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Richard Harris stars in the bleak and powerful This Sporting Life |
Pitch perfect Sporting Life still a moving masterpiece
THIS SPORTING LIFE
Directed by Lindsay Anderson
Certificate 12a
THIS Sporting Life was a not a massive box office success when it came out in 1963, but while film fans did not put bums on seats, there can be no doubt it is a genuine masterpiece.
And 45 years later it is still as fresh and intriguing as it was back then.
Featuring a young Richard Harris, it tells the story of Frank Michin, a Yorkshire miner turned rugby league player. He is struggling to make sense of an uncaring world around him, channelling his aggression into the field of play, while trying to break through barriers put up by his recently widowed landlady.
Author David Storey, who lives in Kentish Town, won awards for the book, published in 1960. Three years later he had adapted it for the big screen and it was nominated for Baftas and Oscars. He had been a professional rugby player in Yorkshire and much of the action is seen as biographical. The changing-room life is acutely observed.
The film has since been credited as being one of the last products of the “kitchen sink” school of realism that gripped English film and literature in the mid 1950s and early 1960s. And it is relentlessly bleak and brutal.
Harris is beautiful to look at, and his determined performance brings out all the frustrations of a working-class man, who, without the camaderie of the rugby team is rootless and unloved.
His co-star Rachel Roberts also turns in a determined performance as the widow Mrs Hammond.
When the pair are on screen together in Hammond’s depressing, two-up two-down it is so powerful you feel trapped in an early 1960s fly-on-the-wall documentary.
On a minor, technical note, one of the pitfalls many films based on sporting prowess stumble over is making on-pitch action appear lifelike. This Sporting Life shows how it can be done. With the help of Wakefield Rugby Club, the match scenes are simply brilliant – the crowds are real, the players get stuck in and the whole thing is superbly choreographed.
Overall, this film has not dated and is as exceptional as it was when it was first released. |
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