It was very instructive as an illustration of what TV could do at the time. If there was a really popular programme the whole nation would watch. You maybe thirty million people. Also, was very innocent. We hadn't been saturated with images. SO: Were there any attacks from the right when you made Cathy Come Home about the use of the dramadocumentary style? Loach: Yes, the whole development of the Wednesday Play was to make films which did confuse people as to whether they were fact or fiction.
So they would take it as seriously as if it had been documentary.
That whole debate always arises when there is a disagreement about content. On Hidden Agenda when it all surfaced again, there was a leader in the Times, no less, attacking it as 'faction.' On the same week, the Claus Von Bulow film was released which was clearly a factual event recreated in fiction, and it even shared the Times film review. Yet of course, the leader didn't see the irony of this. Clearly, it is entirely politically motivated. SO: Is there any correlation between the amount of left wing work that gets shown and the level of class struggle? Loach: Yes, the time when you saw the correlation most clearly was in the early eighties.
When there was a great potential tor fightback and when 1 grip of the idea that what was progres sive was on the right. That was why it was very difficult to get commissions.
There were three or four wasted years. I was involved in making a documentary called Questions of Leadership which was about the Thatcher government and the opportunity for resistance to it. And how the leaders of the trade union movement nad talled to organise that resistance However, it would have been much more effective to do one or two substantial pieces of fiction which had a political purpose, but wouldn't have been quiteso upfront politically, because the TV heads don't expect fiction to be balanced in quite the same mechanical way That's what screwed us. If I had been perceptive enough I should have realised that the documentaries would never have been shown. SO: Could you say more about the banning of Questions of Leadership? Loach: I subjected the role of the trade union leaders to some criticism, and also tried to provide a coherent analysis in apposition to the TS.
is is when the TV bureaucrats have a field day.
June 22, 1991. - No. 4 • Added to which, when you criticise someone like Chapple, for instance, you find the Chair of the IBA is a long-time political mate. So you have a group who are both criticised by the programme and have the power to stop them going out. SO: After Questions of Leadership you returned to fiction with Fatherland. The text for Fatherland by Trevor Griffiths was based on Milan Kundera. Both are very non-literal, whereas your work has a very straightforward approach. Loach: Yes, the film just didn't work. Trevor Griffiths' way of working and mine are very different.
Also, we had the problem of doing half of it in German. Struggling to understand In addition Trevor's literary style meant that when his work was trans lated, we had the Germans saying to me that it didn't read right. I tried to get the language to emerge through their experience of the plot. But this does inevitably drag it towards what people call naturalism, or what you try and just make authentic and real.
Overall, the narrative was too convoluted and long. And too much had to be reyealed at the end. It was too much to try and pull off, in retrospect. People didn't go to see it, which in the end is the • ultimate test. SO: The original text of Fatherland was based around three sexual relationships. You cut all the sex scenes which formed the basis of the original and so made a very different film. Loach: I always find those sort of scenes just embarrassing when you're shooting them because it's very intimate, and you are rather intrusive. I guess it just needs someone who doesn't have that difficulty shooting it. And the man playing it didn't respond. I found it all rather mechanical. I'm sure it was my fault. Heavy breathing scenes are not some thing I think I would do again. There is something tacky about it. There is some thing rather curious about doing that sort of thing at 8 in the morning. not to say I necessarily object to it in others' work, if it is done with confidence. SO: You have been involved in the production, and therefore financing, of some of your films. Does it feel difficult having to change the scripts for financial reasons? Loach: Well, I'm hopeless at it, and that is why I can't get many films made. Also I'm not taken seriously when I go into an office to try to raise some money. They don't recognise one of their own. Also, part of the problem of raising money from different countries is that they always have to have an input. The original script of Hidden Agenda had a German female lead. But to get American However, this means that the person that says the most right-on things American, and this certainly did change for fin. Being Germer sa the origias, resonance SO: Most people really enjoyed Hidden Agenda, but some have said that there's so much narrative that you almost swamp the thriller aspect "In Questions of Leadership I subjected the role of the trade union leaders to some criticism, and also tried to provide a coherent analysis in opposition to theirs. This is when the TV bureaucrats have a field day ..." Loach: Yes, I think there is something in that. I think there are a couple of struc tural faults in it, that I had a sense of beforehand, but I couldn't see a solution.
For instance, the long dialogue scenes, such as that one in the Republican Club. The narrative is too dense. With another long scene following it, it is too much for a popular audience. SO: Towards the end where it's clear that the state is closing in, don't you think there is an exces sive touch of naivety of these people? Loach: Obviously, I met one or two people who had done the same job for groups like Amnesty International and a ot of these people are not political. People do just close their eyes. Although, maybe your right. SO: One of the most impressive things about Hidden Agenda is the scene where they break in - since it suggests all of the violence without depicting it. Is that something you would strive for? Loach: Yes, absolutely, I think that most films that claim they are against violence end up in indulging in it.
It is one thing if it's in language, you see the image of it more. But in film, which is a very concrete medium, you tend not to see the image of it but the actual thing itself. It is very hard to see it as a serious work. SO: What has been the film's impact? Loach: Oddly enough, I think its impact has been much stronger abroad than here.
I'm still being called about it. It would never had that international impact if it had been, as originally planned, for TV. It was backed by 'V money bu everyone turned it down. Channel 4 flirted with it but they never were selluus. SO: Finally, in order to reach a wider audience, have you any interest, say, in doing a left wing soap? Loach: Thereare forms which do become self-defeating.
I think the problem is that after a time, =*: the car oreras become about the = However. I do think nar=.= = i-en: as a iorm because it eates sier of people - people like stores.
They always want to know what hap pens next. But I think it is dangerous if you wrap everything up. You have to leave it in the audiences lap in some way. And you have to leave the audience feeling the possibility of their own strength, which is difficult to do.