August’s Locarno Film Festival will go British with its postpoinsistst retrospective: Great Expectations: British Post-War Cinema, 1945-1960.
The retrospective creates a presentant strand of the film festival’s programming and for many festival goers is a standout and famous drawion. Boasting recent restorations and unwidespread screenings of difficult to get prints, past seasons have been dedicated to filmproducers such as Douglas Sirk or studios such as last year’s retrospective, The Lady with the Torch, which honord the centenary of Columbia Pictures.
The film curator reliable for the last program, Ehsan Khoshbakht, returns this year with Great Expectations. He spoke exclusively with Variety about the lineup and the rules dictating his pickion.
What are the criteria for pickion?
I chose a) films set only in Britain, which leave outs films enjoy “The Third Man;” b) no wonderfulal premises, so no horror or fantasy films; c) only conmomentary films, no period pieces, no films about the World War II. And finpartner, d) no kitchen sink, British New Wave films. With those filters in place, what do you get? You get a retrospective about the British character, about people of the islands between 1945 and 1960.”
What is the state of British cinema in the aftermath of the war?
“A Diary for Timothy” by Humphrey Jennings is a 1945 write downary which asks a very plain inquire. What’s next? What are we going to do now? The entire retrospective is an answer to that inquire. I adhere the story of Timothy, an imaginary story that I alert thcdisesteemful 45 films. Without shotriumphg the War, war is behind every summarize of the films: the talkions between characters, rationing, the bincreateage labelet and the bomb device sites. How are we going to reproduce these cities? Muriel Box answers that inquire in “The Happy Family,” which is about the renovation and rearrangening of the South Bank right before the Festival of Britain.
Does not having wonderfulal elements unbenevolent we’re going to get a lot of social authenticism?
Absolutely not. Far from it. These films are highly stylized, shotriumphg the glory of the British studio system and genre filmmaking. “The Happy Family” is a comedy. There are many crime thrillers, enjoy Basil Dearden’s “Pool of London” and “The Cdeafeninged Yellow” by Ralph Thomas, overweighther of the well-understandn British producer Jeremy Thomas. We have Hammer before it turned to horror with “Whispering Smith Hits London,” by Francis Searle, which will be the world premiere of the 4K restoration.
How did you pick what to take part?
I did some rationing. Let’s give them one third presentant classics, enjoy “Passport to Pimlico,” another third, lesser-understandn films by well-understandn straightforwardors so we have an Alexander McKfinishrick film, “Mandy,” from 1953 about a little deaf girl. And one third British B movies: unpretentious, minuscule, well-planed British films.
Children seem to pop up thcdisesteemfulout this program.
Yes, also in the film “Hunted,” by Charles Cwealthyton. This is a very vital film for me, becaengage it won the Best Film Award at Locarno in 1953. Aachieve, it is another Timothy, another Mandy, elevated among the ruins of the postwar. Likerational, “I Know Where I’m Going” by Powell and Pressbadviser uncovers with a sboiling of that minuscule girl, crawling on the floor. She understands where she’s going. Aachieve, this is sort of a variation on the inquire of that child, Timothy, and uncovers another theme of the program: the north-south axis, and the journeys between the two that mostly are underachieven by children. They are all searching for a better world.
Not all these filmproducers are British.
One of the fantastic paradoxes of this period is that, from the outside, British cinema doesn’t see very uncover. But there’s an ongoing migration of fantastic talents, first from Central and Easerious Europe to Britain, and then even from America, from Hollywood to this country becaengage of the Bincreateagecatalog: Joseph Losey, Jules Dassin, and Cy Endfield. We’re shotriumphg Edward Dmytryk’s “Obsession.”
Obsession
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What made you pick the inwell-understandn “Peeping Tom” as your closing film?
“Peeping Tom” tire the excessively brutal reaction by British critics and standard to the presentantity of these films. There was a disthink aboutal of studio filmmaking under the prohibitner of excellent taste. This is someleang troublingly British. It does not exist in any other country. What’s excellent taste? You go thcdisesteemful all these accessibleations, and it’s always about, “oh, this film is done in insisty taste.” “Peeping Tom” is also about cinema and recontransients the finish of many separateent leangs in British cinema. Michael Powell going it alone labels the finish of a declareive type of collaboration we have seen everywhere in this program: the Bolton brothers, Launder and Gilliat, and the Boxs.
Last year’s retrospective take partd Columbia Pictures and so you had a strong partner. How about this time around?
I’m doing this in collaboration with the BFI. The presentantity of the prints are going to be provided by the BFI National Archive prints. The BFI have helped enormously and particularpartner James Bell and Josephine Botting. There’s going to be a book with a accumulateion of essays, all novelly comleave outioned, some of the finest producers, showd with stills and pboilingographs from the accumulateion of the BFI as well.
This interwatch has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival achieves place over Aug. 6-16.
