10 great British films of 1976

If the 1970s generally tend to be viewed as the decade that quality forgot when it comes to British cinema, then 1976 might seem like the year that confirms the case. The very titles of much of the year’s cinematic output – Keep it Up Downstairs, Under the Doctor, Queen Kong – make it clear that critical prestige really wasn’t uppermost in the minds of many of the nation’s filmmakers, as cheapo sex comedies and slashers dominated domestic production.

Between the defection of audiences to TV, the tax burden of the 1974 Finance Act being felt, and a summer heatwave taking temperatures to highs of 36°C and keeping people out of the picture palaces, the conditions simply weren’t there for a shiningly successful year of British cinema.

Nonetheless, in a cultural climate that encompassed a British Eurovision win and the emergence of punk, the belated opening of the National Theatre at its South Bank home and the publication of Jeffrey Archer’s debut novel, and the deaths of Sid James and Benjamin Britten, certain worthwhile films still appeared. While only occasionally reflecting the zeitgeist, these included historical dramas with a revisionist streak, deluxe takes on popular fairytales, avant-garde experiments, and some innovative engagements with genre, from horror to the war film.

Director: Jack Gold

R.C. Sherriff’s 1928 play Journey’s End remains one of the definitive dramas of World War I. Filmed for cinema three times (James Whale’s 1930 version was remade in Germany in 1931, then a modern version appeared in 2017), and for TV (as an early live broadcast in 1937 and then again in 1988), it’s also frequently revived in the theatre.

One adaptation tends to get undeservedly overlooked, though – perhaps unsurprising, given that Jack Gold’s Aces High changes Sherriff’s title and also shifts the play’s action from the WWI trenches to the airforce. That’s not the only change that Howard Barker’s script makes to the material, but while the transposition isn’t always seamless, the end result is seldom less than compelling, especially with the addition of excellent aerial sequences (shot by Gerry Fisher) and a solid set of performances from a cast including Malcolm McDowell, Simon Ward, Christopher Plummer, and Peter Firth.

Director: Alan Parker

Despite the dubious elements of its premise – a musical gangster pic pastiche with pre-teens in the archetypal roles of hoods, heavies, molls and ingenues – Alan Parker’s Bugsy Malone has remained a perennially popular entertainment.

Inspired by stories that Parker would tell to keep his kids amused on car journeys, it’s surely that infectious, making-it-up-on-the-spot spirit of play that accounts for the film’s enduring cross-generational appeal – that, and Parker’s evident affection for the genres he’s operating in. And let’s not forget the commitment of the exuberant ensemble of kids – from Jodie Foster’s Tallulah to Florrie Dugger’s Blousey and Scott Baio’s Bugsy – all throwing themselves into the musical numbers and ‘splurge gun’ battles with great gusto.

Director: Stephen Dwoskin

An important influence on Laura Mulvey’s theorising of ‘the gaze’ in cinema, the work of Stephen Dwoskin was nurtured in the underground orbit of Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage, Kenneth Anger and Jonas Mekas, offering an avant-garde alternative to the classical Hollywood spectatorship dynamics that Mulvey’s scholarship critiqued.

Described by Mekas as “a bazaar for voyeurs”, Central Bazaar is the longest of Dwoskin’s experimental works. The film was edited down (albeit to a still-chunky 150 minutes) from footage shot by the filmmaker with a group of participants – strangers who were willing to share and act out their sexual fantasises. Dwoskin’s camera lingers on looks, movements, gestures, costumes and improvisations; whether you view the end result as a profoundly subversive investigation of social relations, or simply as a pretentious proto-Big Brother, the film, once seen, is definitely never forgotten.

Director: James Kenelm Clarke

No self-(dis)respecting list of 1976 British films would be complete without at least one sex ‘n’ violence shocker, given how many were produced in this era. And while calling the controversial Exposé ‘great’ would be a stretch, it earns its keep as a more stylish entry than most into a disreputable but undeniably significant market.

Combining elements of Psycho (1960) and Straw Dogs (1971) with a literary twist, the plot centres on the arrival of a mysterious secretary (Linda Hayden) at the home of a paranoid novelist (Udo Kier). Throw into the mix the author’s sexpot girlfriend (Fiona Richmond) and some brutish locals, and the scene is set for a decidedly eventful time in the country. Indeed, Clarke makes atmospheric use of the rural Essex locations, while a dubbed Kier uses his freaky blue-eyed stare to inimitably unsettling effect. The quintessence of a 1970s guilty pleasure.

Director: Nicolas Roeg

One of Nicolas Roeg’s signature films is also one of his most enigmatic – a tone poem on themes of alienation, exploitation, addiction and loss. Though the role was originally earmarked for Peter O’Toole and even writer-filmmaker Michael Crichton, David Bowie – trailing Ziggy Stardust memories and Berlin-era vibes – is ideally cast as Newton, the extraterrestrial who splashes down in a lake in the US southwest in search of water for his drought-afflicted planet, only to be distracted and damaged.

