The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Tony Richardson, 1962)

Tom Courtenay in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

Cast: Tom Courtenay, Michael Redgrave, Avis Bunnage, Alec McCowen, James Bolam, Joe Robinson, Dervis Ward, Topsy Jane, Julia Foster. Screenplay: Alan Sillitoe, based on his story. Cinematography: Walter Lassally. Production design: Ralph W. Brinton. Film editing: Antony Gibbs. Music: John Addison.

Tony Richardson's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner owes some of its prominence in film history to being grouped with other "Angry Young Men" films, such as Richardson's own Look Back in Anger (1959), Jack Clayton's Room at the Top (1959), Karel Reisz's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), and Lindsay Anderson's This Sporting Life (1963), working-class dramas that gave a boost to such young actors as Richard Burton, Laurence Harvey, Albert Finney, and Richard Harris. Tom Courtenay also got a leg up on his career, largely because he, more than director Richardson, is what holds The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner together. Richardson's direction lacks focus and tension. For example, he occasionally resorts to brief bursts of sped-up action that almost make me hear "Yackety Sax" playing in the background. The essence of Alan Sillitoe's screenplay is that, as Kris Kristofferson put it, freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. Courtenay plays Colin Smith, sent to a reformatory, called a Borstal in Britain, for robbery. The oily, autocratic governor of the institution, played by Michael Redgrave, quickly spots Colin's aptitude for running and grooms him for a race he has arranged between teams from the reform school and an upper-class public school. Colin relishes the illusion of freedom that long-distance running gives him, but when the time comes for the race, he realizes that he's just being used by the governor to enhance his image, so he throws the race at the finish line. The bulk of the film deals with Colin's rebellion against the family in which he grew up, his involvement with a young woman, and the small crimes he and a friend commit before he finally gets caught for the theft. But there's not much shape to the film's flashback integration of this background story, and the film falls slack when it should be building to a climax. Still, Courtenay's performance and solid support from Redgrave, from Alec McCowen as a smarmy school counselor full of hack psychology, and from the fine character actress Avis Bunnage as Colin's mother help keep the film alive.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Karel Reisz, 1960)

Albert Finney in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Arthur: Albert Finney
Doreen: Shirley Anne Field
Brenda: Rachel Roberts
Aunt Ada: Hylda Baker
Bert: Norman Rossington
Jack: Bryan Pringle
Robboe: Robert Cawdron
Mrs. Bull: Edna Morris
Mrs. Seaton: Elsie Wagstaff
Mr. Seaton: Frank Pettit
Blousy Woman: Avis Bunnage
Loudmouth: Colin Blakely
Doreen's Mother: Irene Richmond

Director: Karel Reisz
Screenplay: Alan Sillitoe
Based on a novel by Alan Sillitoe
Cinematography: Freddie Francis
Art direction: Edward Marshall
Music: John Dankworth

The 24-year-old Albert Finney was spot-on casting for the antihero of Alan Sillitoe's adaptation of his novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. With his slicked-up coif, predatory grin, and omnipresent cigarette, Finney's Arthur Seaton exudes the kind of sexual attractiveness that allows one to ignore his rough edges. Always on the prowl, Arthur is the quintessential working-class yobbo, drinking too much and sleeping around too carelessly. He gets his comeuppance when Brenda, married to the stodgy Jack, becomes pregnant -- Jack's sexual neglect makes her sure the child is Arthur's -- and Jack's brother and another soldier work Arthur over in a vacant lot. Meanwhile, he has fallen for Doreen, and the film ends with Arthur and Doreen on a hillside overlooking their factory town, planning a wedding and dreaming of a home of their own. But from what we've seen of Arthur, this is almost a parody of a happy ending. Doreen's a tough cookie, too, and we can only foresee a kind of grim muddling-through future, a recapitulation of the lives of their parents and neighbors. It's to the credit of Finney and a superb supporting cast that the film is not a dreary slog through blighted lives, but a kind of tribute to the persistent energy of the working class. It helps that the movie is filmed by the great Freddie Francis, who finds a rich palette of grays in the surroundings, and provides a needed burst of action in the fairgrounds sequence. But above all, it's Finney's show, launching one of the great movie careers, from rakish young leading man to invaluable character actor.