A British New Wave: The Cinema of Tony Richardson on MUBI
Established in 1958 and named after a Chelsea Street sign, Tony Richardson, John Osborne and Harry Saltzman’s Woodfall Film Productions Studio was behind some of the finest and most significant films British cinema has witnessed.
Richardson, Osborne and Saltzman were three of the original ‘Angry Young Men’, spearheading a creative revolution that broke new ground and reverberated across the globe.
In doing so they challenged the social status quo, drawing attention to the reality of working class life and giving a bold new face to British cinema.
Steven Hess, Woodfall Films Curator, commented:
“Woodfall was a risk taker, a rule breaker, it’s founders and collaborators experimented freely embracing new unproven talent and techniques. Today we still feel its effects in subject, style and sometimes attitude. It is with pleasure that we see MUBI bringing these powerful and enduring films to a new generation and audience.”
FILMS:
Look Back in Anger
1959 – Tony Richardson – Exclusively on MUBI
Jimmy Porter, a disillusioned, angry university graduate has a wife from an upper-middle class background, Alison, and runs a sweet stall. He mistreats Alison and she leaves.
Jimmy will have to come to terms with his grudge against middle-class life and values…
Starring Richard Burton, Look Back in Anger launched a New Wave in British cinema, giving visibility for the first time to the adventures and misadventures of the working classes.
The Entertainer
1960 – Tony Richardson – Exclusively on MUBI
Original UK Version rescanned from the film’s negative
A mordant exploration of failure adapted from John Osborne’s eponymous play.
An astounding performance by Laurence Olivier as the unforgettably unscrupulous Archie Rice, which he claimed to be the best character he ever played.
Saturday Night Sunday Morning
1960 – Karel Reisz
Produced by Tony Richardson, Albert Finney stars as a rebellious, hard-living factory worker juggling relationships with two women, one of whom is married to another man but pregnant with his child in this seminal British classic.
A Taste of Honey
1961 – Tony Richardson
Based on one of the most controversial plays of its time, A Taste of Honey stars Rita Tushingham in her breakout debut role as a disaffected teenager finding her way amid the economic desperation of industrial Manchester.
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
1962 – Tony Richardson
Tony Richardson’s iconic film sees a rebellious youth, sentenced to a boy’s reformatory for robbery and rising through the ranks of the institution through his prowess as a long distance runner.
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