John Schlesinger

Schlesinger started in the northern towns of the British New Wave. Later he took his eye for loneliness to New York. In A Kind of Loving, a young man working his way up from the working class is trapped into marriage by his girlfriend's pregnancy. Billy Liar follows an undertaker's clerk in Yorkshire who daydreams about escape. Darling follows a model determined to become rich and famous. Midnight Cowboy pairs a Texas hustler with an ailing New York swindler.

Signature

• Northern working-class lives and escape fantasies (Billy Liar, A Kind of Loving).
• Julie Christie in Billy Liar and Darling.
• Loneliness in the big city (Midnight Cowboy).
• Sexual frankness unusual for its time.