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September 1999, Week 3

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Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
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From:
Leo Enticknap <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 21 Sep 1999 15:22:57 -0700
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Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
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At 14:12 20/09/99 +0300, you wrote:

>""Educating Rita", "Howards End", "Letter to Brezhnev", "Quadrophenia",
>"Breaking Glass", "Room At the Top", "The Loneliness of the Long
>Distance Runner","The Krays", "The Piano", "Trainspotting", "My
>Beautiful Laundrette", "The Crying Game", "Fever Pitch", "The Full
>Monty", "Pride and Prejudice" (as marketing heritage)

I know that availability of video material is always a problem, but that
having been said, the UK did have a film industry before 1962!  From your
original post I couldn't really get a sense of what educational purpose
showing these films is intended to serve.  If your remit is as broad as to
include any British film of any cultural significance then your students
probably need to just go and watch everything in the National Film and
Television Archive!

That having been said, a list in which almost half the titles are post-1990
is surely unbalanced if the aim is to provide students with an overview of
British cinema.  How about a decade per week, something along the lines of:

Teens

HAMLET (1913, Hepworth)
JANE SHORE (1916, Will Barker?)
THE LIFE STORY OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE (1918, Elvey)

Twenties

LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET (1920, Jack Denton)
THE RING (Hitchcock, 1928)
UNDERGROUND (Asquith, 1928)

Thirties

90 DEGREES SOUTH (1933, Ponting)
(or possibly MAN OF ARAN to replace the above, but this film was so
atypical of the industry and culture from which it emerged, showing it in
this context might be rather misleading)
OH, MR. PORTER (1937, Varnel)
THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT (1939, Arthur Woods)

Forties

FIRES WERE STARTED (1942, Jennings)
THE RED SHOES (1948, Powell & Pressburger)
TRAIN OF EVENTS (1949, Dearden et al) or a more mainstream Ealing title,
e.g. WHISKY GALORE (but the Scottish theme is duplicated in THE WICKER MAN
below), PASSPORT TO PIMLICO or KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS.

Fifties

SEVEN DAYS TO NOON (1950, John Boulting)
SIMBA (1955, Brian Desmond Hurst)
SIMON AND LAURA (1955, Muriel Box)

Sixties

LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1968, Lean)
A suitably scary Hammer title, e.g. THE DEVIL RIDES OUT or FRANKENSTEIN
MUST BE DESTROYED (1969, Fisher)

Seventies

One British seventies horror film, e.g. THE WICKER MAN (1973, Hardy) or
DEATH LINE (1972, Sherman)
A Bond film: I would suggest THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1977, Gilbert) as
typifying the series in the 1970s

Eighties

EDUCATING RITA
THE MISSION (1986, Joffe)
HIDDEN AGENDA (1988, Loach)

Nineties

One 1990s heritage movie plus one gritty melodrama, e.g. THE KRAYS or
TRAINSPOTTING.  However I would be reluctant to programme TRAINSPOTTING for
an audience of non-native English speakers unless the video has subtitles!
Plus also LONDON (1996, Keiller)

I have picked these out of being typical of the genres and movements of
their time rather than as 'quality' films in their own right, and thus more
useful for non-British, non-English speaking students to get a sense of
what British cinema got up to.  You will have trouble getting hold of the
teens and twenties stuff - as far as I know, of the six films I mention,
only THE RING is available on retail video.  So these may have to be
scrapped, but everything else is easily available (in this country, at
least) on VHS.

L

------------------------------------
Leo Enticknap
Projection and Sound Engineer
City Screen Cinemas Ltd., London, UK
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