But I saw much by accident on the telly: Carry On, Kes, the Ealing comedies and the Woodfall films of the Sixties made a lasting impression.
The groundbreaking working class films of the Sixties such as Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, A Kind of Loving, Room at the Top were startling in their depiction of social inequities, but these were not films to savour for their cinematic verve.
"That may have been true of mercenaries in the sixties.
Edward Albee recalls a demonstration they attended during the sixties: "It was a time when Arthur and I were both carrying placards, protesting outside the Soviet Mission to the United Nations," he said.
OK, the Sixties social realism seemed ridiculously romantic, but at least the pratfalls and imbroglios of Sid James et al were something approaching cinema-verite.
Sixties decor and an episode of Sex and the City was filmed there - what more could you ask for?
HAYLEY MILLS 1946- (UK) Big break: Tiger Bay (1959) A short life: Daughter of John Mills, her appearance in Tiger Bay at age 13 led to Disney contract which made her the child star of the early Sixties.
RON HOWARD 1954- (US) Big break: Andy Griffith Show (TV, 1960-68) A short life: All-American kid hard to avoid on TV and in the movies in the Sixties and Seventies, hitting 'adolescence' (at 19) with American Graffiti and Happy Days.
THIRTY years ago, as the sixties swung to their climax, Jim Callaghan was Britain's home secretary.
But the truth has less in common with bullet-riddled Hollywood films than it has with "Minder", the classic television portrayal of the seedy world of middle-aged London criminals.According to the policemen charged with eliminating the trade, around 80% of the illegal drugs in this country are sold by operations run by indigenous career criminals, many of them in their fifties and sixties.
She quotes Katharine Whitehorn, a fellow British journalist, on the misconception of that decade as merely "a damp patch between the battleground of the Forties and the fairground of the Sixties".
