‘Of course it is idealised’: Lindsay Anderson's Every Day Except Christmas

Abstract

This article examines Lindsay Anderson's 1957 documentary, Every Day Except Christmas, as a distinct product of British post-war culture that also contributed significantly to the development of Anderson's own film aesthetic. It also sets Every Day Except Christmas against the background of Anderson's influential documentary made a year earlier, O Dreamland. The article combines formal and contextual analysis of Christmas with a review of contemporary assessments of the film as well as Anderson's own comments on it.