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Billy Liar (film)
''Billy Liar'' is a 1963 British CinemaScope comedy-drama film based on the 1959 novel by Keith Waterhouse. Directed by John Schlesinger, it stars Tom Courtenay (who had understudied Albert Finney in the West End theatre adaptation of the novel) as Billy and Julie Christie as Liz, one of his three girlfriends. Mona Washbourne plays Mrs. Fisher and Wilfred Pickles plays Mr. Fisher. Rodney Bewes, Finlay Currie and Leonard Rossiter also feature. The Cinemascope photography is by Denys Coop and Richard Rodney Bennett supplied the score. The film belongs to the British New Wave, inspired by both the earlier kitchen sink realism movement and the French New Wave. Characteristic of the style is a documentary/''cinéma vérité'' feel and the use of real locations (in this case, many in the city of Bradford in Yorkshire). Plot Billy Fisher (Tom Courtenay) lives in Yorkshire with his parents (Wilfred Pickles and Mona Washbourne) and grandmother (Ethel Griffies). Billy wishes to get awa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Schlesinger
John Richard Schlesinger (; 16 February 1926 – 25 July 2003) was an English film and stage director. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for ''Midnight Cowboy'', and was nominated for the same award for two other films ('' Darling'' and ''Sunday Bloody Sunday''). Early life Schlesinger was born and raised in Hampstead, London, in a Jewish family, the eldest of five children of distinguished Emmanuel College, Cambridge-educated paediatrician and physician Bernard Edward Schlesinger (1896–1984), OBE, FRCP, who had also served in the Royal Army Medical Corps as a brigadier, and his wife Winifred Henrietta, daughter of Hermann Regensburg, a stockbroker from Frankfurt. She had left school at 14 to study at the Trinity College of Music, and later studied languages at the University of Oxford for three years. Bernard Schlesinger's father Richard, a stockbroker, had come to England in the 1880s from Frankfurt. After St Edmund's School, Hindhead and Uppingham School (whe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rodney Bewes
Rodney Bewes (27 November 1937 – 21 November 2017) was an English television actor and writer who portrayed Bob Ferris in the BBC television sitcom ''The Likely Lads'' (1964–66) and its colour sequel ''Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?'' (1973–74). Bewes' later career was of a much lower profile, but he continued to work as a stage actor. Early life Bewes was born in Bingley in the West Riding of Yorkshire, to Horace, an Eastern Electricity Board showroom clerk, and Bessie, who was a teacher of children with learning difficulties. His family lived for a few years in the Crossflatts district of Bingley, before they moved to Luton, where he attended Stopsley Secondary School. Because of his early ill-health (he suffered from asthma and bronchitis), one of the reasons the family moved, his mother tended to keep him off school. His illness receded, and the family eventually returned to the north. Having seen an advertisement in the '' Daily Herald'', Bewes auditioned for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leslie Randall (actor)
Leslie Randall (19 October 1924 – 2 August 2020) was an English film and television actor, from South Shields, County Durham, who worked in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. Randall had a lengthy career, but possibly his most important role was with his wife in '' Joan and Leslie'', ITV's first home-grown situation comedy. He also appeared in the 1963 film version of '' Billy Liar'' where he played Danny Boon, and as Reggie Wilkie in episodes of ''Emmerdale'' from 1999–2000, as well as episodes of ''The Monkees The Monkees were an American rock and pop band, formed in Los Angeles in 1966, whose lineup consisted of the American actor/musicians Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork alongside English actor/singer Davy Jones. The group was con ...'' and '' I Dream of Jeannie''. During World War II, he served with the Royal Air Force as a pilot officer bomb aimer with 358 Squadron, in the Far East. His wife was Joan Reynolds, whom h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wormwood Scrubs
Wormwood Scrubs, known locally as The Scrubs (or simply Scrubs), is an open space in Old Oak Common located in the north-eastern corner of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in west London. It is the largest open space in the borough, at , and one of the largest areas of common in London. The eastern part, known as Little Wormwood Scrubs, is cut off by Scrubs Lane and the West London line railway. It has been an open public space since the Wormwood Scrubs Act 1879. The southern edge of the Scrubs is the site of two locally important institutions. At the western end is HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs, built between 1875 and 1891 by convict labour. To the east of the prison is the Hammersmith Hospital campus, which includes the relocated Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital. Within the area are several sports facilities, including the Linford Christie Stadium, tens of football pitches, and a pony centre. Queens Park Rangers Football Club played on Wormwood Scrubs betwee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethel Griffies
Ethel Griffies (born Ethel Woods; 26 April 1878 – 9 September 1975) was an English actress of stage, screen, and television. She is remembered for portraying the ornithologist Mrs. Bundy in Alfred Hitchcock's classic '' The Birds'' (1963). She appeared in stage roles in her native England and in the United States, and had featured roles in around 100 motion pictures. Griffies was one of the oldest working actors in the English-speaking theatre at the time of her death at 97 years old. She acted alongside such stars as May Whitty, Ellen Terry, and Anna Neagle. Biography Griffies was born in Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire, the daughter of actor and manager Samuel Rupert Woods and actress Lillie Roberts. Taken onstage at the age of three, she continued to act for the next 86 years. Griffies married actor Walter Beaumont in 1900, and he died in 1910. In 1917, she married actor Edward Cooper, who predeceased his wife by almost two decades. On 9 September 1975, in London, G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yorkshire
Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other English counties, functions have been undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to History of local government in Yorkshire, periodic reform. Throughout these changes, Yorkshire has continued to be recognised as a geographic territory and cultural region. The name is familiar and well understood across the United Kingdom and is in common use in the media and the Yorkshire Regiment, military, and also features in the titles of current areas of civil administration such as North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire. Within the borders of the historic county of Yorkshire are large stretches of countryside, including the Yorkshire Dales, North York Moors and Peak District nationa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bradford
Bradford is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Bradford district in West Yorkshire, England. The city is in the Pennines' eastern foothills on the banks of the Bradford Beck. Bradford had a population of 349,561 at the 2011 census; the second-largest population centre in the county after Leeds, which is to the east of the city. It shares a continuous built-up area with the towns of Shipley, Silsden, Bingley and Keighley in the district as well as with the metropolitan county's other districts. Its name is also given to Bradford Beck. It became a West Riding of Yorkshire municipal borough in 1847 and received its city charter in 1897. Since local government reform in 1974, the city is the administrative centre of a wider metropolitan district, city hall is the meeting place of Bradford City Council. The district has civil parishes and unparished areas and had a population of , making it the most populous district in England. In the century leadin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cinéma Vérité
Cinéma vérité (, , ; "truthful cinema") is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda. It combines improvisation with use of the camera to unveil truth or highlight subjects hidden behind reality. It is sometimes called observational cinema, if understood as pure direct cinema: mainly without a narrator's voice-over. There are subtle, yet important, differences between terms expressing similar concepts. Direct Cinema is largely concerned with the recording of events in which the subject and audience become unaware of the camera's presence: operating within what Bill Nichols, an American historian and theoretician of documentary film, calls the "observational mode", a fly on the wall. Many therefore see a paradox in drawing attention away from the presence of the camera and simultaneously interfering in the reality it registers when attempting to discover a cinematic truth. History Cinéma và ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Documentary Film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in terms of "a filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception [that remains] a practice without clear boundaries". Early documentary films, originally called "actuality films", lasted one minute or less. Over time, documentaries have evolved to become longer in length, and to include more categories. Some examples are Educational film, educational, observational and docufiction. Documentaries are very Informational listening, informative, and are often used within schools as a resource to teach various principles. Documentary filmmakers have a responsibility to be truthful to their vision of the world without intentionally misrepresenting a topic. Social media platfor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French New Wave
French New Wave (french: La Nouvelle Vague) is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of iconoclasm. New Wave filmmakers explored new approaches to editing, visual style, and narrative, as well as engagement with the social and political upheavals of the era, often making use of irony or exploring existential themes. The New Wave is often considered one of the most influential movements in the history of cinema. The term was first used by a group of French film critics and cinephiles associated with the magazine '' Cahiers du cinéma'' in the late 1950s and 1960s. These critics rejected the ''Tradition de qualité'' ("Tradition of Quality") of mainstream French cinema, which emphasized craft over innovation and old works over experimentation. This was apparent in a manifesto-like 1954 essay by François Truffaut, ''Une certaine tenda ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kitchen Sink Realism
Kitchen sink realism (or kitchen sink drama) is a British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays, whose protagonists usually could be described as "angry young men" who were disillusioned with modern society. It used a style of social realism which depicted the domestic situations of working-class Britons, living in cramped rented accommodation and spending their off-hours drinking in grimy pubs, to explore controversial social and political issues ranging from abortion to homelessness. The harsh, realistic style contrasted sharply with the escapism of the previous generation's so-called "well-made plays". The films, plays and novels employing this style are often set in poorer industrial areas in the North of England, and use the accents and slang heard in those regions. The film '' It Always Rains on Sunday'' (1947) is a precursor of the genre and the John Osborne play ''Look Back in Anger'' (1956) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British New Wave
The British New Wave is a style of films released in Great Britain between 1959 and 1963. The label is a translation of ''Nouvelle Vague'', the French term first applied to the films of François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard among others. Stylistic characteristics The British New Wave was characterised by many of the same stylistic and thematic conventions as the French New Wave. Usually in black and white, these films had a spontaneous quality, often shot in a pseudo-documentary (or ''cinéma vérité'') style on real locations and with real people rather than extras, apparently capturing life as it happens. There is considerable overlap between the New Wave and the ''angry young men'', those artists in British theatre and film such as playwright John Osborne and director Tony Richardson, who challenged the social ''status quo''. Their work drew attention to the reality of life for the working classes, especially in the North of England, often characterised as "It's grim up ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