Based on Walter Tevis’s 1963 novel, Paul Mayersberg’s script provides plenty of space for indelible Roegian imagery, whether one views the film as a vision of the corruption inherent in American culture, as an allegory for alcoholism, or as something else entirely. Meanings are fluid, resonances ambiguous, and 50 years on The Man Who Fell to Earth is a film in which, to quote our outsider-hero himself, “the true mysteries remain”.

Director: Richard Donner

Following the success of Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Exorcist (1973), the unofficial, iconic ‘demon child’ trilogy was completed in style with Richard Donner’s The Omen. Gregory Peck and Lee Remick are the couple gradually realising that the boy he illicitly adopted to replace their own stillborn child is none other than the son of Satan.

An Anglo-American co-production that itself spawned a rash of inferior follow-ups, Donner’s original has been highly influential and often gleefully parodied (remember Only Fools and Horses’ Damien Trotter?). But between highly inventive deaths, Billie Whitelaw’s Nanny from Hell, Jerry Goldsmith’s ‘Ave Satani’ on the soundtrack, and a gratuitous swipe at the European Common Market, The Omen has miraculously maintained its power to shock and grip.

Directors: Kim Longinotto and Dorothea Gazidis

Notwithstanding such vital experimental feminist gems as Jane Arden’s The Other Side of the Underneath (1972) and Sally Potter’s Thriller (1979), female-directed films were a sad rarity in 1970s Britain. Their scarcity makes Dorothea Gazidis and Kim Longinotto’s Pride of Place particularly valuable. If Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, released the previous year, made girls’ boarding school experience into a tantalising, sensuous enigma, then Gazidis and Longinotto look it straight in the eye in this black-and-white hour-long doc, which was Longinotto’s National Film and Television School graduation film.

A portrait of the weird, repressive regime at a Buckinghamshire boarding school from the pupils’ perspectives, the project had deeply personal roots for Longinotto, who had previously attended (and run away from) the institution. With its focus on the rituals, rules and punishments of a self-contained world, Pride of Place wouldn’t be out of place in a double bill with an early Yorgos Lanthimos film.

Directors: Paul Humfress and Derek Jarman

A Slade School alumnus who’d already distinguished himself as an artist and designer, Derek Jarman delivered in Sebastiane one of the boldest feature film debuts in British cinema history. Taking the figure of Saint Sebastian – a subject of homoerotic art since the Renaissance – as its centre, Jarman’s film (co-directed by Paul Humfress), with its Latin dialogue and copious male nudity, immediately announced the emergence of an uncompromising avant-garde voice.

Arriving at a vital time for ‘gay lib’, Sebastiane’s cultural importance shouldn’t be underestimated – exploring exile and outsiderness, Jarman’s debut galvanised through its sheer commitment to radical independence and queer expression. Recalling his formative encounter with the film as a teenager in Liverpool, Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Holly Johnson summed up what Jarman’s vision meant to many: “an affirmation that homosexuality could be beautiful, shameless and out in the open”.

Director: Herbert Ross

A fetching comedy mystery that brings together two turn-of-the-century titans – one fictional and one historical. Sherlock Holmes (Nicol Williamson) and Sigmund Freud (Alan Arkin) connect when the former is tricked into coming to Vienna to deal with his drug dependency by Dr Watson (Robert Duvall). Inevitably, it’s not long before Holmes and Freud are joining forces to solve a mystery: the kidnapping of one of the latter’s patients.

Adapted by Nicholas Meyer from his own 1974 novel – complete with an altered ending added when the author belatedly came up with a more ingenious conclusion than his original one – Ross’s film boasts affectionate period charm and an iconoclastic streak, evident in its play with previous takes on the protagonists. A fine supporting cast – including Vanessa Redgrave, Joel Grey, and Laurence Olivier as Moriarty – orbit the central trio to witty and exciting effect.

Director: Bryan Forbes

Though never gaining the status of a family classic, Bryan Forbes’ The Slipper and the Rose is well worth (re)discovering, especially in the context of the current vogue for fresh takes on fairytales. Studded with appealing, underrated songs by the Sherman brothers, Forbes’ film is a retelling of Cinderella that combines the impish eccentricity of Jacques Demy’s Donkey Skin (1970) with moments of Barry Lyndon-style stateliness.

While the Prince and Cinders pairing of Richard Chamberlain and Gemma Craven is more sweet than scintillating, plenty of colour comes from the supporting cast, whether Michael Hordern’s befuddled monarch, Margaret Lockwood’s Wicked (Lady) Stepmother, Edith Evans’s quavering countess, or Annette Crosbie’s practical-minded Fairy Godmother. The second half sags a tad, but for the most part this is a delightfully designed combination of old-school charm and contemporary wit.