British Realist Filmmakers

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British Realist Filmmakers

• Mike Leigh

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Table of Contents

• 1) Who is Mike Leigh?
• 2) Documentary Realism and Psychological Realism
• 3) Filmmaking Methods of Mike Leigh

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• On the whole, life for most people is get
  born and survive as best you can, for as long as
  you can, till its all up. The norm for most
  people in the world is that life is hard work
  its tough. Its not about being winners or
  losers. Its about coping. The minute anything
  extraordinary or exotic happens in a film, I
  get bored. Most movies are about extraordinary
  or charmed lifestyles. For me whats exciting is
  finding heightened drama, the extraordinary in
  the ordinary what happens to ordinary people
  the entirely disorganized and irrational business
  of living.
  Mike Leigh

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Who is Mike Leigh?

• Mike Leigh (1943 - )
• Bleak Moments (1971) -
• His first feature
• ?
• His Second Feature,
• High Hopes (1988)
• Theatre and TV drama director in the
  intervening 17 years.

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Mike Leighs Early Works

• Bleak Moments (1971)
• A shy, intelligent woman, Sylvia, looks after
  her mentally retarded sister in their suburban
  south London home, while having a friendship with
  a woman from work and embarking a relationship
  with a emotionally stunted man.

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Mike Leighs Early Works

• Abigails Party (1977)
• While teenage Abigail throws a party two doors
  away, grown-ups have their own soirée. The
  cynical exposé of adult, middle-class pretensions
  and snobbery.

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Mike Leighs Early Works

• High Hopes (1988)
• Slice-of-life look at a working-class couple in
  London, Shirley and Cyril, his aging mother, his
  mums ghastly upper-middle-class neighbors, and
  Cyrils pretentious sister and philandering
  husband.

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Who is Mike Leigh?

• Life Is Sweet (1990)
• About a family life with Andy, a professional
  chef who buys a decrepit hamburger van, his wife
  Wendy, a part-time waitress, and their daughters,
  sex and Marx-obsessed Nicola and and a secret
  bulimic, Natalie, an apprentice plumber who
  rejects gender stereotyping and dreams of
  escaping to America.

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Mike Leighs Works

• Naked (1993)
• Johnny, a highly intelligent but bitterly cynical
  Mancunian wanderer, arrives in London, where his
  presence has a powerful impact on those he meets,
  his former girlfriend, her flat mate, and the
  guard of an office building.
• The winner of the best director and actor at the
  Cannes Film Festival in 1993. Wider acceptance.

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Mike Leighs Works

• Secrets and Lies (1996)
• The story of a successful black woman named
  Hortense Cumberbatch who, while tracing her
  family history (she was adopted as a baby),
  discovers that her birth mother, Cynthia Rose
  Purley, is an unhappy working-class white
  woman.

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Mike Leighs Works

• All or Nothing (2002)
• The marriage between Penny and Phil is on the
  rocks. In a poor London housing estate over a
  long weekend they recover their love when their
  son is hospitalized after he collapses with an
  attack of stroke.

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Mike Leighs Works

• Vera Drake (2004)
• Vera Drake is a selfless and respectable woman
  who is completely devoted to, and loved by, her
  working class family. However, she also secretly
  visits women and helps them induce miscarriages
  for unwanted pregnancies.

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Documentary and Psychological Realism

• Mike Leighs Realism
• Psychological rather than documentary realism
• Realistic representation of inner psyche of
  characters rather than realistic copying of
  appearances

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Documentary and Psychological Realism

• The exploration of the desires, hopes and
  disillusionment of working-class protagonists and
  the presentation of the heart of the structure
  and texture of working class families.
• Similarities to and influence from Ozu Yasujiro

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Documentary and Psychological Realism
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Documentary and Psychological Realism

• Mike Leighs films it is people but not
  locations that are their centre.
• The interiors and behaviours of his characters
  and the small-scale incidents
• Realistically capturing the variety of human
  (mainly working-class) behaviours with personal
  quirk, emotion, or idiosyncrasy
• Earlier films strong caricaturing tendencies
  turning characters into types.
• Later films more naturalistic characterizations
• Both sharper observation of human beings.

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Filmmaking Methods of Mike Leigh

• (1)   A group of actors arrive with lists of
  people they know, and Leigh then lets them
  discuss these people with him.
• ?
• (2) Leigh picks up the characters he is
  interested in, bearing in mind the other
  characters he is assembling and the general area
  the film is going to explore.

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Filmmaking Methods of Mike Leigh

• ?
• (3) He then sends the actors off to do research.
• They create the personalities by inventing
• their entire histories and giving them emotional
• depth and a psychological and social structure.
• Leigh works closely with each actor during this
• process.

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Filmmaking Methods of Mike Leigh

• ?
• (4) Once the creation of the characters is
• complete, Leigh introduces his actors to each
• other and has their characters interact and
• improvise together in situations that he has
• devised. Meanwhile, Leigh is building dramatic
• conflict between the characters, refining the
• dialogue, constructing a plot.

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Filmmaking Methods of Mike Leigh

• ?
• (5) Leigh finalizes the plot and the dialogue,
• construct scenes and determines the mise-en-
• scène.
• ?
• (6) When the film goes before the camera, the
• improvisations are over. There is a final
  script,
• and Leigh adheres to it. There is nothing
  anarchic
• or free-form about his directorial methods.

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Happy Go Lucky (2008)
Another Year (2010)
Leighs output is small but he doggedly sticks to
his filmmaking method.