The British New Wave of the late '50s and early '60s,
much like its more loudly heralded French counterpart, arose from filmmakers
who rejected the bourgeois timidity of their national cinema and strove to
liberate the form. Alongside fellow directors like Karel Reisz (Saturday
Night And Sunday Morning) and Tony Richardson (The Loneliness Of The Long Distance
Runner),
Lindsay Anderson released a "Free Cinema" manifesto which advocated productions
outside the system—made on the cheap and in black-and-white—that
cast an eye on the ordinary struggles of working-class Brits. These
"kitchen-sink" melodramas would henceforth become a hallmark of British cinema,
and none was better than Anderson's 1963 debut feature, This Sporting Life, which is all raw nerves
and volcanic emotion.
As a miner turned rugby star in the grim town of
Wakefield, a young Richard Harris seems like the bridge between Marlon Brando
in A Streetcar Named Desire and Robert De Niro in Raging Bull, a portrait of volatile,
inarticulate masculinity that's just shy of animal magnetism. For no reason
other than simple envy, Harris picks a fight with members of the local rugby
team, whose arrogant owner (Alan Badel) is impressed enough by his ferocity to
give him a tryout. Harris soon becomes a sensation on the field for his
bruising style, but his newfound riches and popularity don't translate into
happiness in his romantic life. He falls in love with landlady Rachel Roberts,
a recent widow who eventually submits to his advances, but treats him
coldly—partly out of bereavement, but mostly due to his coarseness and
lack of sensitivity.
Though Anderson would veer into full-blown
surrealism later with the better-known If…. and O, Lucky Man!, he devotes This
Sporting Life
to an unvarnished realism that had little precedent. At the same time, he
experiments freely with time, telling Harris' story through densely interwoven
flashbacks and associative edits that keep the film from shrinking into
four-walled histrionics. His poetic montages of rugby action reduce this
gentleman's game to its brutal essence, which then fade seamlessly to Harris'
failed attempts to wield the same power on the domestic pitch. Harris' haunted
eyes carry a wealth of feeling, but when he finally brings himself to say, "I
love you," he gets the contempt he deserves.
Key features: A solid commentary track by Anderson
scholar Paul Ryan, with some added musings from 75-year-old Sporting Life screenwriter and novelist
David Storey, on disc one. The supplemental second disc has a pair of formative
Anderson documentary shorts, a 30-minute profile, and the director's poignant
hourlong swansong, 1993's Is That All There Is?