Topic: Free Cinema

Direction Ken Loach

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

Synopsis 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. However, when Billy finds an injured kestrel and attempts to...

Direction Jack Clayton

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

Synopsis 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 daughter Susan is playing ingenue roles on stage and in...

Direction Tony Richardson

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

Synopsis 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 relives his troubled past and plans how to show his...

Direction Tony Richardson

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

Synopsis 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 finds a friend in a middle-aged gay man, who aspires...

Direction Karel Reisz

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

Synopsis 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 the drudgery and discipline of his weekday life with weekends...

Direction Tony Richardson

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

Synopsis 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 his wife Alison (Mary Ure) alternates between hugs and kisses...

Direction Lindsay Anderson

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

Synopsis 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 schools are destroyed. When Mick and his friends rebel, violently,...

Direction John Schlesinger

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

Synopsis 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 her and moving in with his mother-in-law due to a...

Direction John Schlesinger

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

Synopsis 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. And she captures the lives and loves of three very...

Direction Lindsay Anderson

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

Synopsis 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 comment on class expatiation is as forceful as it is...

Direction Lindsay Anderson

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

Synopsis 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, giving the film a stagy tone.

Direction Bryan Forbes

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

Synopsis 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. Accepting the role, the man is safely hidden from the...

Direction Bryan Forbes

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

Synopsis 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. They listen all coiled up in a silent radio. The...

Direction John Schlesinger

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

Synopsis 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

Synopsis 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, practicing lip-reading and finally speech.

Direction Karel Reisz · Tony Richardson

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

Synopsis 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

Synopsis 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 an abortion, but is unhappy with this solution. She falls...

Direction John Schlesinger

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

Synopsis 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. She is a reckless seeker of self caught up in...

Direction Lorenza Mazzetti · Denis Horne

Cast Michael Andrews · Eduardo Paolozzi · Valy · Denis Richardson

Direction Karel Reisz

Synopsis 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 the Free Cinema movement - was one of the first...