From the field to the screen: sociological influences in Ken Loach's realist cinema

In June 2024 Ken Loach turned 88 years old. The British director has announced that 'The Old Oak,' released in 2023, will be his last film. Although this is not the first time Loach has announced his retirement from the stage, these events offer an opportunity to sketch an analysis of his extensive filmography that includes works that won the Palme d'Or at Cannes (The Wind That Shakes The Barley (2006) and I, Daniel Blake, (2016). His realist cinema has a significant link with sociology and it deserves to be analyzed going beyond the abundant literary criticism that has dealt with the British filmmaker. The essay begins by analyzing some of his key films devoted to labor and the working-class condition and it shows the epistemological intersections between realist cinema and sociology. It concludes by dwelling on the particular trajectory of the filmography of the British director, who, after documenting numerous experiences of conflict, in his later works seems to suggest instead a certain pessimism toward workers’ capacity to transform of the world. Is this perhaps a cinema that has given up the investigation of the horizons of emancipation to merely bear witness to a nostalgia for the old working-class world and its old forms of organization? Or is his realist cinema an important tool to trigger new forms of critical consciousness and transformation?

Keywords: Ken Loach, sociology, realist cinema, working-class culture, social inquiry

Riccardo Emilio Chesta, Vincenzo Maccarrone, Dal campo allo schermo: influenze sociologiche nel cinema realista di Ken Loach in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL LAVORO " 169/2024, pp 195-207, DOI: 10.3280/SL2024-1690010