35 Up is the fifth in a series ofremarkable documentaries that began with the 1963 film for Granada TV, 7 Up, inwhich seven-year-olds from widely variant backgrounds were interviewed. The samechildren were filmed at seven-year intervals into adulthood. The feature film 35Up incorporates footage from past interviews, so as to compare the progress ofthese lives which are extraordinary only in being compellingly real. Andsometimes dubious progress it is; in one case, the bright child who wanted to bea tour-bus guide and became a vagabond, it is a tragic progression toward theedge. In another, humorous upper-class twitlet grows into insufferable barrister.35 Up, like its predecessors, is a film about the British class system, and it isalmost by degrees of class that the confident world views expressed by thechildren have metamorphosed into the settled, the almost-secure.