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| Valentino by Ken Russell |
From the mid 1960s on, not only American film directors produced in Britain, also a number of distinguished (notevoli) European directors followed their examples. These included Roman Polanski (1933 – ) Repulsion (1964) and Cul-de-Sac (1966- ), Francois Truffaut (1932 – 1984) Fahrenheit 451 (1966), Michelangelo Antonioni (1912–2007) Blow-Up (1966) and Jean-Luc Godard(1930 – ) One Plus One (1968). Television itself developed a generation of filmmakers who began to find their way into film industry. These include Ken Russell (1927 – 2011) with his spectacular, outrageous style and his frequently risqué (rischiosi) subject matter, Ken Loach (1936 – ) and Peter Watkins (1935 – ), whose films reflect the British cinema’s received traditions of realism and social commitment (coinvolgimento). The seventies and eighties have continued the history of crisis and renewal (rinnovamento)that marks the development of British cinema from the twenties onwards. The seventies saw a dramatic decline in American investment and British filmmaking was thrown back (fu rigettato) on its own resources. In America itself there were signs of a new cinema emerging with the success of the low budget (basso costo) Easy Rider (1969) by Dennis Hopper and the appearance of young directors such as Francis Coppola (1939 – ) and Martin Scorsese (1942 – ). The British music conglomerate EMI financed successful American co-production films like The Deer Hunter, Convoy, and The Driver (all released in 1978) and Agatha Christie’s (1890 – 1976) adaptations such as Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Death on the Nile (1978) starred famous actors. Lord Grade (1906–1998), a magnate TV producer, made thrillers like The Eagle has landed (1976) and The Boys from Brazil (1978), remakes (rifacimenti) of classic films such as All Quiet on the Western Front (1979), and popular horror cycle with The Medusa Touch(1978). In the eighties the Oscar-winning Puttam’s Chariots of Fire(1981), Ken Russell’s films Mahler (1974) and Litszomania(1975), Alan Parker’s (1944 – ) Midnight Express (1978), and Richard Attenborough‘s (1923 – ) Gandhi (1983) gave British filmmakers fresh hopes.