Kes ***** (1969, David Bradley, Lynne Perrie, Colin Welland, Brian Glover) – Classic Movie Review 1481

Director Ken Loach’s 1969 film is his masterpiece, a superb British humanist, realist film. It is a bleak, despairing but not negative  experience and it is lit up with a heartrending performance by the young David Bradley as a Yorkshire kid, the 15-year-old Billy Casper, who is obsessed with his new kestrel friend as he grows up in the hard school of knocks.

He is bullied at school and at home by his abusive half-brother Jud (Freddie Fletcher). The dysfunctional Billy steals eggs and milk, can’t pay attention in school, and, with his dad having cleared off, is being brought up by his uncaring mum, who calls him a ‘hopeless case’.

Billy finds redemption and purpose in training a kestrel that he takes from a nest on a farm, and as his relationship with Kes improves, so does Billy’s outlook on life, and he receives praise from his English teacher. But then Jud gets Billy to place a bet on two horses and he spends the money on fish and chips and on meat for Kes.

It’s hard for a young actor to play an emotionally neglected boy desperately struggling with life and his own self-respect, but Bradley does it perfectly. There are also smashing, truthful naturalistic performances from the adults too, especially Lynne Perrie (as the boy’s mum), Colin Welland (as his English teacher Mr Farthing) and Brian Glover (as his bullying PE teacher Mr Sugden, who takes part in a football game, fantasising about himself as Bobby Charlton and commentating on the match). Bob Bowes plays the absurdly raging, ranting headmaster Mr Gryce, who seems to take pleasure caning a group of boys caught smoking, Billy among them.

Based on Barnsley-born author Barry Hines’s 1968 novel A Kestrel for a Knave, the film refuses to be sentimental and instead is moving on a deep human and psychological level. It provides a sharply focused snapshot of life in the low-paid mining areas of Yorkshire of the era, as well as an incisive attack on the 60s education system and the harsh way of life people were forced to lead in Northern England back then. Loach’s almost-documentarist direction is painstaking and subtle but hard hitting and cutting.

Colin Welland won the 1971 Bafta award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and David Bradley the award for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles. It won the 1971  Writers’ Guild of Great Britain award for Best British Screenplay.

The school used as the location was St Helens School, Athersley South, renamed Edward Sheerien School and demolished in 2011. The film was also shot around the streets of Lundwood. Set in Barnsley, the film is cast with actors who have authentic Yorkshire accents, and for authenticity the extras were all hired from the Barnsley area.

Produced by Tony Garnett, the film is ranked seventh in the British Film Institute’s Top Ten British Filmsand, though it’s not actually a children’s film at all, among the top ten in its list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14. The film eventually was a hit in Britain, making a profit, but the Americans rejected it probably because of the Yorkshire accents.

A digitally restored version of the film was released on DVD and Blu-ray by The Criterion Collection in April 2011.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1481

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