Page 34 - DENG403_BRITISH_DRAMA

British Drama

Notes exact—and is as much about celebrating the time in which it was set (1968) as it was about saying,
ah well, life can be a bit grim sometimes, can’t it? Adapted from a groundbreaking novel by Nell
Dunn, the film concerns a girl (played by Suzy Kendall) who gives up a privileged life in Chelsea to
work in a factory in Battersea, where she takes up with a young Dennis Waterman and comes to
learn just how hard life can be. Admirably unsentimental, Up the Junction is a rare gem, a film that
has until recent years been languishing awaiting a reappraisal that the current reissue should go
some way towards delivering.

Billy Liar
Billy Fisher is a dreamer. He has a whole country in his head, a place he goes to when grim reality
proves too much. And reality, in Billy Liar, doesn’t come much grimmer: there is his home life,
where his mum and dad perpetually grind on about how it’s time for him to grow up; there is work,
in the funeral parlour under Leonard Rossitter’s malevolent Mr Shadrach; and, for Billy, there are
women—Rita, a shrewish blonde played by Gwendolyn Watts, Barbara, a mumsy housewife type
played by Helen Fraser, and Liz played— in a career-defining performance—by Julie Christie.
Pinging from one setback to another like a pinball, Billy’s problems are all largely of his own making
but that doesn’t stop you siding with him every time he takes up his imaginary machine-gun.

Self Assessment

Multiple Choice Questions:

11. Kitchen sink drama also known as kitchen sink realism is a term coined to describe a
(a) British cultural movement
(b) British socialist realism
(c) British working class people
(d) British cultural movement against romanticism.
12. Social realism developed as a reaction against
(a) British working class
(b) romanticism
(c) British aristocratic class
(d) British family tensions.

13. Kitchen Sink dramas gained notoriety in twentieth century British culture for their
unflinching anger and criticism directed towards
(a) the social establishment
(b) the political establishment
(c) the economic establishment
(d) the social, political, and economic establishment.

Fill in the blanks:
14. Kitchen sink drama also known as kitchen sink realism is a term coined to describe
a British ..........
15. The cultural movement was rooted in the ideals of ........., an artistic movement,
expressed in the visual and other realist arts.
16. The domestic world during mid-twentieth century was believed to be the domain of
the..........

28 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY