This was part of a semi-revolution in British cinema when it was released. Britain seemed to be emerging from its long, long post-war pulling together and putting a lot of effort into defining a new expressive culture. There were "the angry young men" of literature and drama, "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning," the Rockers and the Mods -- all sorts of dendritic feelers trying to find a new and stronger cultural pulse.
"This Sporting Life" was pretty typical of the period. There's a framing story of poor Richard Harris, a pro football player who has had some dental damage that must be fixed, and most of the film consists of flashbacks to the development of Harris's character.
It doesn't end happily but then the whole movie is relentlessly depressing. Harris himself rarely seems pleased and even more rarely expresses happiness. Well, sometimes he gets drunk or has a stroke of good luck, and then he smiles. He lives in a room he rents from Rachel Roberts, an embittered widow. The game itself is rough. The industrial slums are dismal.
I found the despair smothering but I can understand why it was considered revolutionary. It's like an ethnography of a tribe that has been neglected by anthropologists. And this is nothing like the Hollywood sports stories of the 1950s: hero accidentally discovers a monstrous talent, rises through the ranks with the help of a few others, encounters demons, falls to the basement, rediscovers his inner strength and comes back to win the Big Prize. This isn't formulaic. It's more like John Huston's "Fat City," a study of the vernacular. It gets extra points for that.
Actually, I realize that, though I had seen it years ago, I wasn't going to be able to sit through it a second time at a particular moment in the film. Harris has invited a doddering old friend into the sitting room and the old codger shovels a bit more fuel into the stove to warm the place up. Rachel Roberts, the landlady, enters and remarks, "You know we don't have enough coal for that." Clunk. As a viewer, I knew then how Harris's mouth felt after that initial injury.
"This Sporting Life" was pretty typical of the period. There's a framing story of poor Richard Harris, a pro football player who has had some dental damage that must be fixed, and most of the film consists of flashbacks to the development of Harris's character.
It doesn't end happily but then the whole movie is relentlessly depressing. Harris himself rarely seems pleased and even more rarely expresses happiness. Well, sometimes he gets drunk or has a stroke of good luck, and then he smiles. He lives in a room he rents from Rachel Roberts, an embittered widow. The game itself is rough. The industrial slums are dismal.
I found the despair smothering but I can understand why it was considered revolutionary. It's like an ethnography of a tribe that has been neglected by anthropologists. And this is nothing like the Hollywood sports stories of the 1950s: hero accidentally discovers a monstrous talent, rises through the ranks with the help of a few others, encounters demons, falls to the basement, rediscovers his inner strength and comes back to win the Big Prize. This isn't formulaic. It's more like John Huston's "Fat City," a study of the vernacular. It gets extra points for that.
Actually, I realize that, though I had seen it years ago, I wasn't going to be able to sit through it a second time at a particular moment in the film. Harris has invited a doddering old friend into the sitting room and the old codger shovels a bit more fuel into the stove to warm the place up. Rachel Roberts, the landlady, enters and remarks, "You know we don't have enough coal for that." Clunk. As a viewer, I knew then how Harris's mouth felt after that initial injury.