Poor Cow

British filmmaking icon Ken Loach was still calling himself Kenneth when he shot this heartbreaking drama depicting the tough flipside of swinging ’60s London. Carol White is Joy, a battered wife and mother who gets a new lease of life when her husband is banged up for armed robbery. Shacking up with guitar-strumming good-time-boy Dave (Terence Stamp), Joy struggles to find her feet in a world where society’s sands are shifting and the role of women is becoming increasingly uncertain.

Taking his cues from the French New Wave but adding an intimate, non-judgmental empathy all his own, Loach immerses us in the character of Joy – her loves, fears and failings. But ‘Poor Cow’ also offers a microcosm of working-class life, with Chris Menges’s restless camera winding through bustling streets and bombsites, smoky pubs and poky flats. It may not have the emotional intensity of Loach’s very finest work – that would come with ‘Kes’, two years later. But ‘Poor Cow’ is a remarkable film, a time-capsule character study of great warmth and compassion.