Kes DVD [1969]

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He later won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for 1981's Chariots of Fire and later wrote the screenplay for 1994's War of the Buttons.

Kes DVD - Zavvi UK Kes DVD - Zavvi UK

Freddie retired as an actor in 1996, after playing another 'Judd' - this time a pub landlord in the film When Saturday Comes - after being recommended for the role by the film's star, Sean Bean! The film has been much praised, especially for the performance of the teenage David Bradley, who had never acted before, in the lead role, and for Loach's compassionate treatment of his working-class subject; it remains a biting indictment of the British education system of the time as well as of the limited career options then available to lower-class, unskilled workers in regional Britain. It was ranked seventh in the British Film Institute's Top Ten (British) Films. [3] This was Loach's second feature film for cinema release. What's your favourite Yorkshire film or drama? Let us know in the comments below. Read More Related Articles The film has also been noted for its themes around familial bonds during childhood and the effect their absence can have on children. Actor Andrew Garfield, who played Billy in a stage adaptation of Kes early in his career, commented that, "Billy needs to be loved by both his mother and brother. Like any child, he instinctively loves them both. He may resent his mother for not seeming to care about him, but he cannot help but love her. This causes Billy a lot of emotional pain when his mother rejects him. With Jud the rejection is even more blatant; he goes out of his way to hurt Billy, both physically and emotionally. Billy desires approval, comfort, support, guidance and attention from his family, but he receives nothing from them. A hug from his mum would make his day. I believe that love does exist within his family but expressing it is considered to be embarrassing and inappropriate. ... I think that Kes represents to Billy the ideal relationship that he finds so difficult to have with the people around him. Billy trusts, protects and is supported by Kes. He spends all of his time thinking of Kes and day dreaming about her. Billy looks up to Kes and feels privileged to be her friend. Kes has everything that Billy desires: freedom, pride, respect and independence." [10] Release [ edit ] Certification [ edit ] The film (and the book upon which it was based, by Barry Hines) were semi-autobiographical, Hines having been a teacher in the school in which it was set, and wishing to critique the education system of the time. His younger brother Richard had found a new life after his student experiences at the local secondary modern school by training the original bird "Kes", the inspiration for the movie. Richard assisted the movie production by acting as the handler for the birds in the film. Both brothers grew up in the area shown in the film, and their father was a worker in the local coal mine, though he was a kind man in contrast to the absentee father in the film. [4] Both the film and the book provide a portrait of life in the mining areas of Yorkshire of the time; reportedly, the miners in the area were then the lowest-paid workers in a developed country. [5] Shortly before the film's release, the Yorkshire coalfield where the film was set was brought to a standstill for two weeks by an unofficial strike.The film was a word-of-mouth hit in Britain, eventually making a profit. However, it was a commercial flop in the US. [2] In his four-star review, Roger Ebert said that the film failed to open in Chicago, and attributed the problems to the Yorkshire accents. [14] Ebert saw the film at a 1972 showing organised by the Biological Honor Society at the Loyola University Chicago, which led him to ask, "were they interested in the movie, or the kestrel?" Nevertheless, he described the film as "one of the best, the warmest, the most moving films of recent years". [14] Graeme Ross, writing in 2019 in The Independent, placed the film 8th in his "best British movies of all time", saying: The Sheffield native went on to join the comedy classic Porridge playing the slightly slow Cyril Heslop. Kent, Philip (2016). "Championing the underdog - Ken Loach before and after Kes". Essay included with the 2016 Blu-Ray release of Kes, Eureka Entertainment Ltd. (Masters of Cinema Series #151). In 2003, Lynne appeared on ITV's 'Facelifts from Hell" where she told the show: "Everyone was laughing and calling me fish face.

