How Has British Film Developed The Anti Hero From The New Wave Movement Of The 60s.

[Ambrosia]

I thought this was easy going, compared to some forums, this is horizontal,

[Ambrosia]

Listen noooo listen, I'm the best idiot in the village.... missus

Its nice to know ones place in the world

[Ambrosia]

Most of us are in a coma, hey sounds like a good idea for a TV prog

May be or not too be but it was a Film - Coma that is and so was Hamlet now I think of it, best stop its hurting again.

Is it?

Yes

Stop talking to your self its the first sign of Quadrophinia, Now there is a film.

[Rob Compton]

The tips are fantastic, why only today I got a farthing and two buttons, only problem I had was a tourist asking the way to San Jose, I sent him off in the direction of the old sanatorium.... ohh I do love to send them in the wrong direction, if you see me give me a I'm always at the bridge watching the.... errrr

Time for your medication

[Billy Liar]

Couldn't all this have gone in PM's to one another? A perfectly good thread has been ruined with pointless chatter.

[Ambrosia]

OK son ere yer go now be a good lad and dont whilst I tell all the rest of the good boys and girls the full story. Are you all cumffy, then I will begin;

Night Mail

This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.

Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.

Dawn freshens, the climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends
Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes,
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochs
Men long for news.

Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from the girl and the boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or visit relations,
And applications for situations
And timid lovers' declarations
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled in the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Notes from overseas to Hebrides
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring,
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

Thousands are still asleep
Dreaming of terrifying monsters,
Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston's or Crawford's:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
And shall wake soon and long for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

(W H Auden)

[Ambrosia]

(Billy Liar @ Feb 14 2006, 10:07 PM) Couldn't all this have gone in PM's to one another? A perfectly good thread has been ruined with pointless chatter.

Now Now dont

[Ambrosia]

(Billy Liar @ Feb 14 2006, 10:07 PM) Couldn't all this have gone in PM's to one another? A perfectly good thread has been ruined with pointless chatter.

Since I started the thread, how about addressing the original thread then. What comments have you?

[theuofc]

(Billy Liar @ Feb 14 2006, 12:40 PM) Bob Le Flambeur was also about an aliented anti-hero by the same director 12 years earlier(one of the most influental films for the new Nouvelle Vague directors). Also there are different forms of alienation, I'm thinking of British New Wave films like Billy Liar, The L-Shaped Room, A Taste of Honey, Cathy Come Home, Darling etc. All these deal with alienation of one sort or another.

Dear BillyL,

Right on point! Yes, I also liked Melville's earlier Bob LF, which had a bizarre remake in The Good Thief, not bad to look at shot on the glitzy Cote d'Azur but definitely not the Melville Existential anti-hero. I especially liked the further evolution of Melville's style in Le Samourai and particularly the cinematography which reinforced the existential feel. I agree about the variations on a theme of alienation in Brit kitchen sink realism, but I have been trying to think of a true descendant of the Existential loner alienated from society as a whole rather than alienated in a class struggle. Can you think of a Brit film with a disengaged anti-hero like Delon in Le Samourai as well as its cinematography?

Thanks for the very interesting reply.

Barbara