7 Plus Seven (1970)

Alternate title: 14 Up.

Sequel to Seven Up! (1964), and a part of an ongoing series of documentaries which every seven years has been interviewing the same fourteen British persons, who were chosen from various social backgrounds. In this installment they are, you guessed it, 14 years old. The movie inserts scenes from the previous movie so you can compare the children at the two points in their lives. It is a fascinating experiment, and it is proving a fascinating viewing experience for me. I intend to see the whole series. I am not sure the interviewer did an ideal job regarding the choice of questions (I would bet that he votes Labour...). He insisted on the race questions (they were also asked in the first movie), and, curiously enough, only one of the boys seemed to be aware that blacks do not appear out of thin air in a country like England, and that immigration may upset the country's economy. Anyway, I enjoyed the movie, and the boys and girls came up with a lot of interesting stuff, so I guess it was a job well done after all.

I do not rate documentaries numerically, for reasons I cannot properly explain.