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Touring: Free Cinema
This is the original programme screened at the National Film Theatre in February 1956 and which launched the Free Cinema movement. We have also included Nice Time, a quintessential Free Cinema film.
103 mins total
O Dreamland - New Print
- Dir Lindsay Anderson
- 1953 / b&w / 11 mins / no dialogue
Lindsay Anderson's vibrant and energetic portrait of the Margate funfair on a typically wet summer's day is about the serious business of the English enjoying themselves on holiday. Punctuated by the manic and mechanic laugh of a dummy policeman, the perfectly selected montage of images exposes the shoddiness of the attractions, the bingo halls, slot machines and the animals in the miniature zoo. O Dreamland is every bit as much about exploitation as it is about pleasure.
Momma Don't Allow - New Print
- Dir Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson
- 1956 / b&w / 22 mins
Momma Don't Allow is an exploration of the emergence of working-class youth culture in the mid-Fifties and focuses on young people jiving the night away in a north London pub. The Teddy Boys may now look rather tame, but the film's exposure of class divisions when a group of 'well-dressed' middle-class groovers arrives to spend a night out slumming it, is genuinely shocking. Using close-ups, the camera draws the viewer into the bar as a participant, picking out the details, the spinning mirror-ball on the ceiling, the men thoughtfully sipping their beer as they listen to Otilie Paterson sing, a young couple's tiff made up as they continue dancing. The last song ends and the dancing stops; hot and tired, they go home.
Together - New Print
- Dir Lorenza Mazzetti, Denis Horne
- Cast Eduardo Paolozzi, Michael Andrews
- 1956 / b&w / 52 mins / no dialogue
Against the background of the bombsites, warehouses and street markets of the late 1950s East End, Together offers a compelling exploration of the isolated lives of two deaf men. Despite its emotive fictional structure, the film is not a typical romanticisation of East End working-class life, but offers a complex, open-ended presentation that refuses to condemn or celebrate. The film is also notable for its extraordinary cast, with great performances from local people and the curious, but very successful casting of the artist Michael Andrews and the internationally known sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi.
Nice Time - New Print
- Dir/scr Claude Goretta, Alain Tanner
- 1957 / b&w / 17 mins
"Impressions of Piccadilly Circus in 1957: hot dogs and nude magazines; dumb cinema queues; posters advertising the glories of war and the horrors of science fiction; lonely faces; searching glances; the parade of amateur and professional 'talent'; presiding over all, the ironic statue of Eros... The observation is untouched by nostalgia, and presents a devastating picture for anyone who thinks of Piccadilly Circus in romantic terms... Magnificent candid camera work by John Fletcher and an imaginative soundtrack help to sharpen the texture of the film with such ironies as the playing of the National Anthem over a shot of a large Coca Cola sign." Monthly Film Bulletin
