56 Up (2012) - Textual Analysis

The ‘Up Series’ is a documentary/short biography films produced by Granada Television and directed by Paul Almond and Michael Apted. From 1964, they follow the lives of fourteen British Children from when they were seven. In Britain, ’56 Up’ premiered on British TV on May 14^th 2012 and was released in the USA on January 4^th 2013.

Michael Apted has directed the series of films ‘7 Plus Seven’ onwards and he has also been the researcher on ‘Seven Up!’ who chose the original children to be in the film with Gordon McDougall. The children we see from ‘7 Up’ are the ones we see in ’56 Up’ later on. The children are Sue, Paul, Neil, and Peter. Jackie and Lynn are Sue’s friends and they are also seen on ‘7 Up’.

Sue is a full time working mother at the age of 42. She got married at the age of 24 and divorced with two children and reengaged with her current boyfriend for 14 years. She is also the Coordinator of a postgraduate program and a lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, even though she hasn’t studied at university herself.

Paul Kligerman was in childcare from the age of 7. He is now married with 5 kids and has grandkids. We see most parts of the interview in black and white. We also see both him and his wife being interviewed at different ages in their life, from teenagers to adults. As a kid, Paul was placed in a charity-based boarding school at 7, due to divorced parents and being left with his father. At the age of 21 he had a girlfriend who he later married and he is still with. By ’56 Up’, Paul started working at a local retirement village with his wife Susan.

Neil Hughes is from a Liverpool suburb. At the age of seven, he was funny, full of life and hope. He has turned out to be the most unpredictable of the entire group of kids. He had dreamed of going Oxford University but he didn’t get in. At the age of 28, he was homeless and was found on the west coast of Scotland. At the age of 42, he moved to London, became a Liberal Democrat in the London Borough of Hackney. And was giving some help from Bruce and was given a place to stay.

Peter Davies was childhood friends and went to the same middle-class suburban school with Neil. Peter went university and became an underpaid school teacher at the age of 28. He dropped out of the series ’28 Up’ and made a surprise return in ‘56 Up’ to promote his band The Good Intentions which includes his wife and his friend. He has also been married twice, has two teenage kids and is currently married to his second wife.

In ‘7 Up’, we see that it is filmed with a handheld camera to show the activity of the children as well as being in black and white. During the interviews with the children, the questions asked were differently themed but also linked to each other and were simple which allowed the children to talk to each other, as they do not have long attention spans. We also see the camera eye level with the kid running across the playground to put the audience in the mindset of the children within the film. ‘7 Up’ shows the contrast between different groups of children and their class division from their clothing, environment, speech, body language and so on. ‘7 Up’ is a very observing documentary that includes fly on the wall filmmaking when we see the lower/working class children playing in the playground like the camera isn’t even there.