Kitchen Sink Dramas

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In the austere late 1950's --early 1960's The United Kingdoms Underclass were perennially being misrepresented by the likes of Noel Cowards Drawing--Room Farces and permanently On They're Uppers Financially. Riding against this oppression was a reverse -engineering known today as Kitchen Sink Drama which pioneered modern British Cinema.Counterpoised against the concurrentFrench New Wave and European Film-making in general(Ingmar Bergman for example) one was comparatively the complement of the other in a conflated World-View that saw The World through the same prism the same eyes even through the same coloured /filtered spectacles.Taking as it's theme then the championing of the urban-proletariat, Kitchen-Sink Drama was an immediate and influential hit---One considered Dangerous by The System in the UK.

The World was Changing however and Cinema was changing with it(!)...

In the terms of this context however, one of ground-breaking European Cinema, then being considered 'Subversive' by the Higher -Orders only intensified the bullish and insouciant nature of the Films and Filmakers themselves of course. While European Filmakers were in bistros in cafe society British Film-makers articulated seemingly vitriolic and uncontrollable anger onto 16 mm Cine--Camera's taking the sophisticated and ahead-of-their-time editing-techniques of Sergei Eisenstein and the Philosophy of Camus,Beckett,Sartre even Kafka ,this was a delicious new expoerience in the UK---Poets with a muse of fire telling it How It Is.

Indeed the counter--attack against the inert status quo was launched by amongst others: Tony Richardson and Ken Loach--- whose masterpiece Cathy Come Home was so powerful that it launched The Charity SHELTER overnight and addressed the fundamental problem of Homelessness in Britain in the 1960's.Such an impact is of course almost unthinkable in today's Media---Nonetheless Loach a bookish Leftish Director managed to galvanise considerable support for his Cause successfully and singlehandedly transforming British Drama from its Angry and Raw chrysallis into 'Powerful' and Shocking. In the midst of all this flux the dynamic of Cinema in the UK was spellbindingly transformed of course into Class--Consciousness.

Shorn of all of the aforementioned artifice this was Realistic filmaking from its Alpha to Omega along the lines of Pasolini in Italy for example. No obfuscation then just straightforward Drama/Characterisation usually highlighted by Down-BeatEndings and Broken (Anti-) Heroes.Notwithstanding this ,was the foothold left by John Osbornes Look Back In Anger which showed Angry Young Men not dissimilar to the Directors themselves exploring nightmarish existentialism in their crevice of a house fulminating against Authority and indeed Life itself.However this stereotype is transcended by passionate and heartfelt characterisation and insight. Inter-generational then the Films of Pasolini and Bergman are Promethean and Frame--Breaking even today of course as is Osbornes dialectic.

Coming then as they did, when they did, was probably no accident either--This after all was a Cross-Roads in British History when Ealing Comedy and Dramas by the likes of Terrence Rattigan were evaporating into tweeness and The Revolutionwas definently On. Black and White Cinema was not quite ready for its transformation into Colour---it would be a few years later on. However this suited The Kitchen Sink Drama of course.

Outstanding creatively these Films indeed offered no Yellow--Brick Road out of Poverty other than a Rakes Progress (Lawrence Harvey---magnificent in Room At The Top) and indeed dealt with the claustraphobia and hardship Urban poverty caused and it's influences economically and personally. Structurally left-wing multi-layered and post-structural in outlook Kitchen Sink Drama explored the limits and possibilities of groundbreaking Cinema. Cinema for the Cineasts of their day.Ultra-Realistic in the New Wave school of Film-Making infiltrated from Europe by the likes of Bergman and Fellini Kitchen Sink drama was it's equal and opposite in terms of it's school-of-philosophy poetry and visionary capabilities.

Noteworthy today for paving the way in terms of gritty realism unfocused---deliberately--photography and an antagonistic relationship with Authourity the likes of Lindsay Anderson Ken Loach and Tony Richardson are still lauded and feted in todays Film-Making Colleges--Rightly So. Artistically speaking their influence has never dissipated only increased in subsequent years as the vacuum of Thatcherism and even Blairism decimated so many of the aforementioned Urban Communities...

Understanding their influenceis to therefore acknowledge a sea-change that is with us today. Ultimately it is difficult to envisage a creation-process as fecund in today's Cinema such is the diaspora of their forerunnners cultural influences. Made at a time when we never had it so good was juxtaposed to hardship and even hunger they managed to change not only Cinema of the time , these films changed the face of perceptions about long-held industrial stereotypes that the likes of Coronation Street oppositionally underpinned---A Twee and conventional look at the Underclass.

Nonetheless on the other hand however confrontational Saturday Night/Sunday Morning and A Taste Of Honey photosynthesised perceptions Cinema moved on in the late 1960's into Colour Television and---for most---material affulence. It was the death-knell unfortunately as Hammer Cinema financially supplanted Kitchen-Sink in the late 1960's and it was the end for people like them alas. In the end then Kitchen-Sinks renaissance however came perhaps unexpectedly in the ironic knowing 1990's---a full 180 degree turn from its hey-day in the 60's starring the likes of Alan Bates Albert Finney Julie Christie and Tom Courtneay all of whom went onto lesser things.Ultimately however The disadvantaged will of course always be with us ---Thankfully so too will Kitchen-Sink Dramas in the archives of Our Hearts and Minds fortunately.