Michael Caine and the four “angry young men” who redefined British cinema
A class divide within the British film industry has existed for decades, ever-fluctuating between championing working-class actors and simply relegating them to soaps.
Think about it – the privately-educated stars typically appear in impressive productions from the get-go, like Benedict Cumberbatch, whose entry into the world of professional acting began with various significant theatre roles. The actor had attended Harrow (of course), where the opportunity to join a prestigious performing club really boosted his chances of success.
Things were very different for actors from a working-class background. Getting into the film industry was a monumental task. Forgetting the socio-economic challenges of actually providing enough space to pursue an art form, the industry at the time was also highly bias towards those who were privately-educated. The world of acting may as well have been on a desert island in the Galapagos.
One such actor tasked with taking on the voyage of a lifetime was Michael Caine. Born just before World War Two, the Londoner would have to force his way into the acting sphere through a series of fortunate moments and a refusal to quit. Equipped with a Cockney accent, the young Caine was aware that people like him just didn’t appear in the movies.
He wanted to be a star, though, so he spent many years appearing in uncredited roles in an attempt to break into the business, and in 1964 – 14 years after his first on-screen appearance – he finally got a significant part in Zulu. The rest of the decade soon proved to be monumental for working-class representation on screen, and Caine was a vital part of this.
For the first time, British cinema was starting to show a more realistic side to life in the country, spurred by the ‘angry young men’ movement that began to flourish in literature and theatre. Titles like Look Back in Anger and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning were published in the late 1950s, and soon they were adapted for the big screen, shedding light on the bleak postwar opportunities for young working-class men.
This social realist movement wasn’t just the arena of angry men, however. The likes of A Taste of Honey, The L-Shaped Room, and Poor Cow centred around working-class women, exploring themes such as single motherhood, abortion, and interracial relationships.
Still, the period appeared to be much easier for working-class male actors to navigate than women, because out from this era of increased class diversity came some of the biggest British stars – all of whom were men.
Talking to the New York Times, Caine explained, “I was one of the angry young men. Me, Peter O’Toole, Albert Finney, Roger Moore, Sean Connery. It was the class system that did it. We were all angry, postwar English kids, and we all expressed our rebellion in separate ways. I expressed my rebellion by never getting rid of my cockney accent.”
It might seem small, but it was a huge step forward for actors lower down the economic ladder. By starring in movies that reflected real life for real people, and using their real voices to do so, Caine and his cohorts broke down barriers. Finney became a household name alongside Moore and Connery in defiance of the elite.
“The thing to do would have been to get rid of it,” Caine said in reference to his accent, “which is how Roger Moore showed his anger, by burying it.” He added, “Roger is a policeman’s son, and he talked the same way I do. It marks you to talk the way I do in England. I hate the class system, hate it very deeply. I worked hard to get up out of poverty, and the class system said: You’re never going to get out of it. You’re going to clean toilets and thank us for it.”
It was not about fitting in but about carving one;s own place in the world. Forget boarding shcools, the Queen’s English and the ‘good and proper’ way of being, Caine and his crew were able to craft a new space for a whole generation of actors to inhabit. Representation has certainly fluctuated over the years, these angry young men undisputedly paved the way.
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