I read the book by Lynne Reid Banks before I saw the movie. She also wrote two sequels to the story as well as the terrific kid's book THE INDIAN IN THE CUPBOARD.
This is the 1962 story of a pregnant French girl who finds a room in a boarding house when her father kicks her out and gradually comes to find a home there too. Other than Leslie Caron in the starring role, the cast is fairly unfamiliar to me although that is Brock Peters playing the horn. One of those movies where you could wallow in its misery. My favorite kind at fourteen (and sometimes now). One of the many British movies about the working class from the fifties and sixties. It is rare now to find movies that treat urban blue-collar people seriously although perhaps it was then.
What is your favorite movie about this segment of society?
You can find more movies at Todd Mason's blog.
20 comments:
I love those "kitchen-sink dramas" from England in the late 1950s/early 1960s. There are two movies that stick out in my mind: "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" with Albert Finney and "A Kind of Loving" with Alan Bates. There were many others. (We'll have to wait for Todd to provide us with the comprehensive list.)
Ooh, forgot A KIND OF LOVING.
I was going to say "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" but Deb beat me to it.
I also love that they were (mostly?) in black & white. Look at the slightly later GEORGY GIRL (1966) for a realy nostalgic look at London the way it was before it got so Americanized.
Jeff M.
Look Back in Anger was another one.
Marty on our shores.
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
Room at the Top
A Taste of Honey (which you mentioned last time)
Jeff M.
No fair poaching films I brought up! (Emoticon) Though I must admit that when I first caught BILLY LIAR, I was disappointed in comparison with the run of films already cited...when I was catching these on television from about age seven or so up through early adolescence, they'd all been so impressive to me (and such apparent open views into the adult world). While BILLY LIAR, in comparison, was just a miss...so minor that even Clinton deriders didn't bother to cite it much. Kitchen sinkers based on Angry Young Man drama and fiction (and in Delaney's case and some others', observant young women).
The striving to get away from such life, as expressed in the likes of THE KNACK, also related. The US responses included also NOTHING BUT A MAN and, ineptly, the likes of THE SUBTERRANEANS (and go a step further into hokiness and you get THE EXPLOSIVE GENERATION).
I hadn't realized there were two sequels to L-SHAPED's source...Banks, obviously, being Another Angry Young Woman.
Ha ha, "this segment." These are my people ;). It does seem that in North America we've been all about getting out of "this segment."
Usually movies with urban blue-collar workers have some added layer like the heist in "Blue Collar," which was silly when it was shown to be so one guy could pay for braces for his daughter as if all that UAW work to get a dental plan never happened.
I'm currently re-reading John Sayles' novel, "Union Dues," would you be interested in a Friday Forgotten books about it?
My segment too, John.
I read them all but of course, I remember this one more. Just like with the Edna O'Brien books, I remember the first THE GIRL WITH THE GREEN EYES best. I think the visuals always help me to remember.
Patti, you might be interested in this BBC documentary about Levittown, PA.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15598511
My house was even more modest than those. There was a Levittown in PA near where we lived. It seemed like paradise not to live in a row house to me. The chapter on Levittown in the Halberstram book on THE FIFTIES was excellent.
ALFIE.
Well, for that matter, as an undercurrent of the "Harry Palmer" movies (and a nod to the late Ken Russell).
Great to be reminded of one of the great British films of the late 50s and early 60s - always really amused by the fact that, as in ROOM AT THE TOP, they had to cast a Continental actress to play a sexually risque role. The great cinematography is by the amazing Douglas Slocombe, who worked with everyone from Joseph Losey on THE SERVANT to the Indiana Jones trilogy of the 1980s.
Bryan Forbes, who wrote the script and directed this one, also directed the magical WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND, which is unusually looks like at working class life from a child's perspective.
Another good pick Patti
This is a great movie. Of course looking back made me realize how dynamic of an actress Leslie Caron is/was.
I had always take for granted that she was simply Gigi.
Loved Whistle Down the Wind-Hailey and her Dad, right?
I was going to mention Bryan Forbes, who is still alive at 85. He has been married to Nanette Newman since 1955.
We've seen Hayley (one of my first loves) and John Mills on stage at different times.
Saw John in 1974 with Judi Dench in the musical (!) version of J. B. Priestley's THE GOOD COMPANIONS (music, Andre Previn; lyrics, Johnny Mercer, yet it never played in the US to my knowledge) and in 1977 in a revival of Terence Rattigan's SEPARATE TABLES.
Saw Hayley in 1975 in A TOUCH OF SPRING (with Leigh Lawson, whose son she bore the next year) and in 1995 in something called DEAD GUILTY, which I hated so much I walked out at the interval and waited out the second act outside. It was either that or start yelling out stuff at the actors.
I hate when that happens.
Jeff M.
Didn't like many of these movies then and now. There was always something so gray and grim about them. I was a gray and grim kid. Didn't need to find that at the movies.
I'm in the minority, I know.
I wanted sparkle! Happy Endings! Dance numbers. Cowboys! Music!
Well, the campers were with you, Yvette!
The Canadians were heard from with NOBODY WAVED GOODBYE...
MODERN TIMES is a favourite in this category. I also liked THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940) and OF MICE AND MEN (1939) on the plight of migrant labourers during the depression. More recently, I watched NO PLACE LIKE HOME (Jeff Daniels), a very depressing film, and closer to reality in these recessionary times.
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