Cathy Come Home

Not many films can claim to have resulted in a change in the law. "Cathy Come Home" is one of them.

This graphic, sympathetic depiction of a couple who become homeless in 60s Britain is still powerful. I watched just the eviction scene recently on TV and I felt intense anger at the injustice rising in me.

The film is plotted like a Greek tragedy - the couple's decline from prosperity is gradual at first, then accelerates horrifically. Unlike a Greek (or Shakespearian)tragedy, however, the characters are not the architects of their fate. They make mistakes, but their punishment is out of all proportion. They are the victims of a harsh and unfeeling system - but most of all of the hostile attitudes of their fellow citizens towards the homeless.

Most viewers at the time would have shared these prejudices - but the film showed them that there, but for the grace of God, they could go too.

The film gave a huge impetus to Shelter, the campaign for the homeless that had just started up. Few other campaigns except (later) CND have had such widespread support. Pressure from Shelter eventually led to a change of the law in 1977 which means that homeless families can no longer be treated as the protagonists of "Cathy" were (although the law certainly has its defects - for example the use of bed and breakfast as temporary accommodation, and its non-applicability to single homeless people).

"Cathy Come Home", if I recall rightly, was written for the BBC's famous "Wednesday Play" slot. Many brilliant plays were filmed for this series, including some early Dennis Potter, and that other influential polemical masterpiece "The War Game" - which the BBC refused to show in a cowardly acquiescence to Government pressure. "Cathy" shares with "The War Game" a quasi-documentary style, without commentary, which provides much of its realism. However the performance of the two leading players in "Cathy" is also perfect.

Ken Loach's "Cathy Come Home", one of the valuable society-tackling items of BBC's Wednesday Plays, offers a view of Great Britain far from its era-defining shots on glamorous mini-skirts, the Beatles and the swinging 60s. This is a wake-up call to those who'd take for granted that anyone with a decent salary - in a country as socially-advanced as Great Britain- would be guaranteed a home.

The story of Cathy and Reg, played by Carol White and Ray Brooks, echoes the tragedy of thousands of couples and families who found themselves entangled in unexpected complications within the most basic prospect of finding a house. It's set in 1966 and since the war, not enough houses were built to help people building their future and asking for one could be a soul-crushing experience. Well, it wouldn't be a Ken Loach movie if the ending didn't leave your heart overloaded with a mixture of anger and sadness.

Now, some detractors would label such a film as leftist propaganda, but Loach handles emotions very carefully and never lets them guide Ray and Cathy's actions, subduing them even in dramatic situations. And as if he was anticipating the objections, he lets voice-over do the job and some anonymous speakers explain how they ended up in a squalid house, an overcrowded building or a caravan, and also some well-dressed council or welfare workers explain the 'housing crisis' in words Cathy can understand.

Really it's a matter of arithmetics: so many demandants in the waiting lists for so few houses, some would technically have to wait for 350 years to get one. With facts such as these, a movie doesn't need a stand: filming reality is enough. And Loach with the power of his 16mm camera explains that this is an ordeal endured not by vagabonds or social misfits but working-class people, men who worked as miners, bus or lorry drivers, even military veterans. This is the Loachian approach as it would define his movies from "Cathy Come Home" to "I, Daniel Blake", half a century later (when things hadn't improved much).

Loach's oeuvre isn't that lengthy political leaflet but rather a Human Tragicomedy ("tragi" underlined) à la Balzac where people from Cathy Ward to Billy Casper, from Joe Kavanagh to Daniel Blake were such relatable embodiments on the realities underwent by the lower-class citizens that calling them fictional would be an insult. And that's because Loach was lucid enough to know that you can't just drop numbers and statistics on the nose and expect a visceral reaction: the disclaimer that concludes the story wouldn't have one tenth of its impact if it wasn't for the image of a distraught Cathy after she lived the ultimate tragedy, her devastation and confusion give their weight to the conclusion.

In fact, the ending -almost cynically- negates the impact of the story by saying that this tragedy was just one among the others, leaving the skeptical viewer alone with his own conscience. The narrative approach of Loach illustrates the infamous comment of Stalin that "one death is a tragedy, a million is statistics". By handcuffing an individual tragedy with the numbers, Loach directs a manifesto against the drawbacks of the English so-called welfare system. The story of Cathy becomes a portmanteau to hang all the absurdities of the housing crisis: flats that wouldn't allow children, councils blaming people over their homelessness or kids being thrown off a house because of insalubrity, but without any place to go...

Loach is also aware that he's dealing with people we conveniently feel sorry for but yet consider them, if not deserving, at least guilty for lack of anticipation. But for the most compassionate of us who wonder at the sight of a poor drunken beggar in the subway "how did he end like that?" Ken Loach shows us that the sliding toward poverty is easier than we'd presume: an accident, a death, unexpected pregnancy not to mention Kafkaian bureaucracy ... you don't need to go high to fall hard. And Cathy's nightmare is a succession of sequences that hardly last longer than one minute, giving you the vertiginous impression of someone climbing down spiraling stairs so fast the fall's inevitable.

