DIRECTOR: LINDSAY ANDERSON
WRITER: DAVID STOREY
I think this entry into my New Wave series is one of the most gritty, harsh, moving, honest, and realistic movies ever. It rocked me to my core.
The relationship between Richard Harris's character and Rachel Roberts was unlike any other I've seen in movies. Richard Harris plays a working-class Northern Englishman who plays rugby soccer as a way to reach a certain strata in society he couldn't have working in a coal mine, his previous job. It seemed to me he sought the money he earned for playing football(British term for soccer) in order to take care of and impress Rachel Roberts's character, a single and widowed mother with two children whom he wants very much to love him. He boards a room in her modest house and tries to win her over by giving her children gifts and showing them attention, but the lady's closed off emotionally.
Harris doesn't win her over, although they do eventually have sex together. Guilt then plagues her because they aren't married(among other reasons). The movie doesn't spell it out but she is a religious, puritanical woman who even calls herself dirty at one point for being with Harris and not married: a kept woman. They fight and argue. He slaps her in the face at one point while they stand outside a church. No happy ending for them. Not even a bittersweet one.
Like other British New Wave movies, in This Sporting Life the male character's ascent from the working class leads him into corruption and vice. The filmmakers's of these movies seem to be conveying through the medium that aspiration to the top of the ladder in society can only lead to unhappiness and disillusion.
I think Harris played caricatures of himself later in his career, I've seen a few later movies, but he's all tough and rough and jumpy here in what is probably his great screen performance.
Rachel Roberts gives what must be one of her finest screen performances as well. She disappears into her role. The scene between she and Harris sitting by the fireplace in the kitchen where she briefly smiles while reminiscing about her days working in a WWII bomb factory with her deceased husband is the most beautiful few seconds of screen acting I have ever seen. Roberts deserved that Oscar nomination and the Bafta award she won for Best British Actress. She lost the Oscar to Patricia Neal who won for for Hud.
DIRECTED BY: TONY RICHARDSON
WRITTEN BY: ALAN SILLITOE
I watched this British New Wave film last night thanks to my public library down the street. Tom Courtenay(so handsome) plays a working-class youth of northern England who ends up in a reform school for boys where he begins to run "long distance" to escape the oppression of growing up poor with no future really besides working at some grimy mill like his father who dies at the beginning of the film. Directed by Tony Richardson, who at the time was married to Vanessa Redgrave, it was adapted by Alan Sillitoe from his short story. Michael Redgrave, Vanessa's father, plays the stern head of the reform school. "Long Distance Runner" was one of several key movies of the New Wave in British cinema, which sought to portray the British working class with dignity. The press dubbed them "kitchen sink" dramas. These movies were also critical of the rigid British class system which existed at the time. Not sure if it still does.
This Hitchcock was a little bit twee for my tastes. It took three days to finish watching it. The movie opens with the death of the farmer's wife then four minutes later the farmer's daughter is getting married and after the wedding the farmer decides he wants to take a wife. He has three ladies in mind, but the perfect wife is right in front of him: his housekeeper.
Frankly, it's hard to see how the farmer doesn't grasp this from the get go; the housekeeper, Minta, is so much more attractive than the four women he proposes marriage to. Played by Lilian Hall-Davis, who was the female lead in The Ring, Hitchcock's previous release, the character has very little to do until the last ten minutes of the movie. But throughout Davis gives a calm, gentle and assured performance. Sadly, Davis suffered from severe depression in real life and like many successful silent screen actors the transition to sound hurt her career; she committed suicide in 1933.
Jameson Thomas plays the role of the Farmer; he's okay. Handsome, his idea of being a farmer seems to be poking his chest out and pointing his finger alot. There are flashes of dandy ism, a sly smile, and the following year these traits were put to great effect in the classic Piccadilly, where Thomas played a nightclub impresario. The movie was notable for featuring beautiful Chinese American star Anna May Wong, one of the very few Asian stars in that era and even today. She's best known today for playing opposite Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg's Shanghai Express.
The Farmer's Wife began on the London stage as a play from Eden Philpotts. He was also an author and poet and a friend of Agatha Christie. His play was a huge hit; none other than Laurence Olivier went on tour with it in 1926.
Hitchcock later told Francois Truffaut in their famous interview he had little recollection of The Farmer's Wife.
