Film & Britain
by Andre Soares
"Historically, nobody has hated British film more than British film critics. Except, perhaps, British film academics, British film mandarins and the editors of British film magazines. That’s why, when the French director François Truffaut suggested that there was some fundamental incompatibility between the words ‘cinema’ and ‘Britain’, his words were taken most seriously in the country whose work he scorned. He made his pronouncement in 1969 - and didn’t intend it to be taken too seriously. But by that time, a contempt for our native cinema had been a badge of intellectual seriousness for over 40 years." Thus begins Matthew Sweet’s article in The Independent, "The lost worlds of British cinema."
I haven’t read Sweet’s Shepperton Babylon, though the title surely doesn’t sound promising. Here’s hoping there’s less to Shepperton than the derivative - and cheesy - title implies. I mean, what kind of author would want his book associated with fetid trash like Hollywood Babylon? Perhaps the title was a Faber & Faber imposition?
In any case, both Empire magazine and the respected The Guardian have given Shepperton Babylon positive reviews, as per the snippets quoted on Amazon UK.
The picture above is from David Lean’s very British and very heartbreaking Brief Encounter, a 1945 romantic drama in which two adulterers are portrayed in a positive light. In a way, I guess one could say that it was the Brokeback Mountain of its day - well, sort of. . .
Hollywood Foreign Press Association 2005 Golden Globe Award winners and nominees
List of the British Academy of Film 2005 nominees
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