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Kes



Named by the British Film Institute as one of the ten best British films of the century, Ken Loach’s Kes, is cinema’s quintessential portrait of working-class Northern England. Billy (an astonishingly naturalistic David Bradley) is a fifteen-year-old miner’s son whose close bond with a wild kestrel provides him with a spiritual escape from his dead-end life. Kes established the sociopolitical engagement and artistic brilliance of its filmmaker, and pushed the British “angry young man” film of the sixties into a new realm of authenticity, using real locations and nonprofessional actors. Loach’s poignant coming-of-age drama remains its now legendary director’s most beloved and influential film.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION:

- New, restored digital transfer, approved by director Ken Loach and director of photography Chris Menges (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
- Making “Kes,” a new documentary featuring Loach, Menges, producer Tony Garnett, and actor David Bradley
- The Southbank Show: “Ken Loach” (1993), a profile of the filmmaker, featuring Loach, Garnett, directors Stephen Frears and Alan Parker, and other Loach collaborators
- Cathy Come Home (1967), a feature directed by Loach and produced by Garnett, with an introduction by film writer Graham Fuller
- Original theatrical trailer
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by Fuller

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Wow, and the groundbreaking Cathy Come Home as an extra! (It would however seem to nix the prospects of a Criterion of Ladybird, Ladybird, which it might have been more logically paired with thematically, although Cathy and Kes are the two key early Loach works)

Wonderful film, can't wait to add this to my collection... and looking forward to the lauded "Cathy Come Home".

The Kes bonus content mentions another Loach directed feature called Cathy Come Home (1967) that I can't even find on imdb.com. Anyone know anything about this film?

IMDb link for Cathy Come Home. It's absolutely one of Loach's finest. There's a BFI TV Classic on it that's just been published on it too - I'm currently reviewing the book for The Digital Fix which should appear in the next week.

captveg wrote:The Kes bonus content mentions another Loach directed feature called Cathy Come Home (1967) that I can't even find on imdb.com. Anyone know anything about this film?

Wikipedia has a page which links to the IMDB page. It appears the whole film is legally online at youtube.

antnield wrote:IMDb link for Cathy Come Home. It's absolutely one of Loach's finest. There's a BFI TV Classic on it that's just been published on it too - I'm currently reviewing the book for The Digital Fix which should appear in the next week.

Ah, didn't realize it aired on British TV first, hence the listing within "The Wednesday Play". Sounds good. I imagine it'll be HD, too, since most of criterion's extras are, though it may be 1080i rather than 1080p.

And I was so close to picking up the MGM disc...

Cathy Come Home is amazing, almost as good as Kes, and really deserves its own release (if memory serves the BFI disc has a commentary, and possibly more...) But who cares, it's great to see these two films getting more exposure. Just don't watch them both in one evening or you'll kill yourself.

Colin, for a second my mind went to Ladybug Ladybug and while I didn't see the connection, it did make me depressed that it too isn't getting a Criterion release!

Yeah, Cathy Come Home is a pretty big deal in regards to British television and Loach's early career, so its a very nice package to have them together, and a no brainer against the separate UK releases. Too bad they couldn't have picked up Poor Cow and made it a boxset.

Some would say Cathy Come Home is even better than Kes, so it's a shame to see it reduced to an 'extra', when it would go so well in a double set with Poor Cow and some doco material on Carol White.

Matango wrote:Some would say Cathy Come Home is even better than Kes, so it's a shame to see it reduced to an 'extra', when it would go so well in a double set with Poor Cow and some doco material on Carol White.

Especially when such material exists: The Battersea Bardot.

I liked her in John MacKenzie's "Made"(1971) better than "Cathy Come Home", but that's maybe because I have a Roy Harper thing.

I'm confused about the inclusion of an entire feature film (presumably in HD) on a Blu-ray of a 2 hour long film. Bitrate, guys; bitrate!

mfunk9786 wrote:I'm confused about the inclusion of an entire feature film (presumably in HD) on a Blu-ray of a 2 hour long film. Bitrate, guys; bitrate!

"Cathy Come Home" isn't really a feature, it's a TV play shot for the late, lamented "Wednesday Play" on the BBC.

Considering the excellent job Criterion has done in the past presenting two features on one BR disc (Close-up/The Traveler, M German/English versions), I think they can handle it here, too.

Matango wrote:Some would say Cathy Come Home is even better than Kes

I would hope not. Cathy Come Home came across to me as simply a reasonably done version of the style that was enormously popular in England at the time. Nothing to get the heart racing.

knives wrote:

Matango wrote:Some would say Cathy Come Home is even better than Kes

I would hope not. Cathy Come Home came across to me as simply a reasonably done version of the style that was enormously popular in England at the time. Nothing to get the heart racing.

If that were true, it wouldn't have had anywhere near the impact it did. From Televisionheaven.co.uk:

Televisionheaven wrote:Never before or since has one single piece of drama had such an effect on an entire nation. The play was watched by 12 million people - a quarter of the British population at the time and the stark realism of 'Cathy Come Home' led many of them to make angry calls for action to prevent such circumstances from happening. The changes in social attitudes and awareness were significant, and the issues addressed were discussed in Parliament. As a direct result of the play the homeless charity, Shelter, was founded a week later as a national campaign for the homeless, and quickly became an important voice in housing matters.

I don't doubt its cultural impact. I was exclusively referring to it's quality as a film which is a completely unrelated matter.

No, they are not completely unrelated. If the film was run-of-the-mill it wouldn't have had the impact it did. You said it was a "reasonably done version of the style that was enormously popular at the time in England". That's just inaccurate. Kitchen Sink dramas were popular, but they didn't show families of high moral fibre going homeless through little fault of their own, in such a realistic fashion, and on television.

Now, you can say you didn't enjoy Cathy Come Home, because you found it to be overly-didactic, and I could totally understand. I just think one-line dismissals of the quality of the film do a great disservice to a work that, to my mind, represents a triumphant success to Ken Loach, and his intentions with the production of this photo-play.

I'm certainly not trying to start a fight, here. And while I would readily admit that the cultural impact of Cathy Come Home outstrips the quality of the film, that's because the impact was so incredibly pervasive, and not because the quality was at all questionable.

I wasn't trying to say it is a film without merits, I was mildly entertained. I also wasn't trying to speak for the content of the film which while holding no interest for me obviously hits a cord for some people. i was primarily speaking of the style of acting and storytelling. Those elements while not bad don't for me standout as unique in the sea of kitchen sink, a style I already don't like. The story here may have some emotional effect on the national level, but that doesn't correlate that it told that story with any gusto.
As to the point that seems to have started up, I just don't feel that what a work has culturally accomplished should be the lone voice to its quality. I can't think of any concrete examples at the moment, but I'm sure that those Kramer films for example managed to stir up something and I doubt anyone would accuse that of making them great(or accuse them of being great in general). A film should succeed by its own merits alone. A good film is good no matter the situation.

Cold Bishop wrote:Too bad they couldn't have picked up Poor Cow and made it a boxset.

Obviously they're sitting on Poor Cow to use as a feature on a Criterion release of The Limey

mfunk9786 wrote:I'm confused about the inclusion of an entire feature film (presumably in HD) on a Blu-ray of a 2 hour long film. Bitrate, guys; bitrate!

Although a lot of Cathy was shot on location on 16mm, it was mixed with standard definition VT scenes (625 line PAL) taped in the studio. The finished play only exists in SD and runs for 75 minutes.

That doesn't mean that Criterion didn't upconvert it.