Bright Hopes, Dark Dreams: A Guide to New British Cinema

Robert Murphy

Abstract

The international success has raised the profile of British cinema; but only a tiny fraction of British films released every year become box-office hits and the contours of this new British cinema remain vague and ill defined. In this essay the author looks briefly at the careers of directors and outlines the three genres that have dominated British cinema since 1997 – romantic comedy, crime, and horror – to ascertain whether a viable national cinema has been established in the past ten years. Surprisingly, most of the box-office hits came from new directors, some of whom – notably Danny Boyle and Roger Michell – have gone on to pursue interestingly idiosyncratic careers. The past decade has also been notable from the emergence of young directors – Macdonald, Auerbach, Rumley, Ramsay, Evans, Pawlikowski, Meadows, Metzstein, Kapadia, Sheridan in particular – who are following in the footsteps of Michael Winterbottom in making films which defy the division between art and commercial cinema.

• The text is a translation of the chapter Bright Hopes, Dark Dreams: A Guide to New British Cinema from the volume The British Cinema Book, ed. Robert Murphy, British Film Institute Publishing, London 2001. © 2001 by British Film Institute Publishing.

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