She hitch-hikes from her rural town, she meets Reg, he makes her laugh, they marry, manage a flat that don't accept children, she's pregnant, he's got an accident and it goes downhill after that. It's interesting that the use of background music (the opening credits and "Stand by Me" during the romance) is abandoned once the troubles begin and the film turns into a gripping documentary-like experience. From panoramic shots on promiscuous places to much tighter images of three or four people in the same frame, Loach conveys a sense of claustrophobia that is quite effective and makes you feel like an intruder, which is the essence of militant journalism, showing the kind of reality we wouldn't want to see.

Handheld cameras like for true TV reports allowed Loach to give a realistic effect but not always deprived of cinema's vital artifices. The first powerful close-up is on an elderly man who's sent to a nursing house and the sadness on his face while his wife talks to the social worker speaks a thousand words. Naturally, the camera is more in love with White's beauty and the slow erosion of her youthful idealism. White's simply spectacular as the poor mother of three who comes from various psychological stages until she loses the grip on her emotions in the jail-like emergency homeless shelter. Her change of personality is like a subplot within the tragedy and the final nail on the coffin.

"Cathy Come Home" is the work of a director with a social conscience, cinematically absorbing and with the relevance of a historical document, a tragedy not deprived of ironies not the least is that a country where people's jobs can't allow them to get houses still permit jobs that consists of evicting them... when they do find a house.

I have seen several excerpts from and read reviews on this film, but as a mother - I don't think I could watch this film from start to finish. I have seen this drama-documentary featured twice on shows such as Top 50 most emotional TV moments and again tonight on Top 50 best TV dramas (UK). I've looked up info and was just wondering if anyone (from across the water :) ) can confirm that some of "Cathy's" children,(child-actors in the film) had actually been taken into care, in reality.. I seem to remember a mention of something like that on one of those shows. I don't recall exactly, but seem to remember somebody speaking of a direct connection / link, of this sort.

• it's playing on my mind - if anyone can put me out of my misery-?

Issues of morality - whether we agree or not with director Ken Loach's view of his characters - are not really significant here: what makes CATHY COME HOME such an enduring classic half a century after its original release is its essential boldness.

Produced at a time when television drama actually could make a difference to public opinion, and the BBC regularly produced single plays dealing with contemporary issues, CATHY COME HOME tells a straightforward tale of the eponymous protagonist (Carol White) and husband Reg (Ray Brooks), who begin in relative affluence yet end up sliding down the housing ladder until they are left with absolutely nothing. They are forced to lead separate lives, with Cathy taking two of her children to a prison-like hostel while Reg has to find an apartment of his own. The action culminates in a memorable sequence taking place in an Essex railway-station where an indifferent gaggle of Social Service workers take Cathy's children away from her, leaving her in a tearful heap, bereft of anything and anyone.

Stylistically speaking Loach's production was highly influenced by the British documentary film movement of the previous decade with its cinéma-vérité style of fluid action, short sequences and voiceovers including Cathy herself as well as a variety of so-called do-gooders justifying their particular behaviors, even though none of them appeared to want to help the stricken couple. In an era still wedded to the idea of studio-bound drama, CATHY COME HOME came like a welcome breath of fresh air with its determination not to sentimentalize its characters and single-minded commitment to exposing social ills.

The harrowing final scenes, as Cathy's children are taken into care, caused an outrage. Within days of the broadcast, Loach and writer Jeremy Sandford had been summoned to a meeting of Birmingham Council's Housing Committee, as councilors were furious about the ways in which they had been portrayed. The homeless charity Shelter was established in a wave of anger at the way people had been treated.

Fifty years on, some of the attitudes might now seem dated - especially the casual racism and the basic distrust of nonwhite people - but the problem of homelessness still remains. How many more Cathys are there still roaming the streets of Britain's inner cities, relying on hand-outs and food banks for sustenance?

In 1966 it would be hard to envisage that Cathy Come Home was in fact a single play produced by the BBC. It was produced in a drama documentary style.

Upon its broadcast it was controversial as director Ken Loach was accused of mixing facts with fiction. The film led to the setting up of the charity Shelter and eventually led to the reform of housing protection laws in the UK.

Loach examines the plight of the homeless and how institutions that are meant to help end up being a hindrance that in reality break up families.

Cathy (Carol White) comes to London and meets Reg (Ray Brooks). They get married and have children. Reg has a nice job and they get on the housing ladder but when Reg has an accident at work and goes on benefits they go on a downward spiral of looking somewhere to live. Each time the housing is worse quality and its a vicious circle that they cannot break out of. In those days, people would not rent to those who had children, being homeless with young kids did not give you priority and it seems there was not enough housing at all.

As the film goes on we see familiar attitudes to the homeless situation, that it is their own fault, they are feckless, it is the fault of the immigrants who have come here from Jamaica and taken housing from the white folks.

In 1966 this would had been a shocking and provocative film. Carol White was a beautiful actress and we can see her eventually being ground down as her situation becomes hopeless. The final scenes of her losing her kids have still not lost impact 50 years on.