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| (c) Locarno International Film Festival |
A conversation with Locarno’s Christopher Small about my new curatorial project for the festival's 2025 retrospective, Great Expectations: British Postwar Cinema, 1945-1960. A slightly different edit of the conversation can be accessed here on Locarno’s website.
Locarno: Was there a single film that catalysed the idea for this retrospective in your mind?
Ehsan Khoshbakht: A Diary for Timothy (1945) by Humphrey Jennings. It is a remarkable film made during the final stages of World War II, with the knowledge that the war would soon end. The film then asks, 'What next?' It shows a child being born and poses the question: What will happen to this child? How can we make the world a better place for Timothy? I immediately thought of doing a retrospective to explore what happened to that child, following his life and the lives of the people around him.
Locarno: And how extensive at that point was your knowledge of British cinema? Because moving from Jennings to immersing yourself in British studio cinema of the period must have brought its own surprises at first.
Ehsan: My knowledge of British cinema was relatively extensive and detailed—I grew up watching British films. Now, this is very interesting: we all know that Martin Scorsese discovered British cinema on television. This was because Hollywood studios were reluctant to sell the rights to television networks, so American channels filled their programming with British films. The same thing must have happened in Iran—where I was born and raised—because there was a very good collection of British films at the archive of National Television. After the revolution, when ties to the West were cut off, these were the only things in the archive they could still show. And they did, on a regular basis. So, from the age of 8 or 9, I discovered films by Harold French, Alexander Mackendrick, Ralph Thomas and many others.
Locarno: Can you talk a little about the process of rediscovering many of those films in a new context, many years later, and how you structured your work - researching, viewing, assembling - as a curator? I know, for instance, that you limited the scope of subjects: no period films, films set outside Britain, no fantasy, and no kitchen sink realism..
Ehsan: Though made during and about the war, A Diary for Timothy contains no shots of war, combat, or the Blitz. We only hear about it in the soundtrack. I got the idea from there and thought, 'Don’t mention the war!' Yet, the war—or its shadow—is present in almost every film in the programme, well into 1960. I thought this should focus on the people of Britain through British films, rather than the other way around. That’s why I came up with the idea of living day by day with the people, from September 1945 to December 1960, through British films made and set during the exact same period. (Hence, the exclusion of films set in the past or future, or films with fantastical premises.)
This automatically meant focusing on the golden days of the British studio system. I thought, even though the final years of this period overlap with the kitchen sink and New Wave movements, I should not mix the two. I wanted the attention to be on the unsung heroes of British cinema.
My research method was a primitive one: 'Watch everything!'
Locarno: Who or what were some of the great discoveries for you while watching films from this period so intensely?
Ehsan: The two directors I didn’t know much about—beyond their names and a film or two—but now rank highly and consider significant figures are Jack Lee and Gordon Parry. Revisiting the work of George King reminded me of his rich mise-en-scène. Daniel Birt’s collaborations with Dylan Thomas are fantastically dark and lyrical. And needless to say, I think Lance Comfort is one of the finest British directors ever. His Daughter of Darkness is closer to the Mexican Buñuel than anything in British cinema.
Locarno: Looking at the line-up, it's clear you wanted to highlight the role women played in British cinema of the period - as writers, stars, and directors. Can you speak to that? And there are also many exiled American directors who were working in British cinema at the time, seemingly further enriching the pool of voices in the nation's filmmaking. Both strike me as quite remarkable aspects of studio filmmaking of this era.
Ehsan: British postwar cinema is unique when it comes to the role women played in it. What is so remarkable is that women were equally invested in writing, directing and producing genre films, particularly comedy and crime. At the same time, they were making films that argued for a drastic redefinition of women's roles in post-war Britain, highlighting the enormous contributions women made during the war. In other words, if women could be so decisive in defending the country and winning a war against the Nazis, it was absurd to think they couldn’t be equally effective in running society and taking on roles traditionally assigned to men. To Be a Woman (1951) by Jill Craigie is a wonderful short film that addresses this directly.
This openness in British cinema after the war also extended to figures who could no longer find work in Hollywood—blacklisted or gray-listed Americans. What is astonishing is the speed with which they integrated into British cinema and tackled very British subjects, such as class (Losey), the psychological damage of the war (Dmytryk), and mapping London cinematically as skillfully as any British director (Dassin). One shouldn’t forget that even before this post-1947 migration, there were many first-rate technicians in British cinema—mostly European Jews—who had fled their countries and contributed greatly to British films reaching their pinnacle of artistic and commercial success.
Locarno: I know you've been working closely with the BFI to ensure many of these films will show on 35mm. Can you speak a little about the screening formats audiences in Locarno will be able to see?
Ehsan: I do care about showing film on film. That’s always my first priority unless the alternative screening material, such as a restored DCP, is closer to the original look of the film and enhances the viewing experience. A great number of precious 35mm archive prints are coming straight from the BFI, the home of British cinema. However, other distributors are also contributing some fine prints to this program. There might even be a print or two coming from Hollywood studios, as some of these British films were financed by Hollywood, and they have the best elements available. Nearly 30 titles will be shown in analogue format, with the rest presented digitally. The majority of the digital copies are recent restorations and preservations.
Locarno: The Columbia Pictures retrospective has, since you programmed it for Locarno77, already travelled far and wide. What do you hope a program like Great Expectations will bring to the popular understanding of classical British cinema?
Ehsan: Understanding the dark edge that British films have, contrary to common notions of the British character. Their self-criticism is sharp and pointed, and many of the questions they raise remain relevant to this day. Moreover, British cinema, alongside Italian cinema, had one of the most consistent and rewarding studio systems in Europe—one that remains largely unexplored. I hope this programme opens eyes to the brilliance, sheer visual exuberance, and great artistry of directors who deserve greater recognition internationally and even nationally, considering how little has been done to celebrate them, even in Britain.
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