Poor Cow

Swinging London of myth, was for most at the time, a fantasy. It involved a small number of people, in a small area of the city, for a short time. But as many of those who were of this group, went on and maintained long careers in film, TV, Arts and literature/journalism, it's effect and scope was and has been much magnified.

Trust Ken Loach (who else?) to shine a light in the London of the mid/late 60's' for many people, was the reality. Not just the criminal element either.

Loach after all had form here, with his groundbreaking TV plays such a 'Up The Junction' and 'Cathy Come Home'. Showing the darker side of London that was then, still, an industrial city in parts.

Carol White, as lead Joy, had also been in those Loach films, she was a working class Julie Christie and carried off the role of this troubled young woman with aplomb.

White really was a fine actress, sadly like the roles which made her famous with Loach, the real woman was as troubled. Not due to poverty, a different kind of trouble, the numerous affairs, the decline in her career, to die from alcohol abuse at just 48 far from her London roots. It does change you way you view Poor Cow with this knowledge.

Terence Stamp as Dave is excellent - though such was his stardom by then he would turn up for filming in a Rolls Royce! The notorious John Blindon (surely the most stark example of Loach's use of 'real' people who often had the same lives as they acted on screen), struggles as an actor in his first role, though again, with the knowledge of the real Blindon this is less noticeable.

The Loach 60's standards of lots of sequences of real life, lots of cameo characters, loose plotting, are much in evidence.

This is not a film for everyone, if you think you'll see another classic British gangster film, you'll be disappointed. But this was a radical, daring, atmospheric film, more of historic interest than greatly entertaining, worth a look.

It is worth noting that The Limey (1999) is a follow up to Poor Cow. The writer of the later film has stated that the similarities between these two films is incidental. However, Steven Soderbergh (the director of The Limey) has said that he specifically intended for his movie to be a sequel to Poor Cow. If you liked Poor Cow you might also want to see The Limey.

Recently released on British DVD, this is a good movie (as long as you have an attention span and IQ of more than a fruit fly). Not as depressing as it could have been, this is kitchen-sink at its most dirty. Terrance Stamp is great in it, the music is sweet, Carol White is very believeable as the single mum tart who can't stop loving criminals.

My favourite scene is where Carol and her friend who works in the pub with her (the one with the enormous beehive hairdo which comes down over one eye) sit outisde and gossip about all the men who walk past.

The only thing that marred this was the shakey acting of Carol's first husband, but if you can get past that, you're OK. And Donovan provides some of the most languid, mellow, bittersweet lyrics to come out of the 60s.

Beginning with an eye-watering sequence depicting the birth of Carol White's baby boy. Thanks to director 'Kenneth' (as he was then billed) Loach's restless camerawork (punctuated by Godardian captions) the sixties here sways rather than swings in a film that manages to encompass nearly a century of British film history through the presence in the same picture of both Wally Patch and Malcolm MacDowall (not to mention future sitcom stars Kate Williams and Anna Karen); and it's apt that over thirty years later scenes from this of the young and saturnine Terence Stamp strumming his guitar were employed as flashbacks in 'The Limey' (1999).

Although it didn't seem like it at the time, we're now nearly twice as far from the sixties as the sixties were from the thirties. Life at the bottom of the heap remains as bleak in the twenty-first century as ever, and continues (doubtless to no one's regret more than Loach himself) to provide him with plenty of material. In his eighties he doesn't seem able to retire just yet.

As mentioned elsewhere, I've been getting into the 'kitchen sink' dramas of Britain in the 1960s. Previously I've watched a handful of the early black and white ones, but POOR COW, the first film from long-time director Ken Loach, offered in a new wave of all-colour pictures that eventually heralded the way for the miserable likes of EASTENDERS and other soaps that came later. POOR COW is a product of its era and it shows, and that's what makes it interesting.

The film is in essence the story of a young mother and her kid and their attempts to get by in a cruel and often harsh world. Carol White achieves level of naturalness in her performance that you don't often see, which means that she's utterly convincing. The male characters are presented as brutes, philanderers, or simply bland, cold men who don't care about the impact they make on people's lives. There's plenty of talent in the supporting cast, a lot of faces who would go on to become familiar on TV and in film, which makes this a fun watch despite the gruelling subject matter.

The thing I found about POOR COW is that it kept me watching. I was always interested in finding out the outcome of the story, although any viewer will immediately realise that it's not going to be a happy ending. I was interested to note that the interlude in which White gets involved with a group of dodgy glamour photographers seemed to inspire a whole sub-genre of films directed by the likes of Norman J. Warren and Pete Walker. Apparently many of the scenes in the film were ad-libbed, which accounts for the slice-of-life realism of the piece.