56 Up

The eighth film in the longest-running documentary project in the world. In 1964, fourteen seven-year-olds in Britain were interviewed, and every seven years since the same people have been revisited. In this instalment they are all fifty-six. The original idea was explicitly about class: to show where the lives of children at private schools and children in care would go. The results confirmed that thesis in places and demolished it in others, and that is the series' real strength: people do not fit the argument. By this film the conversation is about divorce, grandchildren, unemployment, illness and retirement. Some say outright that they are tired of the camera; several who had skipped earlier instalments return here. Michael Apted, who joined the project as a researcher in 1964, directed every instalment after the first. A necessary continuation for anyone who has seen one of them. For someone who has seen none, the film summarises the older footage and can be entered here, though its actual force comes from having watched the same face for forty-nine years.