Can it stand up to the best of British cinema of the 60s?

Rating: 8/10 (2 April 2003)

Stephen Daldry is to be admired. For a first film by a theater director it is a commendable product that brings out fascinating performances that only theatre directors are adept at ensuring. Admirable performances by Julie Walters and Jamie Bell. Add to it clever and tongue-in-cheek editing by John Wilson and imaginative camerawork by Brian Tufano.
All this reminded me of three films from Britain made in the sixties: Karel Reiz' "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", Tony Richardson's "Loneliness of the long distance runnner", and Lindsay Anderson's "This sporting life". These movies captured exactly the same feelings as "Billy Elliot"--the only difference was Billy is younger. "Billy Elliot" is in color, while the three brilliant films of the 60s were in black and white. Two of the movies were based on work by the superb writer Alan Sillitoe, who I was lucky to have met in real life, whose middle-class characters wanted to break away and become achievers in their own cosmic world--without the angry tap dances of "Billy Elliot" to aid them on the technicolor screen. The three movies of the 60s established the careers of the late Richard Harris, Rachel Roberts, Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay, and the late Lindsay Anderson--another giant I was fortunate to have met and interviewed.
"Billy Elliot" touches your heart because it is a great story and has so much of creative talent packed into it. Yet compare this film to the three British films made forty years ago, with older technology, but brimming with a passion that dwarfs "Billy Elliot" in all its color and technical glory. The politics, the social commentary and human values of the three 60s movies are more gripping than the saccharin sweet "Billy Elliot" made 40 years later. I do not infer that Stephen Daldry is less talented than Anderson, Richardson or Reisz--only that the movie needs to be compared and evaluated with its true elder cousins.