5.1.4 From bedsits to Bond: cinema in the 1960s Life stories: Free Cinema As the big studios struggled in the mid 1950s a new, independent strain of film-making gathered pace A group of young documentary makers established Free Cinema, a movement that held six programmes between 1956 and 1959 Like the Angry Young Men writing for theatre, the figures of Free Cinema were irreverent toward the Establishment and bored with the old social and sexual mores Lindsay Anderson and Karel Reisz were the key film-makers, but Free Cinema also showed work by the likes of Roman Polanski and French New Wavers Franỗois Truffaut and Claude Chabrol In common, their work documented the stuff of everyday life, free (they felt) from the orthodoxies of traditional film-making Shooting on location using hand-held 16mm cameras, they made documentaries like We are the Lambeth Boys (1957), a Karel Reisz film that followed a group of south London teens “TH ES E FI LM S W ER E N O T M A D E TO G ETH ER ; N O R W I TH TH E I D EA O F S H O W I N G TH EM TO G ETH ER B U T W H EN TH EY C A M E TO G ETH ER , W E FELT TH EY H A D A N ATTI TU D E I N C O M M O N I M PLI C I T I N TH I S ATTI TU D E I S A B ELI EF I N FR EED O M , I N TH E I M PO R TA N C E O F PEO PLE A N D I N TH E S I G N I FI C A N C E O F TH E EV ER Y D AY.” Free Cinema film programme, 1956 Sinking feeling: New Wave cinema Free Cinema led directly to the New Wave of British film in the late 1950s and early 1960s It took the social realism of those documentaries and made drama from it, cutting into the marrow of workin-class life The warts and all subject matter saw the genre christened ‘kitchen sink’ Anderson and Reisz both went across from Free Cinema to New Wave, joined by another director, Tony Richardson, graduate of the playwright’s school, who had a hand in more New Wave films than most There was a continuity of technicians too, notably with cameraman Walter Lassally Room at the Top (1958), directed by Jack Clayton, lifted the veil first when working-class Joe was torn between clawing his way up the social ladder and cosying up to the French woman he falls in love with Its popularity paved the way for a rash of kitchen 231 Identity: the foundations of British culture Literature and philosophy Art, architecture and design Performing arts Cinema, photography and fashion Media and communications Food and drink Living culture: the state of modern Britain