Cathy Come Home (1966) directed by Ken Loach
“Its rotten. It’s all gonna come down.” – Reg
Cathy Come Home is the story of a girl from a small town who runs away to the big city of London and meets a fellow named Reggie. They date for a while and eventually get married. She and her husband have a nice apartment and are expecting their first child when Reg has an accident at work and is left without compensation or a job. This begins a series of events where the family is evicted from many homes and faces homelessness. During their slow decent through the system and into poverty they have two more children. Eventually Cathy and Reg are forced to separate and the circumstances begin to take a toll on their mental health. Reg leaves to look for work in Liverpool and Cathy has the children taken away from her.
Though this tale is modern, the main character’s fate follows the plot line of a classic greek tragedy. It is shot in a documentary and episodic style which helps put the pieces of the story together and as the story progresses, it contextualises the issues for the audience. While the young couple are first dating they are seen walking through a park and sit on a bench, an old man is seen asleep on a bench next to them and they laugh at him. This clearly foreshadows their tragic demise and mirrors the final image we see of Cathy sitting alone on a bench herself. Throughout the whole of the story voice overs are played with statistics of the homeless epidemic in other city’s in Britain as well as the stories of many other men and women going through similar situations. This tactic did a wonderful job of taking the audience out of the individual story that they’ve been following and connecting it to the universality of these people’s position in society. It humanises them and creates a well rounded picture, provoking the potential for dialectical discussions.
During the filming of this project, Ken Loach used actors for the main cast but sometimes he didn’t for the smaller interactions and some of the people that are seen on screen were actually living in the squalid conditions, fully bringing home the reality of it all. It is hard to define who the actors are and who are not. The actress who played Cathy, Carol White, was said to have had to refuse money from strangers on the street for years after the release of this movie because people truly believed that she was Cathy. There is no resolution in this story, there is no happy ending and the audience doesn’t know what becomes of these people after they’ve hit rock bottom. The feeling of dissatisfaction that the audience feels at the end is realistic and essential. Because of this film, charities such as ‘Shelter’ were started and public awareness increased. Unfortunately through the problem of homelessness is still a prevalent issue and the homeless population in Britain has doubled since this film’s release.
If you wish to donate to help support shelters, fight homelessness, and hunger please follow any of the links below:
Stoic Sirens - The Critiques of Art and Media 