Poor Cow (1968)

Wonderful character development!

Sorry, this movie sucks

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This documentary-style film, based on Nell Dunn's novel, almost views like a home-movie. As I watched it, I kept checking to see how far into the movie I was and how much longer it would last. This, in itself, was not a good sign. However, Loach does use the environment and surrounding people effectively, with several close ups showing the hopelessness or boredom on people's faces. The main method of the semi-documentary is a series of episodic clips arranged in chronological order; often title cards are used to introduce the episodes. To me, the title cards suggest captions one might find in an old photo album. They are sometimes humorous and sometimes painful, but they help move the story along.The film relates the story of a young North-of-London lower class woman, Joy (Carol White) in the early 60s. She is a victim of her class in that she has never learned to think about aspiring higher. Yet, she does persist and survive. At the beginning of the film, Joy is in the delivery room giving birth to her son, Johnny. I'm not sure if mass Western audiences, at that time, had seen many human births, up close and on screen. So, that may have been new to movie goers at the time. The next scene shows Joy breastfeeding Johnny while her husband, Tom (John Bindon), scolds her for exposing herself, since he was expecting his mates to drop by the house soon. There are early clues that Tom beats and abuses Joy. Although the couple is doing OK financially, things radically change when Tom and his mates rob a store and Tom is caught and sent to prison for several years.Without marketable skills, Joy drifts from job to job (waitress, model, etc.) as she hocks all of her belongings to make ends meet. When she re- meets one of her husband's old crime mates, Dave (Terence Stamp), she falls in love with him and they live together. Unlike Tom—whom she is now trying to divorce while he is in jail--Dave is fun, kind, and loving. Some of the richest and most beautiful scenes of the film reflect the happiness of Joy and Dave. But, when he mugs a rich old woman to steal her jewelry—coupled with his record of previous run-ins with the law--he is sent to prison for twelve years. Joy continues to think of Dave. She also writes him and visits him regularly in jail. While she swears she will wait for him, she continues to have causal affairs with other men and lives from day to day and job to job. As Johnny gets older, Joy remains stuck...Once again, to me, this looks like a well-acted, but poorly-photographed home movie. On the other hand, I may be missing the great movie-making craft that Ken Loach seemed to deliver so well in Kes but missed here.

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.

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.

It's been over 30 years now but I still remember that this movie was the worst I've ever seen. I would have thought that in this length of time something worse would have been filmed but I was mistaken. I just finished watching "STARSHIP TROOPERS" and it came mighty close but it was still more entertaining than " POOR COW ".