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Sparrows can't sing : East End kith and kinship in the 1960s
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Sargeant, Amy (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. doi:10.3366/E1743452109000922 ISSN 1743-4521.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/E1743452109000922
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 | ||||
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Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1993 Motion Pictures |
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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 | ||||
Official Date: | August 2009 | ||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | Vol.6 | ||||
Number: | No.2 | ||||
Page Range: | pp. 256-266 | ||||
DOI: | 10.3366/E1743452109000922 | ||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) |
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