by Alexander Walker (Author)
HOLLYWOOD ENGLAND is a book of an era as much as of the cinema. The focus of Walker's commentary is American power operating on British talent as, in the sixties, for the first time British cinema achieved a truly national character. It was an era of BILLY LIAR and KES, of the Beatles, musicals, the whole swinging London cycle; of directors such as Richardson, Loach and Russell and stars such as Albert Finney, Michael Caine and Julie Christie. And yet there was the irony that by the end of the decade Hollywood sustained 95% of British film making. Alexander Walker traces the change from the sober reality of post-Suez Britain to the consumer boom, and gives sharp judgements and critical appraisals on the vast variety of American and British film people who made up this extraordinary new wave.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 496
Edition: New edition
Publisher: Orion
Published: 15 Sep 2005
ISBN 10: 0752857061
ISBN 13: 9780752857060
Book Overview: Reissued with NATIONAL HEROES alongside the final volume in the trilogy, ICONS IN THE FIRE (new in paperback). Alexander Walker was film critic of the Evening Standard from 1959 until his death in 2003. His judgments are based on more than four decades as Britain's leading film critic, biographer and film historian. Cinema is the most popular form of mass entertainment - and Alex Walker one of our best-known writers on film. All three books in the series received widespread critical acclaim: 'The first serious, but popular account - one understands properly for the first time why Pinewood and Shepperton have never successfully rivalled Hollywood' Sunday Times. 'With a honed, dry wit ... each page shows his elegance ... uncompromising and intelligent, this study requires some answers' Scotland on Sunday. 'Walker's narrative is clear-eyed and merciless' Daily Telegraph. '[His] shrewd and witty commentary is matched by a fine sense of moral outrage' Sunday Times. 'Impeccably researched, written with considerable eloquence and thoroughly provoking ... Required reading if you want to know how the film business works, and how often it doesn't, in Britain' Evening Standard.