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Angry young men, Michael Caine, and the emergence of working-class stories in British cinema

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For many years, the lives of working-class British people were invisible on screen. Not only that, but actors from working-class backgrounds were hard to come by, thus meaning that a large chunk of Britain’s screen icons were privately educated or well-connected figures. This imbalance within the industry prevented authentic stories from being told, silencing the voices and experiences of a massive group of the British population.

Posh actors dominated the screens with their received pronunciation accents that asserted them as well-educated figures. “The working-class person always had to have an accent before, was often a joker, and peripheral,” actor Rita Tushingham told The Independent. Indeed, there were hardly any working-class protagonists or stories about the plight of poverty, unemployment, governmental disillusionment, or abortion.

Then, in the 1950s, the ‘angry young men’ movement emerged within the world of literature, theatre, and film, changing everything. Post-war, a new generation of young people were feeling dismayed by the widespread levels of unemployment and dead-end jobs that forced people to work to the bone for little money. Many people were unable to afford nice places to live, and countless individuals were suffering from PTSD, grief, and a sense of malaise.

People’s childhood towns and cities were now destroyed by bombs, leaving what was once a community in ruins, and this physical representation of destruction and emptiness mirrored the emotions many were feeling at the time. This disillusionment came to a boiling point in the mid-1950s as people struggled to move forward and prosper in a country still ravished by the effects of war and economic disparity.

However, with John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger, a voice finally cut through. Michael Caine once discussed the play with The Guardian, explaining: “When it changed, it was all down to the writers. They started writing for working-class people and it made all the difference. Playwrights like Noël Coward, someone I later knew very well, wrote middle-class parts for the stage. If you had a cockney accent you were going to play the butler. But John Osborne wrote Look Back in Anger in 1956, and that, I believe, was the first major piece of theatre that had a working-class hero.”

Things were beginning to change, with the stories of working-class people making more of a dent in popular culture than ever before. Other writers that were dubbed part of the ‘angry young men’ movement (although most hated this term) included Kingsley Amis, Alan Sillitoe, and John Braine, whose stories really changed the game in regards to the representation of normal British people and their struggles.

At the same time, the Free Cinema documentary movement helped to pave the way for depictions of British working-class issues on screen. These filmmakers—including Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson, and Karel Reisz—used a cinema vérité style to cheaply chronicle elements of working-class life to great success.

Look Back in Anger - 1959 - Tony Richardson

Look Back in Anger (Credits: Far Out / BFI)

In 1959, Look Back in Anger was turned into a film directed by Richardson, who teamed up with Osborne to form Woodfall, a production company responsible for many of the kitchen sink dramas that subsequently emerged from ‘angry young men’ plays and stories. The movement expanded across theatre, philosophy, novels, and film, but the latter was perhaps the most accessible way for these stories to be transmitted to the masses.

Following Look Back in Anger, movies like Jack Clayton’s Room at the Top, Reisz’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and Richardson’s The Entertainer emerged as cinematic versions of works by the likes of Osborne, Sillitoe, and Braine. Putting the experiences of working-class men on the map, these films explored themes such as employment, romance, and friendships through a class-centric lens, typically questioning authority and depicting squalid living conditions and workplaces.

You might be wondering what was happening in terms of working-class female representation – something that was less common in the kitchen sink genre in comparison to the number of films with male protagonists. A Taste of Honey, a play by Shelagh Delaney that was turned into a film by Richardson in 1961, was the most prominent movie from the period to take women’s struggles into consideration. The movie, starring the working-class Tushingham, explored abortion, interracial relationships, and homosexuality among its depiction of class, and it remains one of the most influential stories from the era.

As a result, various other films began to emerge featuring female protagonists, like Ken Loach’s Poor Cow (based on a story by Nell Dunn) and Cathy Come Home, Silvio Narizzano’s Georgy Girl, and Bryan Forbes’ The L-Shaped Room. Gradually, the depiction of both men and women of working-class backgrounds became more common on screen, creating a breakthrough moment for budding actors who weren’t from posh lineages to consider their chances in the industry.

Poor Cow - 1967 - Ken Loach

Poor Cow (Credits: Far Out / Anglo-Amalgamated)

Thus, people like Caine, inspired by media like Look Back in Anger, realised the importance of keeping their ‘working-class accents’ as a symbol of pride. Caine “decided to be an actor because I thought it would be a lot better than working in a factory,” he told The Guardian, starting out as an assistant stage manager in Horsham. From here, he was able to build his career as an actor, eventually landing a leading role in the 1966 film Alfie, a kitchen sink comedy-drama that followed Caine’s Cockney protagonist through a series of romantic affairs and personal problems.

Caine’s career in the ‘60s saw him star in American and British movies, but he never shied away from the fact he was a working-class actor without familial or monetary connections to the film industry. With the rise of the kitchen sink drama in British cinema allowing working-class people to be taken more seriously, the decade allowed for a more diverse mix of people from different class backgrounds to succeed.

Of course, this phenomenon has fluctuated over the years, and it seems as though most British stars are still those from rich backgrounds. Yet, thanks to the angry young men movement, which led to an array of powerful kitchen sink dramas about both men and women, British cinema has become known for its gritty tales of working-class life, which lives on through filmmakers working today, like Loach, Mike Leigh, Andrea Arnold, Shane Meadows, Charlotte Regan, and Luna Carmoon.

While the films from the kitchen sink era aren’t all without fault, with most of them depicting an overwhelmingly white portrait of the country, they were vital stepping stones towards more diverse stories within British cinema. People were inspired to become actors and auteurs because of these films, which offered a realistic and necessary view of a rapidly changing Britain, and their legacy and influence cannot be mistaken.

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