Room at the Top, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and the 'Cultural Revolution' in Britain

Abstract

No British film released in 1950, nor in 1951 (when the charming Ealing comedy The Lavender Hill Mob, starring Alec Guiness and Stanley Holloway was the British Film Academy's choice of best British film of the year) carried an X certificate. In 1952, 1953, and 1955 there were two in each year; in 1954, one; but in 1956, three.l In 1957, there were seven; in 1958, nine; in 1959, eleven; in 1960, seventeen; in 1961, sixteen. The curve may not be exponential, the facts behind the crude figures may not be simple, but times, as they say, were certainly changing. Until the balance altered in the late fifties, X-certificate films, almost exclusively, meant Continental films. Indeed, several of the British Xs had strong French connections (Intimate Relations of 1953 was based on a play by Jean Cocteau, and Knave of Hearts of 1954 was directed by Rene Clement and starred Gerard Philipe; the other Xs tended to heavy crime films, sometimes involving children). However, one of the two Xs in 1955, The Quatermass Experiment, broke new ground in two ways: it gained its X because of the horrific character of its science fiction, and the film itself was the first to have its origins in a successful television programme. The other X of 1955 was I Am a Camera, starring Laurence Harvey as Christopher Isherwood. As it happened, it was in February 1956 that the film of 1984, Orwell's novel of the late forties, was released; more portentous was the first horror film from Hammer, a derivation from Quatermass entitled The Unknown. Quatermass II followed in 1957, accompanied by The Curse of Frankenstein and four other horror films, so that in fact there was only one sex-oriented film, The Flesh is Weak, to contribute to that year's total of seven Xs. All of the next year's crop were horror or science fiction films. If