Kes DVD (DVD) | Used | 5050070009347 | Films at World of Books Kes DVD (DVD) | Used | 5050070009347 | Films at World of Books

Playing a wayward son in Queenie's Castle from 1970-72, he also appeared in Yorkshire's beloved Emmerdale. One day, Billy takes a kestrel from a nest on a farm. His interest in learning falconry prompts him to steal a book on the subject from a secondhand book shop, as he is underage and needs – but lies about the reasons he cannot obtain – adult authorisation for a borrower's card from the public library. As the relationship between Billy and "Kes", the kestrel, improves during the training, so does Billy's outlook and horizons. For the first time in the film, Billy receives praise, from his English teacher after delivering an impromptu talk about training Kes.a b Walker, Alexander (1974). Hollywood UK: The British Film Industry in the Sixties (1sted.). Stein And Day. p.378. ISBN 978-0812815498. For some of the cast, the film was a springboard into successful TV and film careers, soap stardom and more. In Ken Loach: The Politics of Film and Television, John Hill noted how the film's producers were against the bleak depiction of educational prospects for children in the film, writing, "Garnett [the film's producer] recalls how, in raising finance for the film, they encountered pressures to make the film's ending more positive, such as having Billy - with the help of his teacher - obtain a job at a zoo. As Garnett observes, however, this would have been to betray the film's point of view, which was concerned to raise questions about 'the system' rather than individuals." [9] He became a soap star, joining Brookside to play Harry Cross for seven years from 1983-1990, and reprised the role in 1999.

Kes : David Bradley, Freddie Fletcher, Lynne Perrie, Colin Kes : David Bradley, Freddie Fletcher, Lynne Perrie, Colin

After wrapping up his role on Kes, David, also known as 'Dai' joined the cast of children's shows The Flaxton Boys and the Jenson Code in 1973. Reflecting on changes in the film's locale and setting in the intervening 40-odd years, Graham Fuller wrote in 2011: It [the film] has gradually achieved classic status and remains the most clear-sighted film ever made about the compromised expectations of the British working class. Its world has changed: Billy's all-white "secondary modern" school (for children who failed the national exam for eleven-year-olds) would have become a fully streamed (academically nonselective) "comprehensive" in the early seventies, and increasingly multiethnic; Barnsley's coal mines closed in the early nineties. But the film's message is relevant wherever the young are maltreated and manipulated, and wherever the labor force is exploited. [18]David's role as Billy Casper was hit break-out one. At just 14, he was thrown into the spotlight but walked away with a BAFTA for his performance. Her final episode was March 1994 - although she did briefly as a ghost in 1996, with residents claiming to have seen her spirit around the street.

Kes now? With Oscar winner, soap Where are the cast of Kes now? With Oscar winner, soap

Kes won David Bradley the most promising newcomer BAFTA, with Colin Welland winning best actor in a supporting role. Colin battled Alzheimer's disease for several years before passing away aged 81, in 2015. Read More Related Articles Ken Loach's Kes was dubbed one of the top 10 British films by the British Film Institute - and is one of Yorkshire's most successful exports.Kes is an extraordinary film, beautifully composed and searing in its realist humanity. It is often compared with François Truffaut's Les 400 coups (1959), another memorable depiction of adolescent rebellion in an unsympathetic adult world. Both films are what the French term a cri de coeur, a heartfelt appeal for adults not to write off the next generation and condemn them to a future without meaning, but rather to take the time and the effort to instil in youngsters a sense of self-worth and desire to make something of their lives. Forty years since it was first seen, Kes has lost none of its power to move an audience and remains one of the most inspired and inspirational films of the Twentieth Century. [19] An outstanding performance from David Bradley as Billy glues together the sometimes shaky portrayals of the other characters. As a contemporary social commentary this is a film that has many of the elements you might expect. Billy has an impoverished family with an elder brother working down the pit and a single mother struggling to cope with the situation in which she finds herself. His school is staffed by teachers who react to their part in a failing system with aggression towards the pupils. And he's quite at home with petty crime, stealing a pint from the milkman and a volume to help him train the kestrel from the second hand bookshop. But the film is saved from cliché by the honesty of the acting and the quality of the direction; it seems at times as if we're watching a fly on the wall documentary. The reactions of the boys to the rant and the caning they receive for being caught smoking is entirely natural. Brian Glover as the sadistic games master is all too credible. And the employment interview is too close to my own experience to be fiction. Kes / k ɛ s/ is a 1969 British film directed by Ken Loach (credited as Kenneth Loach) and produced by Tony Garnett, based on the 1968 novel A Kestrel for a Knave, written by the Hoyland Nether–born author Barry Hines. Kes follows the story of Billy, who comes from a dysfunctional working-class family and is a no-hoper at school, but discovers his own private means of fulfilment when he adopts a fledgling kestrel and proceeds to train it in the art of falconry.