We Are the Lambeth Boys **** (1959, documentary) – Classic Movie Review 6638

Karel Reisz’s classic 1959 British ‘Free Cinema’ documentary film looks at the lives of boys in a South London youth club, with revealing glances at their humdrum work lives.

There is an amusing and telling finale as they go to play posh Mill Hill School at cricket. We Are the Lambeth Boys has worn very well as a nostalgic look at London life in the Fifties. Full of points of interest, indeed fascination, it still packs a punch and makes you sit up and take notice.

Reisz filmed it in a period of six weeks in the summer of 1958, in and around the Alford House youth club in the Oval area of South London.

It runs 53 minutes, is shot in black and white by Walter Lassally, is produced by Robert Adams and Leon Clore, and scored by John Dankworth.

The ‘Free Cinema’ movement films also include Lindsay Anderson’s Every Day Except Christmas (1957) and O Dreamland (1953), and Reisz and Tony Richardson’s Momma Don’t Allow (1956).

Walter Lassally, who went on to be the Oscar-winning cinematographer of Zorba the Greek (1964), died on 23 October 23 2017, aged 90.

Karel Reisz (1926–2002) went on to be the director of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), Night Must Fall (1964), Morgan! (1966), The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981) and Who’ll Stop the Rain (1978).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6638

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