Arena — Season 1, Episode 590: Flames of Passion: the Other Side of British Cinema
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
Britain's postwar cinema was not well looked upon by many critics. The melodramas, crime films and horror shockers were almost all derided by contemporary critics. Unearthing a wealth of vibrant extracts from forgotten and over-looked movies, this documentary celebrates the British cinema of the 1940s and 50s when films of the era tended to deal with the difficulties and occasional traumas of women and men as they come to terms with the postwar world.
About Arena
Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.