This Sporting Life

Rating:
Summary: Gritty Working-Class Drama
Review: Richard Harris is superb (and so young!) as a driven but unsophisticated rugby player struggling to make something of himself. He becomes involved with his grieving landlady, a widow, and persists in trying to get her to feel something for him. Everything is a struggle for the characters in this film, which is realistic but evokes time creatively via flashbacks and cuts to create a stong emotional impact. Lots of mud and broken teeth in the very gritty rugby scenes.

Rating:
Summary: Hard
Review: Richard Harris uses all his knowledge and love of rugby football in his award nominated role. If the footballing parts of this movie are not for the faint hearted, then neither is the harsh look at life in north of England. This is no romantic comedy but the best film of it's genre. A classic of 1960's British movies!

Rating:
Summary: Stark, but compelling - A working class masterpiece
Review: The greatest sports movie ever made. The story of a miner in Yorkshire using his sporting skill in an attempt to escape the harshness of the industrial north east of the mid sixties.
This great sport, Rugby League, was born of the toughness and physicality that these hard men faced in their everyday lives.

Richard Harris is brilliant in the lead role of Frank Machin, and the Rugby League scenes are the most realistic portrayal of sport ever bought to the screen.

A true masterpiece and a snapshot of the cruel realities that shape other peoples lives.

An essential addition to every serious collector of dramatic sports cinema.

Rating:
Summary: Great film
Review: The movies actually about a Rugby League player, not a Rugby player - had it been a Rugby player I definitely wouldn't have watched the movie. A very good film with lots of tough scenes.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful English drama
Review: This drama offers a gripping story and outstanding performances. The affair between a frigid widow and a professional rugby player who carries the violence of the football field into his personal life is painfully detailed and will have you captivated throughout the whole film.
A powerful film characteristic of the British dramas of the 50’s and 60’s based on working class life in rural England. Director Lindsay Anderson is one of the major contributors to this genre.

Rating:
Summary: Classic
Review: This is the British "Streetcar Named Desire." Harris rock and rolls as an unforgiving animal rugger. His passion and rage will blow you away, plus lots o' good ruby scenes.

Rating:
Summary: A British Masterpiece of the 1960s
Review: This masterpiece by Lindsay Anderson should be on any film aficionado's must-see list. It is an uncompromising study of alienation, social class, maturity, and loneliness. Richard Harris gives a performance of astonishing realism: it seems unlikely he could ever surpass it. The character moves from physicalized anger to tenderness often within a moment. Harris builds to a completely believable dramatic eruption by the climax. He is matched all along the way by Rachel Roberts, a great actress in an unforgettable role: a woman unwilling to let go of the past and the pain it contains.

Anderson populates the film with several other memorable characters--an older man who seems to be in love with the hero, the grasping team-owner's wife who wishes to possess him.

The film contains scenes of nearly unbearable intensity and anguish (Frank's drunken ballad sung in a bar, or Margaret's pleading to be left alone). Also of note is the film's unusual structure, functioning on two levels at once: in "real time" and in Frank's memory, which he may be coloring by his own reactions (something for the viewer to contemplate).

The black and white cinematography is often beautiful as it poeticizes Frank's plight (for example, near the end of the film, he ends up wandering along moonlit railway tracks in a world of steely, silvery loneliness. Also of note, the wonderfully nightmarish music by Roberto Gerhard, an avant-garde composer who differed with the director on the scoring the film.

See the film on DVD for maximum quality. Although the disc contains no special features, it is good to know this great picture has been preserved in the new medium.

Rating:
Summary: Harris' Finest Performance
Review: While viewing this film again recently, I was curious to see if it has lost any of its edge since I first saw it almost 40 years ago. It hasn't. In fact, in light of almost daily revelations of inappropriate (if not illegal) conduct by professional and even by so-called amateur athletes, it has perhaps even more relevance today. In my opinion, Richard Harris (Frank Machin) delivers his finest performance as a coal miner in Northern England (Yorkshire) who gains fame and fortune as a professional rugby player. I am reminded of Scorcese and De Niro's presentation of Jake La Motta in Raging Bull. (Both athletes fail in their personal relationships for precisely the same reasons they succeed in competition.) Rachel Roberts plays Mrs. Hammond, the only person Machin sincerely cares about, other than himself. Most of the time, she endures his use and abuse of her but in one memorable scene, she confronts him as the arrogant bully he is. He appreciates her only after....

David Storey wrote the screenplay based on his novel (same title) and, under Lindsay Anderson's crisp and sure direction, each member of the cast delivers a superb performance, including Glenda Jackson in what I think is her debut role. The colorful, often violent action on various playing fields is effectively portrayed, in stunning contrast with the drab lives of those who cheer on the teams. Credit Denys Coop for the cinematography. In essence, this film explores the nature and extent of one man's raw ambition and almost animalistic determination as his natural talents enable him to seize opportunities available to few others. Comparisons of This Sporting Life with Raging Bull are not a stretch. (Presumably De Niro saw this film prior to portraying La Motta. Did Harris see Brando in On the Waterfront before portraying Machin?) This is a dark film in terms of its tone and setting; also in terms of what it reveals about the values of young men such as Machin whose fame and fortune can be gone so quickly, and often unexpectedly. Then what? Within its own self-imposed limits, this is a "classic" film.