Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

The films of the early fifties had all starred either well-groomed middle-class actors with BBC accents—Kenneth More, Dirk Bogarde, John Gregson, Rex Harrison, Geoffrey Keene—or else lovable London ‘types’ usually portrayed by Jewish character actors (Sidney James, Alfie Bass, Sidney Tafler or Peter Sellers). The later films, dubbed ‘kitchen-sink dramas’ for their gritty depiction of everyday life, starred a new cohort of younger actors—Tom Courtenay, Albert Finney, Richard Harris and Alan Bates. They were typically set in northern working-class communities, with accents and language to match. And they represented England as a divided, embittered, cynical, jaundiced and hard-faced world, its illusions shattered. About the only thing that the cinema of the early fifties and early sixties had in common was that women almost always played a secondary role, and everyone was white.