Approaching British Cinema with Great Expectations: Ehsan Khoshbakht on the Locarno78 Retrospective

After a successful exploration of Columbia Pictures in 2024, curator Ehsan Khoshbakht once again will return to Locarno to craft the festival’s latest retrospective, this year focused on the postwar years of British cinema. For decades, British cinema of this era was looked at with condescension by auteurist-minded critics on the continent; of the figures of the French New Wave, François Truffaut was most memorably chauvinistic when he described the words “British cinema” as an oxymoron. Yet this snobbery was certainly not universal. In the US, for instance, prominent cinephile champions like Martin Scorsese continued to draw on the period for inspiration, long insisting on classical British cinema of the postwar years as an artistically fertile period ripe for rediscovery.

I spoke with Khoshbakht about the program, conceived as a focus on films about British life during the period of 1945-1960. Khoshbakht started his work with films made at the end of the Second World War and went, month by month, right up to Michael Powell’s once-critically reviled 1960 masterpiece Peeping Tom.

Was there a single film that catalyzed the idea for this retrospective in your mind?

A Diary for Timothy (1945) by Humphrey Jennings. It is a remarkable film made during the final stages of World War II, with the knowledge that the war would soon end. Jennings asks, “What next?” We see a child being born: “What will happen to him?” “How can we make the world a better place for Timothy?” From there, I thought of doing a retrospective that explores what happened to that child in the years after that point, following his life and the lives of the people around him.

Before you commenced with this impressive undertaking – digging deep into the BFI archives, rethinking the history of British cinema from the ground up – how extensive was your knowledge of these films? You started with Humphrey Jennings, a documentarian, and moved to fiction films made in the British studio system of the period. That must have brought its own surprises.

I grew up watching British films. Now, this is a very interesting point: we all know that Martin Scorsese discovered British cinema on television. This was because Hollywood studios were reluctant to sell the rights to television networks, so American channels filled their programming with British films. The same thing must have happened in Iran, where I was born and raised, because there was a very good collection of British films at the archive of National Television. After the revolution, when ties to the West were cut off, these were the only things remaining in the archive that they could still show. And they did show them on a regular basis. So, from the age of eight or nine, I discovered films by Harold French, Alexander Mackendrick, Ralph Thomas, and many others.

How did you structure your work - researching, viewing, assembling - as a curator? I know, for instance, that you limited the scope of subjects: no period films, films set outside Britain, no fantasy, and no kitchen sink realism.

My research method was a primitive one: “Watch everything!” In any case, though it was made during and about the war, A Diary for Timothy contains no shots of war, combat, or the Blitz. We only hear about it in the soundtrack. I got the idea from there and thought to myself, “Don’t mention the war!” Yet, the Second World War – or its shadow – is present in almost every film in the program, all the way up to 1960. With that in mind, I thought this program should focus on the people of Britain as seen through British films, rather than the other way around. That’s why I came up with the idea of living day by day with the people, from September 1945 to December 1960, through British films made and set in the exact same period, hence the exclusion of films set in the past or future, or films with fantastical premises. This automatically meant focusing on the golden days of the British studio system. Even though the final years of this period overlap with the kitchen sink and New Wave movements, I thought that I shouldn’t mix the two. I wanted the attention to be on the unsung heroes of British cinema.

Who were some of the great discoveries you made while watching so many films from this period?

The two directors I didn’t know much about – beyond their names and a film or two – but who now rank highly in my mind, and who I consider significant figures, are Jack Lee and Gordon Parry. Revisiting the work of George King reminded me just how rich his mise-en-scène is. Daniel Birt’s collaborations with Dylan Thomas are fantastically dark and lyrical. And needless to say, I think Lance Comfort is one of the finest British directors ever. His Daughter of Darkness (1948) is closer to Mexican Buñuel than anything in British cinema.

Looking at the line-up, it's clear you wanted to highlight the role women played in British cinema of the period, as writers, stars, and directors. Can you speak to that? And there are also many exiled American directors who were working in British cinema at the time, seemingly further enriching the pool of voices in the nation's filmmaking.

