The Harvard Film Archive is pleased to present a focused version of Great Expectations: British Postwar Cinema, 1945-1960, the Locarno rediscovery of British cinema curated by film curator and archaeologist, Ehsan Khoshbakht, originally produced in partnership with the BFI National Archive (who have provided a number of prints for this current film program) and Cinémathèque Suisse with support from Studiocanal. This series looks differently at the immediate post-WWII years of British filmmaking, centered on films taking the pulse, and even touching the third rail, of the urgent contemporary moment in all its complexity and contradiction.  

This retrospective was structured around the question of Britishness and life in the British Isles as reflected through cinema. Therefore, the selection criteria focused exclusively on contemporary films. It is hard to believe that one of the most refined and remarkable European national cinemas—one that also gifted some of the finest artists and technicians to Hollywood—remains so underexplored beyond its borders. British cinema made in the studio system managed to blend popular entertainment with some of the most stylistically innovative forms, elevating it to the status of art. Our focus on contemporary cinema tells the story of a nation in search of its identity—sometimes dark and brooding, and at other times, as in the finest tradition of British comedies, hilarious and biting. This is a national portrait in cinema.