9° FESTIVAL INTERNAZIONALE CINEMA GIOVANI
Retrosective - New British Cinema 1956-1968
Poor Cow
by Ken Loach
Country: UK
Year: 1967
Duration: 101'
Pregnant and married at eighteen, Joy is dissatisfied with life with baby Jonny and husband Tom, a smalltime thief whose treatment of her is violent and insensitive. A successful robbery enables them to move from their squalid bedsitter to a semidetached in Ruislip. but Tom is jailed for four years after attempting a big robbery, and Joy briefly shares a room with her Aunt Emm, before moving in with Dave, one of Tom's former associates. Dave is tender and understanding in his treatment of Jonny and Joy but the idyll is punctured when Dave gets twelve years for robbery with violence. Intending to be faithful, Joy writes to him constantly: she moves back with Aunt Emm and initiates divorce proceedings against Tom. Then she takes a job as a barmaid, starts modellings. But when Tom is released, Joy agrees to go back to him for Jonny's sake. One evening, after Tom has beaten her up, she runs out of their fiat and returns to discover that Jonny is missing. After a frantic search, she finds him. She accepts the necessity of compromise and of staying with Tom but continues to dream of a distant future with Dave.
"The principal characters in Poor Cow all cheerfully accept mendacity theft, brutality and promiscuity as essential parts of a makeshift survival kit; and perhaps in defence of their unreflecting amorality, the song which is heard over the credits exhorts: 'Be not too hard/For life is short/And nothing is giver, to man'. It is an exhortation which is at any rate superfluous as far as the film's makers are concerned. Despite the aggressive realism of the precredits sequence in which a placentacovered baby emerges screaming from the womb, despite the social criticism implicit in the slum interiors and in the shots of identical rows of surburban houses, and despite the workingclass authenticity of the dialogue, Loach's direction suffuses the material in a cheery glow of lyricism that often verges on sentimentality." ("Monthly Film Bulletin", n. 409, February 1968, p. 23)
Biography
film director
Ken Loach
Ken Loach (Nuneaton, UK, 1936), after directing various theatrical performances while studying at Oxford, moved on to directing for TV in 1961, also working for BBC. In 1967, he directed his first movie, Poor Cow. An exponent of Britain’s free cinema and winner of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at Venice in 1994, he has received numerous awards, including the FIPRESCI award in Cannes for Riff-Raff and Land and Freedom, and the Golden Palm for The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006). The Angels’ Share received the jury prize at the last Cannes Film Festival.
FILMOGRAFIA
Poor Cow (1967), Kes (1969), Hidden Agenda (L’agenda nascosta, 1990), Riff-Raff (Riff Raff - Meglio perderli che trovarli, 1991), Raining Stones (Piovono pietre, 1993), Ladybird Ladybird (id., 1994), Land and Freedom (Terra e libertà, 1995), Carla’s Song (La canzone di Carla, 1996), Bread and Roses (id., 2000), Sweet Sixteen (id., 2001), Ae Fond Kiss (Un bacio appassionato, 2004), The Wind That Shakes the Barley (Il vento che accarezza l’erba, 2006), It’s a Free World (In questo mondo libero, 2007), Looking for Eric (Il mio amico Eric, 2009), The Angels’ Share (La parte degli angeli, 2012).
Cast
& Credits
Director: Kenneth Loach.
Screenplay: Nell Dunn, Kenneth Loach, dal romanzo di Nell Dunn.
Fotografia (Eastman Colour): Brian Probyn.
Editor: Roy Watts.
Art director: Bernard Sarron.
Musica e canzoni: Donovan.
Sound: Kevin Sutton, Gerry Humphreys.
Cast: Carol White (Joy), Terence Stamp (Dave), John Bindon (Tom), Kate Williams (Beryl), Queenie Watts (la zia Emm), Geraldine Sherman (Trixie), James Beckett, Bill Murray (i compagni di Tom), Ellis Dale (l'avvocato), Gerald Young (il giudice), Paddy Joyce (il capo dello studio fotografico), Giadys Dawson (Bet), Ron Pember (Petal), Malcolm McDowell (Billy)
Production company: Joseph Janni per la Vic Films/Fenchurch.
Screenplay: Nell Dunn, Kenneth Loach, dal romanzo di Nell Dunn.
Fotografia (Eastman Colour): Brian Probyn.
Editor: Roy Watts.
Art director: Bernard Sarron.
Musica e canzoni: Donovan.
Sound: Kevin Sutton, Gerry Humphreys.
Cast: Carol White (Joy), Terence Stamp (Dave), John Bindon (Tom), Kate Williams (Beryl), Queenie Watts (la zia Emm), Geraldine Sherman (Trixie), James Beckett, Bill Murray (i compagni di Tom), Ellis Dale (l'avvocato), Gerald Young (il giudice), Paddy Joyce (il capo dello studio fotografico), Giadys Dawson (Bet), Ron Pember (Petal), Malcolm McDowell (Billy)
Production company: Joseph Janni per la Vic Films/Fenchurch.