Yes, British postwar cinema is unique with respect to the role women played in it. Women were equally invested in writing, directing, and producing genre works, particularly comedies and crime films. At the same time, they were making films that argued for a drastic redefinition of women's roles in post-war Britain, highlighting the enormous contributions women made during the war. Which is to say, if women could be so decisive in defending the country and winning a war against the Nazis, it would be absurd to think they couldn’t be equally effective in running society and taking on roles traditionally assigned to men. To Be a Woman (1951) by Jill Craigie is a wonderful short film that addresses this directly.

And you’re right, this openness in British cinema after the war also extended to figures who could no longer find work in Hollywood, by which I mean blacklisted or gray-listed Americans. What is astonishing is the speed with which those directors integrated into British cinema and tackled quintessentially British subjects, such as class (Joseph Losey), the psychological damage of the war (Edward Dmytryk), and mapping London cinematically as skillfully as did any British director (Jules Dassin). One shouldn’t forget that even before this post-1947 migration, there were many first-rate technicians in British cinema – mostly European Jews – who had fled their countries and contributed greatly to British films reaching their pinnacle of artistic and commercial success.

I know you've been working closely with the BFI to ensure many of these films will show on 35mm. Can you speak a little about the screening formats audiences in Locarno can expect to see these films on this year?

I do care about showing film on film. That’s always my priority, unless the alternative screening material, such as a restored DCP, is closer to the original look of the film and enhances the viewing experience. A great number of precious 35mm archive prints are coming straight from the BFI, the home of British cinema. However, other distributors are also contributing some fine prints to this program. There might even be a print or two coming from Hollywood studios, as some of these British films were financed by Hollywood, and they have the best elements available. Nearly 30 titles will be shown in analogue format, with the rest presented digitally. The majority of the digital copies are recent restorations and preservations.

What do you hope a program like Great Expectations will bring to the popular understanding of classical British cinema?

Understanding the dark edge that British films have, contrary to common notions of the British character. Their self-criticism is sharp and pointed, and many of the questions they raise remain relevant to this day. Moreover, British cinema, alongside Italian cinema, had one of the most consistent and rewarding studio systems in Europe—one that remains largely unexplored. I hope this program opens peoples’ eyes to the brilliance, sheer visual exuberance, and great artistry of directors who deserve more recognition internationally and even nationally, considering how little has been done to celebrate them, even in Britain.

Finally, can you give us five key titles from the retrospective that give a sense of what we can expect?

1. The Passionate Friends – David Lean (1949)
   Lean was a painter with his camera even before he could expand his canvas to the widescreen glory of deserts and icy steppes. He was already a painter in this ravishing melodrama, with Ann Todd at its center. Her mature bitterness and the film’s rich visual details (plus a narrative link to Switzerland) make it essential viewing. This is a restored version from a few years ago.
    
2. Train of Events – Sidney Cole, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden (1949)
   At least two of these three directors are masters of British cinema. This film is, in my view, the best of the portmanteau films that were common in British cinema of the 1940s and 1950s. It combines Ealing Studio stylization and fine acting with shrewd social observation.
    
3. The Happy Family – Muriel Box (1952)
   London was in ruins after the war and had to be rebuilt. Films were made about the new plans for the post-Blitz capital, and to me, this semi-anarchist comedy is the best of them. It conveys all the insights found in remarkable documentaries on the same subject but tells the story from the perspective of a family whose house is about to be demolished during the redevelopment of the South Bank before the Festival of Britain.
    
4. The Elephant Will Never Forget – John Krish (1953)
   A poetic short film about the last tram ride in London before the service was discontinued. It makes one’s heart ache.
    
5. The Flying Scot – Compton Bennett (1957)
   An excellent and surprisingly self-conscious example of a British B-movie. Many often-enjoyable crime or mystery stories were made during this period. This one, however, questions the nature of American-influenced crime films in a self-referential way you wouldn’t expect from a low-budget flick!