Ken Loach

Two main features characterize Ken Loach's film and television output: a commitment to a radical, even revolutionary, political agenda, and formal qualities (descriptions range from ‘naturalist’ or ‘social realist’ to the pejorative ‘kitchen-sink’ or ‘miserabilist’) developed out of a unique filmmaking approach combining linear shooting, the employment of natural lighting and casting nonprofessional actors. John Hill's book-length study of Loach's almost five-decade-long career attempts to synthesize both features and, in the process, provide a contextualized ‘social history’, which assesses ‘the political significance of his work’ (p. 2). It is a formidable task, not least because of the scale of the seventy-seven-year-old, English-born director's oeuvre: the book's filmography lists fifty-eight films and television programmes (one-off plays, miniseries – both individual episodes and entire series – and documentaries).1 It is a task, however, in which Hill is predominantly successful, despite a rather ambiguous and brief conclusion. From the start, Hill flags the importance of collaboration to the director's output, noting that it was producer Tony Garnett who initiated much of their early/mid 1960s television projects, and that screenwriter Jim Allen's Trotskyist outlook heavily influenced Loach's politics when they started working together later that decade. Nevertheless, Hill notes that while Loach rejects the auteur label, ‘the circumstances in which his films are made and shown have increasingly encouraged a reading of his work in precisely these terms’ (p. 5). Hill, however, does not present an auteurist study with an ‘overtly evaluative approach’, opting instead to locate Loach's work within the ‘social, political and artistic currents of the time’ (p. 6). The book is broadly chronological, concentrating on what Hill regards as the director's ‘most important work’ or work which has received ‘less attention than might have been appropriate’ (p. 6). Less consideration is therefore given to Loach's cinematic output than to his television work

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