Cinema
Kes
Ken Loach · 1969
Synopsis
Barnsley, in mining Yorkshire. Billy Casper, fifteen, lives under the thumb of Jud, his older half-brother, a violent miner. He does his paper round before school, steals milk from a delivery van, is bored in class and puts up with Mr Sugden, the games teacher, on the football pitch. He takes a young kestrel from its nest on a farm, steals a falconry book from a second-hand bookseller because he cannot borrow it, and sets about training the bird on his own. One day, Mr Farthing, the English teacher, has him tell the class how he goes about it.
Context
The boy who plays the lead, David Bradley, was fourteen, a pupil at a secondary school in Barnsley and a miner's son; it was his first film role. The actors, mostly non-professionals, were often not warned of what was going to happen; for a scene of punishment with the cane, the boys had been promised that it would stop before the blow, and they were actually struck. The film was presented in London in November 1969. At a screening organised for American executives of its distributor, one of them declared that he would have understood Hungarian better than the Barnsley accent.
Who it is for
One hundred and twelve minutes, in Yorkshire English, subtitled; a version intended for abroad was partly redubbed to soften the accents.
Prizes and reception
Seventh in the ranking of the best British films of the century drawn up in 1999 by the British Film Institute; restored in 2011 under the supervision of its director.
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