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 ] 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] 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! 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. 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.

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

Colin battled Alzheimer's disease for several years before passing away aged 81, in 2015. Read More Related Articles She appeared as a support act for the Beatles, and also shared the spotlight with Rod Stewart, the Rolling Stones and Shirley Bassey. Andrew Garfield: Playing Billy Casper. In Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, 2004 (Behind the Scenes with Kes)". Royal Exchange Theatre. [ permanent dead link] Not the only Liverpudlian in the cast, Colin played Mr Farthing and for his role, earned himself a BAFTA. Set in and around Barnsley, the film was one of the first of several collaborations between Ken Loach and Barry Hines that used authentic Yorkshire dialect. The extras were all hired from in and around Barnsley. The DVD version of the film has certain scenes dubbed over with fewer dialect terms than in the original. In a 2013 interview, director Ken Loach said that, upon its release, United Artists organised a screening of the film for some American executives and they said that they could understand Hungarian better than the dialect in the film. [6]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.

Kes DVD - Zavvi UK Kes DVD - Zavvi UK

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] 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] Funny, sad, and bitingly authentic, Kes resonates with Loach's anger at the way so many kids grow up into narrow, option-free lives. ... But Loach's underdogs are never sad passive victims. There's a defiant spirit about Billy, and a fierce joy in the scenes where he trains his kestrel. Kes, as Loach has commented, sets up a contrast between "the bird that flies free and the boy who is trapped", but at the same time there's an unmistakable identification between them. ... The film's ending is desolate, but we sense Billy will survive. [17]

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] The certificate given to the film has occasionally been reviewed by the British Board of Film Classification, as there is a small amount of swearing, including more than one instance of the word twat. It was originally classified by the then British Board of Film Censors as U for Universal (suitable for children), at a time when the only other certificates were A (more suitable for adult audiences) and X (for showing when no person under 16 years was present... raised to 18 years in July, 1970). Three years later, Stephen Murphy, the BBFC Secretary, wrote in a letter that it would have been given the new Advisory certificate under the system then in place. [11] Murphy also argued that the word "bugger" is a term of affection and not considered offensive in the area that the film was set. In 1987, the VHS release was given a PG certificate on the grounds of "the frequent use of mild language", and the film has remained PG since that time. [12] Home media [ edit ] Hines, Richard (2016). No Way But Gentlenesse: A Memoir of How Kes, My Kestrel, Changed My Life. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781408868034.

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

But his film career wasn't over: he appeared in All Quiet on the Western Front and 1978's Absolution. Reflecting on changes in the film's locale and setting in the intervening 40-odd years, Graham Fuller wrote in 2011: 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. Graeme Ross, writing in 2019 in The Independent, placed the film 8th in his "best British movies of all time", saying: Hill, John (2011). Ken Loach: The Politics of Film and Television. British Film Institute. ISBN 978-1844572038.

Correspondence from Stephen Murphy on the certification of Kes" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 September 2015 . Retrieved 23 August 2014. 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. The Sheffield native went on to join the comedy classic Porridge playing the slightly slow Cyril Heslop.