A kind of loving (1962)
The latest film festival at the Rosen Multiplex celebrates Northern British Kitchen sink of the early 1960s.
The two best known actors are Albert Finney from Salford who made his name in Saturday Night, Sunday Morning and had a distinguished career in film and television and Tom Courtenay from Hull who first starred in Billy Liar.
Another actor born in Derbyshire who ranks alongside these two is Alan Bates who starred in A Kind of Loving which I saw last night.
The film director is the equally distinguished John Schlesinger (Darling, Midnight Cowboy) and the screenplay is written by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall from the Stan Barstow novel.
The north was a fecund crucible for the Arts in the Sixties.
We immediately think of the Beatles, writers like Waterhouse, Hall, Alan Sillitoe and Bill Naughton, Barnsley’s Michael Parkinson.
In sport you had Manchester United and later Liverpool and Leeds.
Many who tasted success early moved down south. John Lennon had moved to Surrey by his mid-twenties.
Alan Bates had already made his film debut as Laurence Olivier’s son in The Entertainer.
He continued to make diverse films in the 60s showcasing his considerable talent in Zorba the Greek, The Go Between and Women in Love before going more into television and theatre.
The world of the north in the early Sixties is well represented in A Kind of Loving.
It charts the relationship between draughtsman Vic Lewis (Alan Bates) and Ingrid (Joy Ritchie).
We see the early attraction and courtship, Vic ‘s fear of being drawn into a predictable, claustrophobic relationship, a domineering mother -in-law beautifully played by Thora Hird, their marriage after Ingrid becomes pregnant , separation and reconciliation.
This is set against the world of the local cinema, dance hall and erotic magazines of big bare-breasted women. It is not so much dated as a period piece of social history.
At roughly the same time you had in France the new wave of Jean Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut.
Both were more Paris-based as France did not and does not have the same North/South divide.
I’m a keen admirer of French cinema but A Kind of Loving or This Sporting Life or Billy Liar are equals in terms of acting and direction.
