Sparrows Can't Sing (1963)

After two years at sea, a Cockney sailor (James Booth) comes home to East London only to find his home demolished and his wife (Barbara Windsor) missing. He begins his search to track her down, not knowing she's shacking up with a bus driver (George Sewell) and has a baby which may or not be his. Based on the play by Stephen Lewis and directed by pioneering theater director Joan Littlewood in her only foray into film. There's not much of a plot. What's there is there merely to give us an authentic if comedic look at a bunch of working class blokes and birds (their "accents" so thick that when the movie opened in New York, it had subtitles) going on with their day to day lives. Littlewood's inexperience with cinema brought a refreshing and unconventional (for the time) energy that still stands out today. Critics of the day weren't always kind, calling Littlewood's direction half hazard and her attitude toward its characters condescending. With Roy Kinnear, Barbara Ferris, Murray Melvin, Yootha Joyce and Victor Spinetti.