Posted on 12/27/2009 6:46:32 PM PST by Steelfish
Classic British Cinema Has Become An Elusive Delight The England I love is in the old films of Ealing, Elstree and Shepperton - and they're becoming harder to see.
Simon Heffer 26 Dec 2009
We all have a cultural comfort zone. It is the place where we go when we need to feel entirely at one with the world and have the ultimate relaxation. For years – actually, decades – I thought that, for me, it was music. Then, not so long ago, I realised that was not the case. Most of my favourite music is loud, agitated, violent stuff – there is nothing comforting about Vaughan Williams's 6th, the last act of Götterdämmerung or Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem, for example.
And such as is not noisy is so laden with nostalgia that it evokes too much the lost-forever past, which in itself is not necessarily a comfort. I then realised what the land of lost content truly was: it is old films.
To be more specific, in my case, it is old British films. I like old American films too, but a little of them goes a long way; and old French films are even better, but they represent an exoticism that goes beyond mere comfort. However, put me in front of a television with a black-and-white British film made at any point between about 1935 and 1960, and I am in heaven.
The England I love is not the England I live in; the England I love is in old films. I am sure it was an era of bad food, lower life expectancy, the reek of tobacco and what we would now call illiberalism, but I love it. I feel instinctively at home there. I understand the tones of voice. I understand the understatement.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
BTTT
Examples:
Space:1999
Inspector Morse
Monty Python's Flying Circus
Fawlty Towers
Life On Mars
Danger UXB
Spooks (Known as MI-5 in the US)
That's merely scratching the surface.
I imagine there were Romans who had the same nostalgic feeling reading Tacitus and Juvenal as the Visigoths were burning down the city.
It was the same way for my father, and I assume his father too. What I would like to see is a classic movie and TV broadcaster in HD...Ever since I went HD at home, I cannot watch the old American movies, the picture quality is poor, and of course since AMC went commercial, they have been unwatchable.
My wife and I have the “Upstairs Downstairs” series, and we have watched it so many times that it has become trite. But it is still comforting. There was once such a time before our industrial strength relativism dissolved all values.
That picture from “Kind Hearts and Coronets” (”In that case, I’ll have a small glass of developer.”) was a keeper. I loved that movie. Good article. I share the authors love for those old British films, and for the Britain that lives in them.
The article reads like a Ray Davies/Kinks LP. The longing for the lost England is the theme of Village Green Preservation Society and Arthur.
I never miss “Keeping Up Appearances”
I so associated Alec Guiness with those great comedies of the fifties that when
“The Bridge on the River Kwai” came out I couldn’t imagine him in a dramtic role.
I love that era of GB too. Just read James Herriot and all the Miss Reads.
Back when the British had backbone and class.
Examples: Space:1999 Er yeah. Get the bad news out first? It took me three episodes to realize it wasn;t in SuperMarionation.
And most of your examples are so last millennium.
That's merely scratching the surface.
Just current crime shows alone
the 40s Foyle's War will they call the new season Foyle's PostWar?
the 60s George Gently
the 80s Ashes to Ashes Is Gene Hunt an imaginary character or not? (OK yes I am aware of the concept of fiction... but you know what I mean)
the 00s Midsomer Murders Pretty countryside, strange people, and a lot of death (It's not called Midsomer Murder), with One Sane Man trying to understand it.
New Tricks The only "cold case" show I watch: It's characters, not plot, which make a TV series - here the four leads have about 160 years acting experience between them.
Put on your slippers and sit by the fire
You’ve reached your top and you just can’t get any higher
You’re in your place and you know where you are
In your Shangri-la
Sit back in your old rocking chair
You need not worry, you need not care
You can’t go anywhere
Shangri-la, Shangri-la, Shangri-la
That and Waterloo Sunset are two of my favorites by the Kinks and I have many. Just fired up the CD.
thx!
LOL! Ouch! At least tell me about your impression of Inspector Morse... ;-)
No respect for Nick Tate? ;-)
I'm inclined to agree. This thread prompted me to plug in my recording of Kind Hearts which I'm watching as I type this. I love the characters of the Descoyne family members he played, particularly the idiot clergyman Lord Henry Descoyne ("...It has all the exuberance of Chaucer, without, happily, any of the concomitant crudities"). Great stuff!
A few faves:
Things to Come (1936)
Dead of Night (1945)
Whisky Galore (aka Tight Little Island - 1949)
A Christmas Carol (1951 - Alastair Sim)
The Belles of St. Trinian’s (1954)
A Tale of Two Cities (1958 - Dirk Bogarde)
I’m All Right, Jack (1959)
The Mouse That Roared (1959)
Tunes of Glory (1960) - an amazing portrayal by Alec Guinness, completely unlike his usual roles
Tom Jones (1963)
Great stuff.
Let’s not forget BRIEF ENCOUNTER
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