Boulting Brothers

Boulting Brothers, twin brothers John and Roy, who formed one of the most prolific teams in British cinema. They worked interchangeably as writer, director, and producer depending on the project, although Roy earned the greater reputation as a director. The Boultings (John Edward (1913-1985) and Roy Alfred Clarence (1913-2001)) were born in Bray, Berkshire, and educated at Reading public school. They began on the bottom rung, working on British “quota quickies” for the producer Widgey Newman, and in 1937 set up on their own as Charter Films, producing supporting features.

Despite their middle-class upbringing, they were committed to making cinema with a social purpose. Their first major films, both directed by Roy, were Pastor Hall (1940), about the German pastor Martin Niemöller who opposed Adolf Hitler during the 1930s, and the highly distinctive anti-isolationist allegory, Thunder Rock (1942), starring Michael Redgrave. During World War II Roy worked for the Army Film Unit, directing the Academy Award-winning documentary Desert Victory (1943), which told the story of the Allies’ North African campaign against Erwin Rommel; John joined the Royal Air Force Film Unit, directing Journey Together (1945), starring Richard Attenborough, about a group of bomber pilots in training.

Responding to the austerity and new climate of openness in the post-war era, the Boultings made a series of original, penetrating, and socially concerned films that consolidated their critical standing. Among these, Brighton Rock (1947; dir. John), a brilliantly executed thriller about small-time crooks on England’s south coast, adapted from the novel by Graham Greene, had a hard-edged realism that was a radical departure for British cinema. This same period also saw the release of Fame is the Spur (1947), an unsentimental study of the fading idealism of a Labour politician, and the class-conscious public school drama The Guinea Pig (1948), both directed by Roy, and the thrillers Seven Days to Noon (1950; dir. John and Roy) and High Treason (1951; dir. Roy).

From the mid-1950s the Boultings changed direction, enjoying popular success with a series of formulaic satires that ridiculed among others the national vices of pompousness, incompetence, and hypocrisy. No institution was safe from attack, ranging from the army (Private’s Progress, 1956; dir. John) to the Foreign Office (Carlton-Browne of the FO, 1958; dir. Roy) to trade unions (I’m All Right Jack, 1959; dir. John; famously starring Peter Sellers as a bolshie shop steward), but the comedy, although sly, was always in good spirit. An adaptation of the Kingsley Amis novel Lucky Jim (1957; dir. John) starring Ian Carmichael fell foul of the critics for its lack of comic subtlety.

In a further shift in tone in the 1960s, Roy directed The Family Way (1966), a comedy about newlyweds forced out of financial necessity to live in the parental home, and the thriller Twisted Nerve (1968). Both starred a young Hayley Mills, who later became Roy’s wife. The Boultings were also directors of the independent distributor British Lion.