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Cathy Come Home è un film per la televisione diretto da Ken Loach, trasmesso nel Regno Unito da BBC One il 16 novembre 1966 all'interno della serie televisiva antologica The Wednesday Play.(imdb)
Nel 1968 ha vinto il Prix Italia come miglior programma drammatico originale.(imdb.awards)
Trama
Il film racconta la storia di una giovane coppia, Cathy e Reg, e della loro discesa nella povertà. All'inizio del film, Cathy lascia la casa in campagna dove vive con i suoi genitori e si reca in città in autostop. Qui trova un lavoro e incontra Reg, un autista di autocarri. Si innamorano, si sposano e affittano un moderno appartamento in un edificio che non consente la presenza di bambini. Cathy rimane presto incinta e deve smettere di lavorare, e Reg si infortuna e perde il lavoro. La perdita di reddito e la nascita del bambino li costringe a lasciare l'appartamento, ma non sono in grado di trovare un altra sistemazione abbastanza economica dove vivere col loro bambino.
Si trasferiscono dalla madre di Reg, finché non si sviluppano tensioni tra lei e Cathy. Una gentile padrona di casa anziana, la signora Alley, li prende in affitto per un periodo, durante il quale Cathy ha altri due figli. La signora Alley permette alla famiglia loro di rimanere anche quando rimangono indietro con l'affitto. Tuttavia, la donna muore all'improvviso e il nipote, unico erede, sfratta la coppia. La famiglia si trasferisce poi in un caravan parcheggiato in un campo dove altre famiglie vivono in caravan, ma i residenti locali si oppongono al campo e lo mettono a fuoco, uccidendo molti bambini. Cathy, Reg e i loro figli sono costretti a occupare illegalmente un edificio abbandonato. Ripetutamente cercano di ottenere un alloggio decente attraverso il consiglio locale, ma non sono aiutati a causa dei loro frequenti spostamenti e della lunga lista di altre persone che cercano assistenza per l'alloggio.
Cathy e Reg decidono di separarsi temporaneamente in modo che Cathy e i bambini possano andare in un ricovero per senza fissa dimora dove i mariti non possono soggiornare. Reg inizia a cercare lavoro. Alla fine, la solitudine e la frustrazione di Cathy esplodono e la ragazza diventa belligerante con gli amministratori del ricovero, che spesso sono freddi e critici verso le donne che vivono nel rifugio. Il tempo di Cathy nel ricovero scade mentre Reg è via, e lei e i suoi due figli rimasti (uno è stato mandato a vivere con la madre di Reg) non hanno un posto dove andare. Si recano in una stazione ferroviaria, dove i figli vengono tolti a Cathy dai servizi sociali.
Produzione
Cathy Come Home was a defining moment in 1960s television, demonstrating how far drama could influence the political agenda. The controversy generated led to public outrage at the state of housing in Britain, and gave a welcome boost to the (coincidental) launch of the homelessness charity Shelter a few days after the play was first broadcast. The success of Cathy established director Ken Loach as a politically committed filmmaker standing apart from the commercial mainstream, and demonstrated again his sensitivity to his usually working-class characters. With its abandonment of the confines of the studio in favour of ___location filming, and its innovative use of documentary techniques - owing something to the Free Cinema movement associated with filmmakers like Lindsay Anderson and Karel Reisz - Cathy played an important part in the development of television drama. Loach himself had been attempting to break free of the usual restrictions of TV drama since the early '60s, notably with the series Diary of a Young Man (BBC, 1963) and an earlier Wednesday Play, 'Up the Junction' (BBC, tx. 3/11/1965), which also starred Carol White (as did his first cinema release, Poor Cow (1967)). While some critics remained uncomfortable about the blurring of the distinction between drama and documentary, there was little argument about the play's power. If anything, its reputation has grown in the years since it first appeared - in September 2000, Cathy Come Home came in second place in the Britsh Film Institute's TV 100 poll of industry figures, behind Fawlty Towers. Loach returned to similar themes in his 1994 film Ladybird, Ladybird.(screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/438481/)
Cathy Come Home has become a British TV "classic," regularly referred to by critics and researchers as well as by programme-makers themselves. After the screening, the issue of homelessness and of various measures adopted by local authorities to deal with it, became more prominent in public and political discussion and the housing action charity "Shelter" was formed. The initial critical response to the programme was generally positive but public discussion tended to circulate around two issues, the possibility of the audience being deceived into according a greater "truth" to it than was warranted by its fictional status, and the way in which the account was a "biased" one, depicting officials as uncaring and often hostile in a way which would have been unacceptable in a conventional documentary.(museum.tv/eotv/cathycomeho.htm)
The legitimacy of combining the dramatic license to articulate a viewpoint through character and action with the documentary requirement to be "impartial" was queried by several commentators, often with a certain amount of naivety about the veracity of "straight documentary." Against these complaints, other critics defended the programme-makers' right to use dramatic emotional devices in order to engage the viewer with public issues and pointed to the way in which the programme's view of officialdom was essentially the view of Cathy herself, in their eyes, a perfectly proper use of character viewpoint from which audience members could measure their own empathetic distance. In British television history, then, Cathy Come Home remains an important marker in the long-running debate about television and truth.(museum.tv/eotv/cathycomeho.htm)
Television's impact on society for good or bad is a hotly debated topic - now a panel of industry experts has produced a list of the ten most influential programmes of all time. Topping the list of "agenda setting programmes" was Cathy Come Home - the 1960s television play which focused on homelessness and led to the setting up of the charity Shelter within a week of its broadcast.(scotsman.com/news/uk/television-that-changed-our-world-1-720880)
We were formed in 1966, in response to the country’s massive housing crisis. This organisation was Shelter. That same year the BBC screened Cathy Come Home; a Ken Loach directed film, about a young family pulled apart by worsening housing conditions. Watched by over 12 million people, its impact ensured public empathy and support for Shelter from our very beginning.(england.shelter.org.uk/our_work/history)
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Critica
Nel 2005, l'Evening Standard lo ha messo al primo posto tra i "10 programmi televisivi che hanno cambiato il mondo".(standard.co.uk/showbiz/top-10-tv-programmes-that-changed-the-world-7216236.html)
Riconoscimenti
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Note
Bibliografia
Voci correlate
Collegamenti esterni
- {{Collegamenti cinema
{{Film di Ken Loach
[[Categoria:Docu-drama [[Categoria:Film diretti da Ken Loach