‘Whatever people say I am…’: Multiple voices on screen and page in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

Abstract

The British New Wave in cinema, which ran from 1958 to 1962, was built around the adaptation of a number of literary texts that derived their ‘newness’ by vocalising working-class protagonists, hitherto largely suppressed in popular visions of British society. As a knock-on-effect, British screen culture refreshed, suffering as it did from the same level of under-representation that blighted literature. In a wider context, the films’ freshness and vigour can also be seen to be identified in a new approach to film style and aesthetics which had more in common with the European art cinema than the staid traditions of British filmmaking.