9° FESTIVAL INTERNAZIONALE CINEMA GIOVANI
Retrosective - New British Cinema 1956-1968
THURSDAY'S CHILDREN
Country: UK
Year: 1953
Duration: 20'
The film opens with the voice of Richard Burton reciting a nursery rhyme for children: Monday's child is fair of face, until the verse, Thursday's child has far to go. On the screen there are children who play at being grown ups: a girl who pours tea and a boy who pretends lo smoke a pipe while reading the paper. Step by step we are introduced into the world of the deaf and we begin to realize how hard it is for them to learn to talk. We see them at a class with their eyes fixed on the teacher's lips, since they learn to speak touching the teacher's lips and throat. We hear them learn to speak. The teacher reads the children a letter scanning the words one by one, aided by drawings on the blackboard. We see the children put on the play Little Black Sambo. From words they progress to phrases. The film ends with the verse about Thursday's child and a series of shots of children playing happily in the school cafeteria.
"The real subject of the film is communication. And if verbal communication counts less, a different language takes its place. The "substitute" language is the musical relationship that is set up among the images, a relationship that is established entirely through the editing. The camera is almost always still. It is as if style were missing. Only at the end do Anderson and Brenton use a tracking shot to distance themselves from the children a bit. The montage takes the place of words, creates relationships and emotions. It can also cheat, like in the scene with Dennis, one of the children, who reads a letter This is absolutely amazing. However it was purposely put together on the moviola, as Anderson himself has admitted. Thursday's Children is impressive in the way it knows how to be both tender and serene in taking on such a dramatic issue as a physical handicap." (Alberto Crespi, Lindsay Anderson, Firenze, La Nuova Italia 1988, p. 31)
Biography
film director
Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Anderson (Bangalore, India, 1923 - Angoulême, France, 1994) graduated in 1948 from Oxford, where he was captivated by theater. He was one of the first collaborators of the magazine “Sequence” and the founder along with Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson of Free Cinema. He directed several short films, like O Dreamland and Every Day Except Christmas, and his debut feature film was This Sporting Life (1963). In 1968 he made If…, which won the Golden Palm at Cannes, and then dedicated himself primarily to theater and television. He later directed films such as O Lucky Man! (1973), Britannia Hospital (1982) and, in 1986, The Whales of August, the last film he directed for cinema.
FILMOGRAFIA
Meet the Pioneers (mm, doc., 1948), Three Installations (cm, doc., 1952), O Dreamland (cm, doc., 1953), Thursday’s Children (cm, doc., 1954), £20 a Ton (cm, doc., 1955), A Hundred Thousand Children (cm, doc., 1955), Every Day Except Christmas (mm, doc., 1957), This Sporting Life (Io sono un campione, 1963), The White Bus (mm, 1967), If... (Se..., 1968), O Lucky Man! (id., 1973), In Celebration (Celebrazione, 1975), Look Back in Anger (1980), Britannia Hospital (id., 1982), The Whales of August (Le balene d’agosto, 1987), Glory! Glory! (tv, 1989), Is That All There Is? (mm, tv, 1993).
Cast
& Credits
Director: Lindsay Anderson.
Coregia: Guy Brenton.
Director of photography: Walter Lassally.
Music: Geoffrey Wright.
Voce fuori campo: Richard Burton.
Cast: i bambini della Royal School per sordomuti di Margate.
Production company: World Wide Pictures.
Coregia: Guy Brenton.
Director of photography: Walter Lassally.
Music: Geoffrey Wright.
Voce fuori campo: Richard Burton.
Cast: i bambini della Royal School per sordomuti di Margate.
Production company: World Wide Pictures.