A certain tendency?: style and meaning in the British New Wave

Conventional approaches to the British New Wave tend to place their greatest emphasis upon viewing the films as a series, stressing the similarities they share with one other and using the fact of these similarities to include them in broader debates about class, gender and/or ideology. Dissatisfied with this tendency, my intention is to take an alternative approach and consider each of the films individually.

This is not to deny that the similarities between these films don’t exist. Nevertheless, for the sake of revivifying the study of British cinema, I see little methodological sense in being content merely to reproduce existing critical discussions. Instead, I intend to define my own critical position and demonstrate that we might fruitfully consider the detail of an individual film without having to continually reemphasise the similarities that might be shared with other films.

In each case, I will show that a re-distribution of critical emphasis will not only allow my discussions of the films to be based around questions of their style and meaning but will also allow the problematic relationship between these films and the question of realism to be reconsidered.

There is an important distinction to make here. I’m not suggesting that social realist conventions weren’t utilised by the films. Nevertheless, a repeated emphasis upon the use of these conventions leading to a flawed series of films has become little more than an effective means of closing down discussion. Surely, there is something else that we might start to say about these films? To this end, my approach will be based upon the idea of difference. Though there might be inevitable or unavoidable similarities between Room at the Top and A Kind of Loving, the main focus of my investigation will be upon the differences that can be found at the level of their respective style and meaning.