Kenneth Loach’s Riff-Raff, between the British documentary tradition and the working-class cinema.

Abstract

Riff-Raff (1991) is analysed as a functional hinge between the British documentary movement of the twenties, the free cinema of the fifties and the present current of social films such as Trainspotting (1996), Brassed off (1996) or The Full Monty (1997). Kenneth Loach seems to have incorporated the theoretical doctrine of the British documentary tradition in most of his films, especially in Riff-Raff, as we can see in his way of dealing with scripts and actors. Simultaneously he has introduced what we may call the humour factor, widely used in the working-class films of the 1990s.