Hollywood U.K.: British Cinema in the Sixties

The first programme looks at the cinematic birth of a new working-class hero in the north of England. John Schlesinger, Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, Alan Sillitoe, Richard Harris, and Tom Courtenay revisit the locations of their early films, while Rita Tushingham and Julie Christie talk about the new kind of girl who came on to the scene.

As the 60s progressed, British cinema turned its attentions away from the class struggles of northern realist films and focused on the glamour of the capital as it crashed into the "permissive" era. Film-maker Richard Lester presents clips from the key "swinging London" films of the period including Darling starring Julie Christie, Michael Caine's Alfie, Morgan: a Suitable Case for Treatment, and Poor Cow. Terence Stamp, Rita Tushingham, Dirk Bogarde, Julie Christie, John Schlesinger, and Frederic Raphael are among those recounting the heady days of swinging cinema.

The ebullience of "swinging" London gave way as the 60s progressed to a mood of questioning, and uneasy portents of revolution could be seen in the films of a new generation of directors, who saw the certainties of post-war Britain collapsing about them. Lindsay Anderson talks about his landmark film If.... in which a public school collapses into anarchy and murder. Dirk Bogarde talks about his roles in Victim, the first British feature film to address the oppression of gay men, and in The Servant, the Pinter-scripted account of subversion among the upper classes. Also featured are Sylvia Syms, James Fox, Tom Courtenay, and Stephen Frears.

The film-making boom of the 60s drew a new breed of foreign directors to London, all with their own vision of the city. Polanski shot Repulsion in South Kensington. Antonioni made the definitive "swinging London" film Blow Up. This programme looks at London through the eyes of these directors and talks to the stars who worked with them including David Hemmings, Jane Asher, and Vanessa Redgrave.

Concluding the series, Michael Caine contrasts the downbeat spy he created in The Ipcress File with the fantasy world of James Bond; John Osborne recalls the huge success of Tom Jones, for which he wrote the screenplay; Sir John Gielgud remembers the rigours of filming The Charge of the Light Brigade; the Carry Ons carry on; and James Fox and Mick Jagger revisit the decadence of Performance. With Vanessa Redgrave, Dirk Bogarde, Charles Wood, Nicolas Roeg, and Donald Cammell.