagle. Biography Griffies was born in Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire, the daughter of actor and manager Samuel Rupert Woods and actress Lillie Roberts. Taken onstage at the age of three, she continued to act for the next 86 years. Griffies married actor Walter Beaumont in 1900; he died in 1910. In 1917, she married actor Edward Cooper (actor), Edward Cooper, who predeceased her by almost two decades. On 9 September 1975, Griffies ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Doncaster
Doncaster ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in South Yorkshire, England. Named after the River Don, Yorkshire, River Don, it is the administrative centre of the City of Doncaster metropolitan borough, and is the second largest settlement in South Yorkshire after Sheffield. Noted for its Horse racing in Great Britain, racing and History of rail transport in Great Britain , railway history, it is situated in the Don Valley on the western edge of the Humberhead Levels and east of the Pennines. It had a population of 87,455 at the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 census, whilst its urban area, built-up area had a population of 160,220, and the wider metropolitan borough had a population of 308,100. Adjacent to Doncaster to its east is the Isle of Axholme in Lincolnshire, which contains the towns of Haxey, Epworth, Lincolnshire, Epworth and Crowle, Lincolnshire, Crowle, and directly south is Harworth Bircotes in Nottinghamshire. Also, within the city's vicinity are Bar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wormwood Scrubs
Wormwood Scrubs, known locally as The Scrubs (or simply Scrubs), is an open space in Old Oak Common located in the north-eastern corner of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in west London. It is the largest open space in the borough, at , and one of the largest areas of common land, common in London. The eastern part, known as Little Wormwood Scrubs, is cut off by Scrubs Lane and the West London line railway. It has been an open public space since the Wormwood Scrubs Act 1879. The southern edge of the Scrubs is the site of two locally important institutions. At the western end is Her Majesty's Prison Service, HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs (HM Prison), Wormwood Scrubs, built between 1875 and 1891 by convict labour. To the east of the prison is the Hammersmith Hospital campus, which includes the relocated Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital. Within the area are several sports facilities, including the Linford Christie Stadium, tens of football pitches, and a pony centr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yorkshire
Yorkshire ( ) is an area of Northern England which was History of Yorkshire, historically a county. Despite no longer being used for administration, Yorkshire retains a strong regional identity. The county was named after its county town, the city of York. The south-west of Yorkshire is densely populated, and includes the cities of Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, Doncaster and Wakefield. The north and east of the county are more sparsely populated, however the north-east includes the southern part of the Teesside conurbation, and the port city of Kingston upon Hull is located in the south-east. York is located near the centre of the county. Yorkshire has a Yorkshire Coast, coastline to the North Sea to the east. The North York Moors occupy the north-east of the county, and the centre contains the Vale of Mowbray in the north and the Vale of York in the south. The west contains part of the Pennines, which form the Yorkshire Dales in the north-west. The county was historically borde ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bradford
Bradford is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in West Yorkshire, England. It became a municipal borough in 1847, received a city charter in 1897 and, since the Local Government Act 1972, 1974 reform, the city status in the United Kingdom, city status has belonged to the larger City of Bradford metropolitan borough. It had a population of 349,561 at the 2011 Census for England and Wales, 2011 census, making it the second-largest subdivision of the West Yorkshire Built-up Area after Leeds, which is approximately to the east. The borough had a population of , making it the List of English districts by population, most populous district in England. Historic counties of England, Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, the city grew in the 19th century as an international centre of Textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution, textile manufacture, particularly wool. It was a boomtown of the Industrial Revolution, and amongst the earliest Industrialisation, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cinéma Vérité
Cinéma vérité (, , ) is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about '' Kino-Pravda''. It combines improvisation with use of the camera to unveil truth or highlight subjects hidden behind reality. It is sometimes called observational cinema, if understood as pure direct cinema: mainly without a narrator's voice-over. There are subtle, yet important, differences between terms expressing similar concepts. Direct cinema is largely concerned with the recording of events in which the subject and audience become unaware of the camera's presence: operating within what Bill Nichols, an American historian and theoretician of documentary film, calls the "observational mode", a fly on the wall. Many therefore see a paradox in drawing attention away from the presence of the camera and simultaneously interfering in the reality it registers when attempting to discover a cinematic truth. History Cinéma vérité can ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Documentary Film
A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and Media studies, media analyst Bill Nichols (film critic), Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in terms of "a filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception [that remains] a practice without clear boundaries". Research into information gathering, as a behavior, and the sharing of knowledge, as a concept, has noted how documentary movies were preceded by the notable practice of documentary photography. This has involved the use of singular Photograph, photographs to detail the complex attributes of History, historical events and continues to a certain degree to this day, with an example being the War photography, conflict-related photography achieved by popular figures such as Mathew Brady during the Am ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French New Wave
The New Wave (, ), also called the French New Wave, is a French European art cinema, art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of iconoclasm. New Wave filmmakers explored new approaches to film editing, editing, visual style, and narrative, as well as engagement with the social and political upheavals of the era, often making use of irony or exploring existential themes. The New Wave is often considered one of the most influential movements in the history of cinematography, cinema. However, contemporary critics have also argued that historians have not sufficiently credited its female co-founder, Agnès Varda, and have criticized the movement's prevailing themes of sexism towards women. The term was first used by a group of French film critics and cinephiles associated with the magazine in the late 1950s and 1960s. These critics rejected the ("T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kitchen Sink Realism
Kitchen sink realism (or kitchen sink drama) is a British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays, whose protagonists usually could be described as " angry young men" who were disillusioned with modern society. It used a style of social realism which depicted the domestic situations of working-class Britons, living in cramped rented accommodation and spending their off-hours drinking in grimy pubs, to explore controversial social and political issues ranging from abortion to homelessness. The harsh, realistic style contrasted sharply with the escapism of the previous generation's so-called " well-made plays". The films, plays and novels employing this style are often set in poorer industrial areas in the North of England, and use the accents and slang heard in those regions. The film '' It Always Rains on Sunday'' (1947) is a precursor of the genre and the John Osborne play '' Look Back in Anger'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British New Wave
The British New Wave is a style of films released in Great Britain between 1959 and 1963. The label is a translation of ''Nouvelle Vague'', the French term first applied to the films of François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard among others. Stylistic characteristics The British New Wave was characterised by many of the same stylistic and thematic conventions as the French New Wave. Usually in black and white, these films had a spontaneous quality, often shot in a pseudo-documentary (or ''cinéma vérité'') style on real locations and with real people rather than extras, apparently capturing life as it happens. There is considerable overlap between the New Wave and the '' angry young men'', those artists in British theatre and film such as playwright John Osborne and director Tony Richardson, who challenged the social ''status quo''. Their work drew attention to the reality of life for the working classes, especially in the North of England, often characterised as "It's grim up no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
