ABSTRACT
The year 1956 marked the beginning of a new era in British cinema, just as it did in politics, literature, theatre and popular music. British cinema in the mid-1950s was characterised by the same sense of complacency that pervaded the country as a whole and which was about to be wiped away by the anger of a new generation. The 'new wave' films can be considered progressive in the extent to which they 'confirmed an identity' for working-class audiences in the late 1950s and in so doing contested the dominant middle-class image which was prevalent in British cinema at the time. In 1963 Harold Wilson had called for a new Britain 'forged in the white heat of a technological revolution' in a rallying cry that was destined to sweep away the old Conservative government which, after twelve years in office, seemed as archaic and outdated as the war films of the 1950s.
