Although Ken Loach began his career working for television, he has
consistently rejected the idea that there is any fundamental difference between
making work for television and cinema. Along with the producer Tony Garnett,
Loach fought to shoot television drama on film and, from 1967 onwards, all of
his television 'plays' were, in effect, 'films'. It was for this reason that the
four-part series Days of Hope (BBC, 1975) was both subtitled and promoted as 'four
films from the Great War to the General Strike'.
Given Loach's enthusiasm for shooting on film, it's hardly surprising that he
should have been encouraged to move into film feature production. The
opportunity arose when Joseph Janni, producer of A Kind of Loving and Billy Liar
(both d. John Schlesinger, 1962 and 1963), recruited Loach to direct an
adaptation of Nell Dunn's novel, Poor Cow (1967), following his earlier
television success with the same writer's 'Up the Junction' (The Wednesday Play,
BBC, tx. 3/11/1965). Starring Carol White and Terence Stamp as a luckless
romantic couple, the film's freewheeling mix of cinematic experiment and
socio-sexual observation caught the spirit of the times and proved a commercial
hit.
Loach, however, was not entirely happy with the experience and, resuming his
partnership with Garnett, went on to make one of his best-known works, Kes
(1969), for the newly-created Kestrel Films. Based on Barry Hines' novel about a
young schoolboy's passion for a kestrel, the film was also Loach's first
collaboration with cinematographer Chris Menges, with whom he evolved a new
approach to filming. This involved jettisoning many of the overt narrational
devices of his earlier work (such as Poor Cow) in favour of a more observational
approach in which the camera maintains a respectful distance from the (mostly
non-professional) actors.
This paring-down of devices (and mixing of professional and non-professional
actors) was carried over into Loach's next feature film, Family Life (1971), an
emotionally gruelling remake of Loach's earlier television production of
David Mercer's play about schizophrenia, 'In Two Minds'
(The Wednesday Play, BBC, tx. 1/3/1967). Although Kes, following a campaign to secure proper distribution, had
eventually achieved commercial success, Family Life did less well and Loach and
Garnett subsequently struggled to get feature film projects off the ground.
Towards the end of the 1970s, Garnett did succeed in raising the funds for a
children's film, Black Jack (1979), based on a historical novel by Leon Garfield
that Loach himself had turned into a screenplay. However, this was a project
partly led by the availability of funding rather than personal conviction and
proved to be the last of Loach and Garnett's collaborations
Loach then found work with the television company ATV, for whom he made an
adaptation of another Hines novel, The Gamekeeper (ITV, tx. 16/12/1980), an
'amphibious' production that was broadcast on television in Britain but shown in
cinemas abroad. Hines' story of a young school-leaver's search for a job, Looks
and Smiles (1981) - made for Central Television - was also unusual in receiving
a modest cinema release after it had received a TV screening (ITV, tx.
19/5/1982).
Loach subsequently concentrated on the production of television documentaries
before collaborating with the dramatist Trevor Griffiths on Fatherland (1986), a
somewhat uneasy European co-production dealing with an East German protest
singer who moves to the West. This was followed by the 'troubles' thriller
Hidden Agenda (1990), which not only reunited Loach with writer Jim Allen -
responsible for such television films as 'The Big Flame' (The Wednesday Play,
BBC, tx. 19/2/1969) and Days of Hope - but also teamed him up with producer
Rebecca O'Brien. Along with Sally Hibbin, O'Brien has been responsible for
producing all of Loach's work since the 1990s, initially under the aegis of the
film co-operative Parallax Pictures and, subsequently, through the independent
production company Sixteen Films (which she and Loach formed in 1992).
While Hibbin and O'Brien were able to provide the stable working
relationships that Loach lacked following the break-up of his partnership with
Garnett, Loach's capacity to continue making films on a regular basis also
depended upon finding a 'solution' to the problem of raising finance that had
beset his career since Family Life.
Ironically, it has been television, in particular Channel 4, that has played
a key role in providing a regular source of funding for films that are now, with
a few exceptions such as The Navigators (2001) and It's a Free World... (2007),
expected to open in cinemas prior to television transmission. Following in the
footsteps of Black Jack and Fatherland, Loach's films have also increasingly
become European co-productions, funded by a number of regular partners,
particularly in Germany, Spain and France. The international funding of Loach's
films also reflects their appeal abroad, and a number of them have attracted
bigger audiences in countries such as France than at home. This was particularly
so of Looking for Eric (2009), an unusually upbeat Loach film starring the
former Manchester United centre forward Eric Cantona as the 'imaginary friend'
of a Liverpool postman.
Although Loach's films since the 1980s have shared a continuing artistic
commitment to telling the stories of 'ordinary' people in an undemonstrative
visual style, they may also be seen to have fallen into two broad camps of
'local' and 'international' films. Written by former building worker Bill Jesse,
Riff-Raff (1991) signaled a revived interest in those at bottom of the social
ladder and the uncongenial working conditions they face. This was followed by
Jim Allen's Raining Stones (1993), dealing with an unemployed man's descent into
debt as a result of his daughter's forthcoming communion, and Rona Munro's
Ladybird, Ladybird (1994), an uncompromising tale reminiscent of 'Cathy Come
Home', (The Wednesday Play, BBC, tx. 16/11/1966) that focused on an unmarried
mother's efforts to hold her family together in the face of bureaucratic
interference.
If these films seek to reveal the unflattering underbelly of contemporary
Britain, Jim Allen's story of the Spanish Civil War, Land and Freedom (1995),
evokes the revolutionary spirit of an earlier age and suggest how lives might be
lived differently. Since then Loach's films have oscillated between those
dealing with the victims of economic neoliberalism in contemporary Britain - The
Navigators, It's a Free World..., My Name is Joe
(1998), Sweet Sixteen (2002) - and those concerned
with a range of international struggles against political and social injustice.
Carla's Song (1996) recalls the social experiments of the Sandinistas in
Nicaragua and Bread and Roses (2000) tells the story of the Justice for Janitors
campaign in Los Angeles, while The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006) draws
attention to the 'forgotten' social radicalism of the Irish War of Independence.
All of these films were written by Paul Laverty, a former human rights lawyer
who has been Loach's regular collaborator since Carla's Song. It is Laverty's
Glaswegian background that partly accounts for the subsequent 'Scottish turn' in
Loach's work. My Name is Joe tells the gloomy tale of a Glaswegian alcoholic
while Sweet Sixteen, set in the former shipbuilding town of Greenock, laments
the waste of lives that results from unemployment and poverty. Ae Fond Kiss...,
also set in Glasgow, explores the possibilities of overcoming ethnic and
religious divisions in the wake of 9/11 while Loach's contribution to the
'omnibus' film Tickets (2005) observes the encounter between a group of Celtic
supporters and a family of Albanian migrants. Following the production of Route
Irish (2010), dealing with events in Iraq, Loach returned to Scotland to shoot
The Angel's Share in 2011. In this way, Loach has not only made an important
contribution to the upsurge of filmmaking in Scotland since the 1990s but also
been responsible for the production of films commanding an international appeal.
John Hill
Further Reading:
Hill, John, Ken Loach: The Politics of Film and Television (London: BFI, 2011)
Leigh, Jacob, The Cinema of Ken Loach: Art in the Service of the People (London: Wallflower Press, 2002)
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