Topic: Free Cinema

Direction Ken Loach

Cast David Bradley · Lynne Perrie · Freddie Fletcher · Colin Welland

Plot Ken Loach's "Kes" follows the tough life of Billy Casper (David Bradley), a young boy in living on the poor end of Barnsley, in the mining areas of Yorkshire County....

Direction Jack Clayton

Cast Simone Signoret · Laurence Harvey · Heather Sears · Hermione Baddeley

Plot The English factory town is dreary but Joe Lampton has landed a job with a future. To have something to do at night he joins a theatrical group. His boss's...

Direction Tony Richardson

Cast Tom Courtenay · Michael Redgrave · James Bolam · Avis Bunnage

Plot A Borstal boy has nothing going for him except the ability to run. He is selected to compete against a public school and starts a training programme, during which he...

Direction Tony Richardson

Cast Rita Tushingham · Dora Bryan · Murray Melvin · Robert Stephens

Plot In a working-class British neighborhood, a 17-year-old girl is living with an alcoholic, promiscuous mother who ignores her. When her mother runs out on her with a new boyfriend, she...

Direction Karel Reisz

Cast Albert Finney · Shirley Anne Field · Rachel Roberts · Hylda Baker

Plot Arthur Seaton (Albert Finney) is a young man filled with a rage perhaps even he doesn't fully understand. Working in the tough environment of a Nottingham factory, he compensates for...

Direction Tony Richardson

Cast Richard Burton · Claire Bloom · Mary Ure · Edith Evans

Plot Archetypal British "angry young man" Jimmy Porter (Richard Burton) is a college-educated bloke who can't seem to get any better job than working in a candy store. Jimmy's relationship with...

Direction Lindsay Anderson

Cast Malcolm McDowell · David Wood · Richard Warwick · Robert Swann

Plot In an inditement of the British Boys School, we follow Mick and his mostly younger friends through a series of indignities and occasionally abuse as any fond feelings toward these...

Direction John Schlesinger

Cast Alan Bates · Thora Hird · June Ritchie · Pat Keen

Plot A young man, inching his way up from working-class traditions via a white-collar job, finds himself trapped by the frightening reality of his girlfriend's pregnancy and is forced into marrying...

Direction John Schlesinger

Cast Julie Christie · Terence Stamp · Peter Finch · Alan Bates

Plot Based on Thomas Hardy's 19th century novel, Bathsheba Everdene (Julie Christie) is a willful, passionate girl who is never satisfied with anything less than a man's complete and helpless adoration....

Direction Lindsay Anderson

Cast Richard Harris · Glenda Jackson · Rachel Roberts · Alan Badel

Plot Richard Harris is Frank Machin, an aggressive rugby-playing miner in the north of England who destroys the relationship he wants most by the force of his rebellious will. Anderson's incisive...

Direction Lindsay Anderson

Cast Malcolm McDowell · Ralph Richardson · Rachel Roberts · Arthur Lowe

Plot This sprawling, surrealist musical serves as an allegory for the pitfalls of capitalism, as it follows the adventures of a young coffee salesman in Europe. Many actors play multiple roles,...

Direction Bryan Forbes

Cast Hayley Mills · Bernard Lee · Alan Bates · Norman Bird

Plot In England's north country, three children find an escaped and wounded murderer in a barn and convince themselves, through something he mutters, that he is the re-incarnation of Jesus Christ....

Direction Bryan Forbes

Cast Edith Evans · Nanette Newman · Harry Baird · Jack Austin

Plot The title refers to the creatures a very poor addled old lady (Edith Evans) imagines in her paranoid fantasies. They lurk behind every drip, drip, drip of a leaky faucet....

Direction John Schlesinger

Cast Tom Courtenay · Wilfred Pickles · Mona Washbourne · Ethel Griffies

Plot A lazy, irresponsible young clerk in provincial Northern England lives in his own fantasy world and makes emotionally immature decisions as he alienates friends and family.

Direction Lindsay Anderson · Guy Brenton

Cast Richard Burton

Plot The subject deals with the children at The Royal School for the Deaf in Margate, Kent. The hearing-handicapped children are shown painstakingly learning what words are through exercises and games,...

Direction Karel Reisz · Tony Richardson

Cast Chris Barber · Ron Bowden · Jim Bray · Lonnie Donegan

Plot A night at the Wood Green Jazz Club - an example of 'Free Cinema'.

Direction Bryan Forbes

Cast Leslie Caron · Tom Bell · Bernard Lee · Brock Peters

Plot Jane (Leslie Caron), a young French woman, pregnant and unmarried, takes a room in a seedy London boarding house, which is inhabited by an assortment of misfits. She considers getting...

Direction John Schlesinger

Cast Julie Christie · Dirk Bogarde · Laurence Harvey · Roland Curram

Plot Diana Scott (Julie Christie) is a young, attractive and vivacious London model who decides to climb the social ladder quickly by jumping, rather fecklessly, in and out of assorted beds....

Direction Lorenza Mazzetti · Denis Horne

Cast Michael Andrews · Eduardo Paolozzi · Valy · Denis Richardson

Direction Karel Reisz

Plot We are the Lambeth Boys is a fascinating glimpse into the everyday lives of working class young people in the Britain of the 1950s. This pioneering documentary – part of...