TheBritish New Wave is a style of films released in Great Britain between 1959 and 1963.[1][2] The label is a translation ofNouvelle Vague, the French term first applied to the films ofFrançois Truffaut andJean-Luc Godard, among others.[3]
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 apseudo-documentary (orcinéma 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 theangry young men, those artists in British theatre and film such asplaywrightJohn Osborne and directorTony Richardson, who challenged the socialstatus quo. Their work drew attention to the reality of life for theworking classes, especially in theNorth of England, often characterised as "It's grim up north". This particular type of drama, centred onclass and the nitty-gritty of day-to-day life, was also known askitchen sink realism.[4]
Like the French New Wave, where many of the filmmakers began as film critics and journalists, in Britain critical writing about the state of British cinema began in the 1950s and foreshadowed some of what was to come. Among this group of critic/documentary film makers wasLindsay Anderson who was a prominent critic writing for the influentialSequence magazine (1947–52), which he co-founded withGavin Lambert andKarel Reisz (later a prominent director); writing for theBritish Film Institute's journalSight and Sound and the left-wing political weekly theNew Statesman. In one of his early and most well-known polemical pieces,Stand Up, Stand Up, he outlined his theories of what British cinema should become.
Following a series of screenings which he organised at theNational Film Theatre of independently produced short films including his ownEvery Day Except Christmas (about theCovent Garden fruit and vegetable market), Reisz's & Richardson'sMomma Don't Allow (1956) and others, he developed a philosophy of cinema which found expression in what became known as theFree Cinema Movement in Britain by the late 1950s. This was the belief that the cinema must break away from its class-bound attitudes and that theworking classes ought to be seen on Britain's screens.
Along with Karel Reisz,Tony Richardson, and others he secured funding from a variety of sources (includingFord of Britain) and they each made a series of socially challenging short documentaries on a variety of subjects. Another acclaimed title was Reisz'sfeaturette,We Are the Lambeth Boys (1959).
These films, made in the tradition of British documentaries in the 1930s by such men asJohn Grierson, foreshadowed much of the social realism of British cinema which emerged in the 1960s with Anderson's own filmThis Sporting Life, Reisz'sSaturday Night and Sunday Morning, and Richardson'sThe Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. According toFilmink "the common element for the ones that made money were, to be frank, sex – if a new wave film had hot people having sex, there was a market for it."[5]
^Tate, James M. (2025-06-08)."Val Guest Directs Stanley Baker in Hammer'sHell Is a City".Cult Film Freaks. Retrieved2025-08-24.…Features raw violence even for 1960 after Film Noir had ended... yet this kind of stylistic crime thriller was just reigniting it with the British New Wave.
^abAllen, Julien (2017-03-01)."The Whisperers (Bryan Forbes, 1967)".Senses of Cinema. Retrieved2025-08-25.More ardent cinephiles might jump straight to his 1960s British New Wave exemplars:Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) and – perhaps his most celebrated artistic venture, placing as it did the Hollywood actress and dancer Leslie Caron in a 'kitchen-sink' drama –The L-Shaped Room (1962).
^Neary, David (2018-08-25)."Tom Jones".Cinéaste. No. Summer 2018.ISSN0009-7004. Retrieved2025-08-25.Well, first, there's the film itself—divorced from its position as a major turning point in the British New Wave, it's simply a ceaselessly creative, untiringly cheeky, delightful romp.
^"Tom Jones (1963)".Scene by Green. 2024-02-02. Retrieved2025-08-24.As a landmark of the British New Wave,Tom Jones naturally carries the influence of its parallel French movement,
^"A Hard Day's Night".New Zealand Film Commission. Retrieved2025-08-25.So, as well as positioningA Hard Day's Night at the top of the music-movie pyramid, we should also view it as the pinnacle of the 1960s British New Wave—
^"Trouble in store".CineOutsider. 2019-10-13. Retrieved2025-08-26.What remains unusual about the 196590º in the Shade [Třicet jedna ve stínu] is that it brings together elements of Czech and British New Wave cinema in a single film.
Sancar Seckiner's new book DZ Uzerine Notlar, published in December 2014, is re-focusing Kitchen Sink Realism which was important in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The articleLong Distance Runner in the book highlights main film directors who create British New Wave.ISBN978-605-4579-83-9.
