ABSTRACT
Adecade after the endof the SecondWorldWar, a newkindof filmhero attractedmillions of British and Soviet moviegoers to the silver screen, astonishing them with his noisy contempt for the established order. The press in the UK and the USSR spilled much ink debating the significance of these scandalous protagonists, recognising in them the intensifying rebelliousness of postwar youth. These celluloid bad boys quickly earned the moniker ‘angry youngmen’ because they railed furiously againstwhat theyperceived tobe the authoritarianism of their parents as well as the conformity of their peers.1 The angry
young man phenomenon earned overnight fame on both the British and Soviet sides of the Iron Curtain because audiences marvelled at the anti-heroes’ open scorn for the much-touted achievements of the postwar period:material abundance, upwardmobility, and social harmony. Undercutting the rosier aspects of postwar life, the angry youngmen film cycle dealt openly with the era’s pressing issues, such as premarital sex, abortion, domestic violence, and juvenile delinquency. A 1958 film poster, advertising one of the cycle’smost famous features,LookBack inAnger, spoke to the effect thesemovies sought to create: ‘The audience was jolted as if they’d been sitting for two hours in an electric chair.’ Few could deny the appeal of young men who, inhabiting a bleak world and facing a perspectiveless future, provocatively wrote off all thosewho viewed the postwar erawith a dose of optimism as blind, hoodwinked, or dishonest.
