I've been very busy the past couple weeks, namely graduating and work. The better of my two jobs entails film research, so for the past week or so I've been looking into "British Kitchen Sink Realism" (also referred to as British Realism or British New Wave), a brief film movement from the late 50's, early 60's, that foregrounds working class citizens - typically 20-somethings - struggling against the deeply entrenched class system in England. The directors are relatively unknown today - Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson, Bryan Forbes, Jack Clayton to name a few - with the exception of John Schlesinger, who continued to make movies until his death in 2003.
The titular "Kitchen Sink" is meant to be slightly ironic, deriving from the way kitchen sinks are typically viewed in British films before and after this movement: clean, pearly white porcelain that idealizes the bourgeois household - a kind of holy grail of success. This is precisely the portrayal of Britain that Tony Richardson - the father of the movement - intended to destroy with his first theatrical production Look Back In Anger, which was only later adapted to the film medium. It was a critical success to be sure, but certainly not fiscally. On and on the story goes. The establishment of Woodfall Films, the creation of some of the most highly acclaimed British films (The Loneliness of The Long Distance Runner, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, A Taste of Honey, Room at The Top, etc.), it's failures and subsequent demise.
All that said, I have yet to see any of these films. Ha ha! I'm still waiting on a few to arrive, at which point I'll start studying and writing on those. As a result of the research, I've posted a few more links on the side bar.
At any rate, lack of writing = No Good. Definitley go time.
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