Look Back at England: The British New Wave

9/2/07 to 10/26/07

Never mind the Sex Pistols-back in the 1960s, Britain's Angry Young Man movement made the phrase "There will always be an England" sound more like a prognosis than a promise. If these brilliantly scripted films, starring the likes of Richard Burton, Albert Finney, Alan Bates, and Laurence Harvey, were prophetic then, they are classics now.

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  • The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, September 27

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  • Past
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Past Films

  • Bedazzled

    • Friday, October 26 7:00 PM

    The Peter Cook and Dudley Moore cult classic comedy, a Faustian bargain at any price.

  • If . . .

    • Friday, October 26 9:05 PM

    In 1968, the boarding school as metaphor for social control was a shot heard 'round the world. "A modern classic."-Time Out

  • The Knack . . . and How to Get It

    • Friday, October 19 7:00 PM

    England swings like a pendulum in Richard Lester's take on hooking up and how to do it, '60s-style. Rita Tushingham shines through the script's inherent misogyny.

  • Alfie

    • Friday, October 19 8:45 PM

    Before Alfie, Michael Caine was just some great British actor. In its offhand candor on all things sexual, Alfie was what it was all about.

  • Georgy Girl

    • Wednesday, October 10 7:30 PM

    Hey there, Lynn Redgrave-you were irrepressible in this antic tragedy of Swinging London and its discontents. With Alan Bates as a catch, and James Mason as a lech.

  • Séance on a Wet Afternoon

    • Wednesday, October 3 7:30 PM

    Decades later this tale of a London kidnapping remains suspenseful; creepy, too, since ransom is not the reason. Kim Stanley as a medium and Richard Attenborough as her milquetoast mate are "utterly superb."-Time Out

  • The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

    • Thursday, September 27 7:30 PM

    Tom Courtenay in Tony Richardson's famously experimental narrative recounting the events in the life of a Borstal lad as he runs track-running for his life.

  • Room at the Top

    • Wednesday, September 26 7:30 PM

    With the marvelous Simone Signoret, this classic about a Machiavellian social climber (Laurence Harvey) endures as a love story, set against the fraught class relations in the North Country in the 1950s. Jack Clayton directs.

  • The Servant

    • Wednesday, September 19 7:30 PM

    Let's play master and servant! Dirk Bogarde and James Fox do it in this striking parable on class conflict, Joseph Losey's first collaboration with Harold Pinter.

  • Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

    • Saturday, September 15 8:40 PM

    Albert Finney's star-making turn as a young Nottingham factory worker to the manner born, a consummate boozer, lover, gambler, and philosopher.

  • Billy Liar

    • Friday, September 14 7:00 PM

    John Schlesinger's Billy Liar broke with kitchen-sink realism to provide star-making roles for Tom Courtenay as a daydreaming undertaker's assistant and Julie Christie as a wistful beatnik.

  • Darling

    • Friday, September 14 9:00 PM

    Schlesinger's time capsule of Swinging London, with Julie Christie as a model on the make, Dirk Bogarde, and Laurence Harvey. "Diamond-hard, diamond-bright."-New Yorker

  • This Sporting Life

    • Wednesday, September 12 7:30 PM

    Richard Harris as the essential working-class antihero, a bruised and bruising rugby player in England's North Country, in Lindsay Anderson's forceful, psychologically complex first feature, noted for introducing a truly modern sensibility to British cinema.

  • A Taste of Honey

    • Sunday, September 9 5:00 PM

    Interracial sex, homosexuality, and unwed pregnancy had the shock of the new in 1961, when Rita Tushingham worked her way into viewers' hearts.

  • The Entertainer

    • Sunday, September 9 7:00 PM

    Laurence Olivier as a has-been music-hall performer-and Alan Bates and Albert Finney in their screen debuts-in John Osborne's play-turned-film, Olivier's "greatest contemporary role."-Pauline Kael

  • Three Short Films by Lindsay Anderson (Free Screening!)

    • Thursday, September 6 5:30 PM

    Anderson's brief, poetic documentaries were a precursor to the British New Wave.

  • Look Back in Anger

    • Sunday, September 2 5:00 PM

    Richard Burton is truly, madly angry-also eloquent, and unforgettable-as the jazz-playing misfit Jimmy Porter in the 1958 film based on John Osborne's bombshell play, directed by Tony Richardson.