1970s television: a self-conscious decade

British Cinema in the 1970s provides a long-awaited and authoritative history of 1970s British Cinema. Accounts previously presented British film culture of the period as without either coherence or quality. This book refutes previous accounts by offering a comprehensive map which reveals a surprising commonality in theme and tone across a diverse range of films. British Cinema in the 1970s: The Boundaries of Pleasure sets the scene by describing the market conditions, and economic, legislative and censorship constraints on British cinema in the decade. The book then goes on to establish the key themes of the film culture of the 1970s: the transformation of gender relations, social space, cultural competence, the landscape of ideas, and generic forms. Its exploration of these themes reveals common moods: irony and anxiety suffuse the whole film culture. A shared visual and performance style is shown to characterise this diverse cinema.