Sargeant, Amy, 1962-. (2009) Sparrows can't sing : East End kith and kinship in the 1960s. Journal of British Cinema and Television, Vol.6 (No.2). pp. 256-266. ISSN 1743-4521

PDF WRAP_Sargeant_sparrows.pdf - Requires a PDF viewer such as GSview, Xpdf or Adobe Acrobat Reader Download (124Kb)

Abstract

Sparrows Can’t Sing (1963) was the only feature film directed by the late and much lamented Joan Littlewood. Set and filmed in the East End, where she worked for many years, the film deserves more attention than it has hitherto received. Littlewood’s career spanned documentary (radio recordings made with Ewan MacColl in the North of England in the 1930s) to directing for the stage and the running of the Theatre Royal in London’s Stratford East, often selecting material which aroused memories in local audiences (Leach 2006: 142). Many of the actors trained in her Theatre Workshop subsequently became better known for their appearances on film and television. Littlewood herself directed hardly any material for the screen: Sparrows Can’t Sing and a 1964 series of television commercials for the British Egg Marketing Board, starring Theatre Workshop’s Avis Bunnage, were rare excursions into an area of practice which she found constraining and unamenable (Gable 1980: 32). The hybridity and singularity of Littlewood’s feature may answer, in some degree, for its subsequent neglect. However, Sparrows Can’t Sing makes a significant contribution to a group of films made in Britain in the 1960s which comment generally on changes in the urban and social fabric. It is especially worthy of consideration, I shall argue, for the use which Littlewood made of a particular community’s attitudes – sentimental and critical – to such changes and for its amalgamation of an attachment to documentary techniques (recording an aural landscape on location) with a preference for nonnaturalistic delivery in performance.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1993 Motion Pictures
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts > Film and Television Studies
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Sparrows can't sing, London (England) -- In motion pictures, London (England) -- History -- 20th century
Journal or Publication Title:	Journal of British Cinema and Television
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
ISSN:	1743-4521
Date:	August 2009
Volume:	Vol.6
Number:	No.2
Page Range:	pp. 256-266
Identification Number:	10.3366/E1743452109000922
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Access rights to Published version:	Open Access
References:	Brunsdon, C. (2007), London in Cinema: The Cinematic City Since 1945, London: BFI. Dench, G., Gavron, K. and Young, M. (2006), The New East End, London: Profile Books. Gable, J. (1980), The Tuppenny Punch and Judy Show, London: Michael Joseph. Goorney, H. (1981), The Theatre Workshop Story, London: Methuen. Hall, P. (2002), Cities of Tomorrow, Oxford: Blackwell. Hoggart, R. (1995), The Way We Live Now, London: Chatto and Windus. Holdsworth, N. (2006), Joan Littlewood, London: Routledge. Leach, R. (2006), Theatre Workshop: Joan Littlewood and the Making of Modern British Theatre, Exeter: University of Exeter Press. Lewis, S. (1961), Sparrers Can’t Sing, London: Evan Brothers. Littlewood, J. (1994), Joan’s Book: Joan Littlewood’s Peculiar History As She Tells It, London: Methuen. McLuhan, M. (1968), Understanding Media, New York: McGraw-Hill. Marwick, A. (1996), British Society Since 1945, London: Penguin. Mumford, K. and Power, A. (2003), East Enders: Family and Community in East London, Bristol: Policy Press. Orwell, G. [1937] (1975), The Road to Wigan Pier, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Sargeant, A. (2003), ‘Marking out the territory: aspects of British cinema’, in Nelmes, J. (ed.), An Introduction to Film Studies, London: Routledge. Sargeant, A. (2005), British Cinema: a Critical History, London: BFI, 2005. Thompson, M. (1979), Rubbish Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Titmuss, R. (1963), Essays on ‘the Welfare State’, London: Unwin University Books. Young, M. and Willmott, P. (1957), Family and Kinship in East London, London: Penguin. Young, M. andWillmott, P. (1986), Family and Kinship in East London, London: Routledge Kegan Paul.
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/3374

Request changes to a record

Actions (login required)

View Item