The raw power of Ken Loach’s ‘Cathy Come Home’
Social realism often feels like a genre that belongs to Britain. That’s not to say that the British were the first—Italian neorealism excellently explored the plight of poverty and war back in the 1940s—but rather, the wave of social realism that emerged from Britain in the 1960s struck a chord with many viewers, really digging deep into the grittiness of many working-class Britons’ lives in a way the country hadn’t seen before.
In 1959, one of the country’s first kitchen sink dramas, Look Back in Anger, emerged to great success, having been adapted from the play of the same name. It was the first Woodfall film, a production company that released many social realist dramas during the period, including A Taste of Honey, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.
These films told necessary stories about disillusioned young people facing poverty, unemployment, discrimination, unwanted pregnancies, family troubles, and boredom, spotlighting many vital issues that the British government desperately needed to fix. It was an incredible time for British cinema, and more and more skilled filmmakers subsequently emerged and explored the lives of people who had previously been cast to the sidelines of the silver screen.
Ken Loach started his career in television, making various plays such as Up the Junction, which explored various issues in the lives of several young women, including illegal abortion, and Three Clear Sundays, about capital punishment. Keen to explore social issues from the beginning of his career, Loach asserted himself as one of his generation’s most politically aware filmmakers. Yet, none of his work from this era hits as hard as Cathy Come Home, an emotional sucker punch that is so frighteningly real you can basically call it a documentary.
That’s because it essentially is, even if the main cast is played by actors Carol White and Ray Brooks. As the couple descend into a life of homelessness, the film uses a documentary style to reflect the fact that countless people in Britain were actually living this reality. It uses handheld cameras and an incredibly naturalistic tone—hardly any cinematic music or stylised shots—making it feel as though the camera is merely a fly on the wall of the couple’s tragic life.
The film starts with hope as Cathy and Reg meet and fall in love, moving into a flat together and living a seemingly nice life. When they find out they’re expecting a child, they are booted out of their adult-only building, only for Reg to injure himself at work. With no form of income, the pair must find a place to live with their newborn baby, but various difficulties crop up as they navigate the city’s impossible housing market. With a lack of clean and safe housing for all, the pair resort to a homeless shelter, squatting in an abandoned house and living in a caravan park targeted by locals, drifting from one place to the next.
Loach challenges our perceptions of those who end up homeless and captures the severe mental strain that poverty can put on an individual. Cathy Come Home is a heartbreaking film that hits out at the government’s inadequate care for its citizens. Loach’s unflinching lens refuses to ignore the harshest aspects of attempting to raise children without the financial means to do so.
The filmmaker would reunite with White for Poor Cow a few years later, a movie that similarly explored a woman’s struggles through poverty and motherhood that is also just as essential to watch. However, it’s Cathy Come Home that physically hurts to consume – and it sadly still feels a little too relevant all these years later.
