Country: UK
Year: 1959
Duration: 52'


Lambeth is a workingclass district of London. The film focuses on the activities of a youth club, especially on dancing. Then, the youths go away lo school or to work in the stores or offices. One day, the youths are invited to a school in the highclass district, which is associated with their club. They play cricket, then cross through the most elegant districts of the city to return calmly to their own neighborhood.

"Reisz set out to uncover an ignored social group the young workers and the teddy boys that hung out in a youth club in working-class Lambeth. Reisz went around with these youths for two months. He gained their confidence and got them used to the camera. With his patient research and allusive guidance. he got an authentic spontaneity out of the boys. He was not content just to watch them while they acted or to listen to them when they talked. He gave a sense of their lives and of the struggle they fought to escape from the boredom of the industrial civilization that cast them out." (JeanPaul Torok, Qu'estce que le Free Cinema?, "Positif", n. 49, December 1962, p. 19)

"I had been working for three years as program director of the National Film Theater when I resigned because I never managed to find money to make films. And I got a job strange as it may seem with Ford. As director of film services, I was responsible for publicity and technical films on tractors, motors, and other things like that. We made a deal that in exchange for this work Ford was to provide the money needed to make a film. The first year we did Every Day Except Christmas, which I produced and Lindsay Anderson directed. The second year we did We Are the Lambeth Boys. The third year I left Ford. Ford was like a 'patron of the arts': as long as I did what they wanted in the commercials, I could do what I wanted in the documentaries. These two films were done in total freedom. And the most outstanding freedom that they gave me was that of being able to give We Are the Lambeth Boys the length that I thought was right. It is a documentary that runs almost one hour a thing that was entirely unusual for that time. And the film was playing in the theaters." (Karel Reisz interviewed by Jean Grissolange, "Jeune Cinema", n. 122, October 1979, pp. 1011)

Biography

film director

Karel Reisz

FILMOGRAFIA

Momma Don’t Allow (cm, doc., 1955), We Are the Lambeth Boys (Siamo i ragazzi di Lambeth, doc., 1958), March to Aldermaston (cm, doc., 1959), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Sabato sera, domenica mattina, 1960), Night Must Fall (La doppia vita di Dan Craig, 1964), Morgan! (Morgan matto da legare, 1966), Isadora (id., 1968), The Gambler (40.000 dollari per non morire, 1974), Who’ll Stop the Rain (Guerrieri dell’inferno, 1978), The French Lieutenant’s Woman (La donna del tenente francese, 1981), Sweet Dreams (id., 1985), Everybody Wins (Alla ricerca dell’assassino, 1990), Performance (ep., tv, 1994), Act Without Words I (cm, tv, 2000).

Cast

& Credits

Director: Karel Reisz.
Director of photography: Walter Lassally.
Editor: John Fletcher.
Music: John Dankworth.
Commento: Jon Rollason.
Production company: Leon Clore per la Ford Motor Company.
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