„Nie było (…) żadnego podziału na normalne i nienormalne”, czyli czego doświadczyli bohaterowie brytyjskiej Nowej Fali oraz ich literaccy poprzednicy, gdy postanowili wyjechać z miasta
Year: 2023
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: This paper reflects upon the key theses pointed out by Andrew Higson in his article Space, Place, Spectacle: Landscape and Townscape in the ‘Kitchen Sink’ Film. Attention is also given to the urban and rural landscapes present in the films of the British New Wave and in their literary prototypes. Urban and rural settings are analyzed as playing a more central role than being a mere neutral canvas on which a story is drawn. The featured places should be treated as historically true, their task being to authenticate the space, but also as ones that have additional functions and meanings: they reflect the traits of the characters or become a metaphor of their state of mind. The relations ‘the urban vs. the non-urban’ are placed in clearly emerging oppositions of being trapped and escaping, the mass vs. the individual, or coercion vs. pleasure. The first part of the text are general considerations from which the opposition between the urban vs. the non-urban emerge, i.e. the relationship between culture and nature (drawing on the concept of Zygmunt Bauman), followed by the characteristics of the style used to describe urban and rural space in the New Wave films and their literary prototypes. Particular attention is paid to the shots of ‘between the city and what is outside the city’ (including ‘That Long Shot of Our Town from That Hill’). The last part of the article looks at the role of the characters’ trips to the seaside.
Author: Anna Śliwińska
Institution: Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań
Language: Polish
Topic: Cinema History and Criticism
Subfield: Visual Arts and Performing Arts
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W7223997060