The ‘New Wave’ of British Cinema from the late 1950s brought a new sexual reality to the big screen. This was especially evident in the ‘kitchen sink’ type of drama that often had a northern setting, such as Room at the Top which was nominated British Film Academy Best Film of 1958.
According to Michael O’Pray in The British Avant-Garde Film, there was a “general air of experiment in the 60s which extended to the film industry.” This included a more liberal attitude to sexuality and violence.
John Schlesinger Film Darling
The 1965 film Darling depicts middle class characters in the London of the 1960s, which was the centre of the ‘swinging sixties’. The film was a critical success at the time, with Julie Christie winning a ‘best actress’ Oscar for her leading role as the beautiful, amoral heroine who sleeps her way to fame and fortune but finds little real meaning to her life.
Since Britain itself was more permissive, it seemed inevitable that film censorship boundaries gradually widened. With more young people visiting the cinema by this time, perceptions of taste were changing to suit the new kind of audience. And film also had to compete with the increasing popularity of television.
James Bond and Carry On Films
Slightly less permissive films also had considerable success in the 1960s. The long-running James Bond films began with Dr No in 1962, which introduced the glamorous world of a sophisticated and sexually permissive secret agent. Although mainly escapist films, there was increasingly suggestive innuendo and glimpses of female flesh in the subsequent Bond films.
The Carry On series, which began in the late 50s, was extremely popular and although the comedy was infused with sexual innuendo, it wasn’t until the late 60s that the films became smuttier, with glimpse of nudity in Carry on Camping in 1969.
Director Ken Russell
Towards the end of the 1960s, “tawdriness and indulgence had descended on the British film industry” according to Robert Murphy in The British Cinema Book. Yet original films were still being produced, some acclaimed and others that took permissiveness to new extremes.
Ken Russell was a former television director whose 1969 film Women in Love was based on the book by D.H. Lawrence. Exploring female sexuality, it also contained the first full frontal wrestling match between two nude males. Russell took full advantage of the new permissiveness and went even further in his 1970 film, The Music Lovers, with its depiction of the composer Tchaikovsky’s nymphomaniac wife. He extended the boundaries to the limit in the film The Devils in 1971, which was banned by many local authorities even after being granted an ‘X’ certificate.
The ‘swinging sixties’ began with certain films reflecting the increasing changes in society, and by the 1970s this new level of permissiveness was well established.
References:
Murphy, Robert, ed., The British Cinema Book (London: British Film Institute, 1999)
O’Pray, Michael, ed., The British Avant-Garde Film: 1926-1995 (Luton: John Libbey media, 1996)
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