Hindle Wakes | Teaching at AS Level | Resources for teachers and students

At AS Level

If you are teaching Media Studies you could consider the film under Language, Representation and Audience.
If you are doing WJEC Film Studies there is plenty of scope for close study of the film. The AS module FS3 British Cinema, Passions and Repressions, deals with Messages and Values, and asks for a comparative study of representations around class, gender, sexuality, race or regional identity, including historical and social context. The scheme recommends the study of three films. There is a set focus film, either Brief Encounter (UK, 1945) or Beautiful Thing (UK, 1996). It also requires close study of a single film, and lists about a dozen films to choose from, including The Wicker Man (UK, 1973). The hero of this film is a male virgin who declines the offer of a 'moment of fun', a stark contrast to the actions of Fanny in Hindle Wakes.

Fanny in Hindle Wakes and Laura in Brief Encounter respond in very different ways to the sexual proposition by the male protagonist. Are there factors in the films that might explain these responses?
In Hindle Wakes Fanny goes to Blackpool for the Wakes Week; in Brief Encounter Laura travels once a week to a nearby town. Both settings become sites for illicit relationships. Describe the differences between them.
Referring to the model of narrative proposed by Todorov, ask the students to identify the equilibrium - disruption - equilibrium in Hindle Wakes and compare this with the narrative structure in Brief Encounter. There is an accessible explanation of this model in Graeme Turner's Film as Social Practice (1999, Routledge). Basically, a stable situation (equilibrium) is disrupted (the advent of disequilibrium), producing the dramatic events; the final resolution provides a new stable situation (return to equilibrium). Very often it is the nature of the disruption that is most revealing. While one might argue that sex is the disruptive force in both Hindle Wakes and Brief Encounter, it is clear that this means something rather different in each film.