A new season at the BFI showcases a Britain casting off the moorings of tradition yet uncertain where it was headed
All human history, you might say, is the story of people not knowing what lies around the corner. The typical family snapshot catches the pathos of this ignorance very well: the 12-year-old schoolboy smiling on a seaside promenade in 1935 is unaware of his fate on a North Atlantic convoy six years later. But the art form that makes us most aware of this is the cinema. You enter a darkened hall to watch an entertainment you first saw 30, 40, 50 and more years ago. The story, the scenery and the characters haven’t changed a jot – they are as vivacious and pleasurable to watch, as “real”, as they ever were. But many, if not all, of the actors are dead. The world beyond the screen has moved on unpredictably. The film forces the audience, or at least those in it who are old enough, to remember who they were and how things were when they first saw it.
Related: BFI launches major archive of films showing Britain at the seaside
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