Poor Cow

Ken Loach's first cinema film, from 1967, follows a young woman's life in London. Joy marries and has a child early; her husband is a thief who treats her badly and soon goes to prison. She then takes up with his friend, seems happy for a while, and he is caught too. The film relays that cycle without moral judgement and does not try to explain her decisions, showing instead how class and the absence of options narrow a life. Loach mixes documentary methods into the fiction: street interviews, improvised dialogue and Joy speaking to camera. That mixture was new at the time and set the method of his later films. Carol White's performance is at the centre. Who it's for: viewers who like British social realism and early Loach. Who it's not for: anyone expecting a narrative that ends in deliverance; the film offers no such exit.