Woodfall: A Revolution in British Cinema on Blu-ray and DVD [read more]
They changed British cinema for good
This year the ground-breaking British film company Woodfall Films celebrates its 60th anniversary. After a popular season at BFI Southbank throughout April, on 11 June 2018 the BFI will release 9-disc Blu-ray and DVD box sets containing some of Woodfall's most revered films, many newly restored.
A huge array of special features includes interviews with Rita Tushingham and Murray Melvin, archive material, shorts from the BFI National Archive and an 80-page book. See the trailer at the link above.
Woodfall revolutionised British cinema during the 1960s with a slate of iconic films. Founded in 1958 by director Tony Richardson, writer John Osborne and producer Harry Saltzman (James Bond), the company pioneered the British New Wave, defining an incendiary brand of social realism. Look Back in Anger (Tony Richardson, 1959), and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Karel Reisz, 1960) spot-lit working-class life with unheard-of honesty. The same risk-taking spirit led the company to find a new generation of brilliant young actors to star in their films, such as Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay and Rita Tushingham. The global blockbuster Tom Jones (1963) expanded the Woodfall slate in an irreverent, colourful direction that helped define swinging London - further securing its extraordinary chapter in the history of British film.
These box sets bring together eight of Woodfall's early ground-breaking films, many now newly restored and on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK. Each set contains:
• Look Back in Anger (Tony Richardson, 1959), starring Richard Burton as a jazz trumpeter
• The Entertainer (Tony Richardson, 1960), which stars Laurence Olivier as ageing music-hall veteran Archie Rice
• Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Karel Reisz, 1960) (as previously released by the BFI), starring Albert Finney as factory worker Arthur Seaton
• A Taste of Honey (Tony Richardson, 1961), legendary kitchen sink drama focusing on working-class women, with a script by Shelagh Delaney and Tony Richardson
• The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Tony Richardson, 1962) (as previously released by the BFI) starring Tom Courtenay at Colin Smith
• Tom Jones (Tony Richardson, 1963), (both the original theatrical release and the 1989 Director's Cut), a raucous and innovative multi-Oscar-winning adaptation of the classic novel by Henry Fielding
• Girl with Green Eyes (Desmond Davis, 1964) with Rita Tushingham, Lynn Redgrave and Peter Finch in a lively adaptation by Edna O'Brien of her own novel
• THE KNACK... and how to get it (Richard Lester, 1965) which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes
