 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Posted: |
Sep 7, 2024 - 10:33 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Jim Phelps
(Member)
|
This Sporting Life (1963)
Plot: Despite success on the field, a rising rugby star senses the emerging emptiness of his life as his inner angst begins to materialize through aggression and brutality, so he attempts to woo his landlady in hopes of finding reason to live.
Directed by Lindsay Anderson.
Written by David Storey.
Cinematography by Denys Coop.
Music by Roberto Gerhard.
Starring: Richard Harris (Frank Machin); Rachel Roberts (Margaret Hammond); Alan Badel (Weaver); William Hartnell (Johnson); Colin Blakely (Maurice); Vanda Godsell (Mrs. Weaver).
Filmed in West Yorkshire.
This Sporting Life is the bleakest, most depressing film I’ve ever watched, so naturally I loved it, but this film beat the hell out of me. This is the kind of film that FSMer MusicMad probably had in mind when he expressed concern over my well being.
Frank Machin is a boarder at widow Mrs. Margaret Hammond’s home. Frank wants fame and money, and he gets it as a rugby star. More than anything, though, he wants Mrs. Hammond, who gives him her body but not her heart, as she still maintains an obsessive devotion to the memory of her dead husband. Machin escapes his bleak, violent life as a miner but it’s all downhill from there. Frank’s life is shit, before and after he achieves fame. The world is shit; the world hates him, and he hates the world.
Machin is referred to as “Tarzan” and (especially) an “ape” numerous times throughout the film. Richard Harris’ makeup accentuates the negative appellation along with his behavior during the film’s never-too-long 2 hour, 14 minute runtime.
The film’s Kitchen Sink moments take place in Mrs. Hammond’s hovel of a home, which essentially serves as a depressing shrine to her dead husband. Machin purchases a flashy Rolls Royce, a fur coat for Mrs. Hammond, and spreads his cash around, yet they never move to better lodgings.
The wonderful and ultimately tragic Rachel Roberts (she also of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning) gives another superb performance in a Kitchen Sink drama as the widow with two small children who still mourns the loss of her husband, who committed suicide and whose boots she maintains and keeps by the fireside hearth. Her life, such as it is, is a living death of endless grieving which is reflected in her every action and utterance. Roberts would never be considered a conventionally beautiful woman, but she was such a tremendously good actor who seemed to bring all the “baggage” of her tormented life to her every performance without even a hint of affectation or artificiality.
There's a depiction of a brutal assault/seduction(?) and subsequent sex scene between Harris and Roberts that would never be allowed today; there's also some male bum nudity, for those who care to know.
Arthur Lowe has a prominent and sympathetic role as the rugby team chairman, with no trace of his “Captain Manwaring” character in evidence. Leonard Rossiter makes yet another Kitchen Sink Drama appearance, in his brief, insubstantial role as “Phillips.”
William Hartnell has a fine role as Johnson, Frank’s admirer who clearly harbors romantic feelings for him. Those feelings are at first implied and then directly stated by other characters. Oddly, Hartnell’s character simply disappears after the first thirty minutes of the film, never to be seen or mentioned again.
Alan Badel (Weaver) is effective as the slimy agent who discovers Frank and gets him signed for the “astronomical” fee of £1000.00 (about £18,000 in 2024).
Vanda Godsell as Mrs Weaver is also excellent; she’s a past it and vile older woman who lusts after Frank.
There’s plenty of the wet, dirty, and thoroughly unpleasant West Yorkshire landscape to be seen in glorious black and white. The sequence when Frank’s sparkling white Rolls Royce is rumbling through the dreary town makes for a stark visual contrast; both car and city backdrop are depressing for entirely different reasons.
Roberto Gerhard contributes a stellar score reminiscent of Edgar Varese which would not be out of place in one of the original Planet of the Apes films. Because of conflicts with the film’s director, Lindsay Anderson, Gerhard would not compose a score for a film again.
Despite its two Oscar nominations (Harris and Roberts), This Sporting Life was not a box-office success in 1963, nor has it enjoyed subsequent critical or popular accolades in the six decades since its release.
This Sporting Life is unremittingly bleak, cynical, and pessimistic. The film’s lone scene with even a trace of humor is when Frank and Mrs. Hammond attempt to dine at an elegant and exclusive restaurant and are out of place there like the proverbial bull in a china shop; even this scene is rife with nervous tension.
The crushingly-sad finale employs some effective, if obvious horror imagery which to some might be over the top, but which this viewer accepted and appreciated. The last scene of Frank once again on the rugby field is a fitting one, with our anti-hero weathering abuse on the field and from an unseen spectator as he plays on in his brutal profession, the bleak landscape towering over the arena.
My Rating: 10 out of 10.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Nice review of This Sporting Life
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I averted my eyes when posting this since I just started watching it, in case of spoilers.
It's starting out okay, not depressing.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
Sep 14, 2024 - 10:31 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Jim Phelps
(Member)
|
Billy Liar (1963)
Plot: A lazy, irresponsible young clerk in provincial Northern England lives in his own fantasy world and makes emotionally immature decisions as he alienates friends and family.
Directed by John Schlesinger.
Written by Keith Waterhouse; Willis Hall.
Cinematography by Denys Coop.
Music by Richard Rodney Bennett.
Starring: Tom Courtenay (Billy Fisher); Wilfred Pickles (Geoffrey Fisher); Mona Washbourne (Alice Fisher); Ethel Griffies (Grandma Florence); Finlay Currie (Duxbury); Gwendolyn Watts (Rita); Helen Fraser (Barbara); Julie Christie (Liz); Leonard Rossiter (Emanuel Shadrack); Rodney Bewes (Arthur Crabtree); George Innes (Stamp); Leslie Randall (Danny Boon).
Filmed in West Yorkshire and Manchester.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056868/locations/?ref_=tttr_ql_dt_5
The opening credits appear as the camera moves swiftly past various styles of homes and flats, becoming more modern as it goes.
Billy Liar does not feature many scenes with the typical Kitchen Sink imagery. The Fishers’ home is quite nice. It’s tidy, clean, and looks like the domicile of a prosperous lower middle-class family. There are numerous shots of tower blocks going up all around the city. One of Billy’s grandiose fantasies is his Hitler-like speech glorifying tower blocks and promising to provide them to everyone in the rapturous crowd.
The film was primarily shot in and around Bradford, West Yorkshire. Sadly, there is also a scene filmed outside of Old Trafford Stadium  when Billy has another of his daydreams.
The Bradford high street looks a little worse for wear but also incredibly vibrant as “cities in motion” tend to do in those scenes filmed during the day. The city is quite a vision when filmed at night, however. For anyone living in the area in those years, Billy Liar would be a veritable time machine.
Billy Liar is, like every one of these Kitchen Sink films, visually impressive. Denys Coop of This Sporting Life is the cinematographer and his work here is his finest I’ve seen thus far. There are some gorgeous night time scenes of the high street and a fine atmospheric scene at London’s Marylebone Railway Station (doubling for Bradford Exchange Station) in the finale.
Among the great cast, particular mention should be made of Wilfred Pickles as Billy’s father, who does not tolerate his son’s idle ways. (“Do you hear me?!? Bloody well get up!!!”). The scenes he shares with Tom Courtenay are among the film’s highlights.
Leonard Rossiter is his usual brilliant self. This time playing the mustachioed, oily-haired and realistically played Mr. Shadrack, one of Billy’s bosses at Shadrack and Duxbury, the funeral parlor where Billy works as an office clerk. Rossiter even does the Twist at the Roxy dancehall.
Rodney Bewes (Arthur Crabtree) is Billy’s best mate, playing sidekick to Courtenay just as Bewes’ Likely Lads co-star James Bolam did for Courtenay in The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner the year before. Bolam and Bewes had comparable careers in the years before they reunited for Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? Bewes plays a decent, regular Joe who seems to believe Billy’s outrageous fabrications.
Sheila Fearn (Also of Likely Lads fame) appears in a brief bit as a switchboard operator.
The moment Julie Christie (Liz) appears on screen, in the sequence as she makes her way through the high street–with amused and captivated onlookers watching her every move–it is clear that the camera simply adores Christie. Her looks and her very aura gives off “star power”, but more interestingly, her character heralds the rise of the “Mod” London that would overlap and then largely displace the Kitchen Sink style of films, even if the substance of Kitchen Sink cinema would continue to be a closer reality than the plastic, empty Mod youth culture. Liz gets the best music cue of Richard Rodney Bennett's score, a flute-driven piece worth tracking down.
Helen Fraser plays the buxom Barbara, the girl to whom Billy is engaged. Fraser profits by virtue of her saucy honeymoon attire in another of Billy’s whimsical fantasies. Fraser adds subtle humor in her performance of a naive girl in what otherwise could have been a bland role. Her scene in the cemetery after Billy has given her some pep pills is funny in a brilliantly understated way by how Barbara behaves while under the influence and Billy’s less-than-loving reaction to the same.
However, Billy Liar’s best comedic scene is between Billy and Rita (Gwendolyn Watts). Rita is the other girl to whom Billy is engaged. Billy has to make up several excuses on the fly while standing outside of his house with his father watching from inside. Gwendolyn Watts plays Rita to the hilt and is by far the funniest among the entire cast. She is delightfully over the top, and her character could have been unlikable but her outrage is totally justified, making Rita’s venom and fury entertaining to witness; just superbly played.
The sad aspect of Billy Liar is that Billy has the gift of gab and the ability to convince and sway his audience, though people who lie frequently ultimately become unconvincing liars because everyone expects them to lie. Liz, Julie Christie’s character, loves Billy because she knows he’s a liar. It’s not really well established why she loves him, though she may be a kindred spirit, with the major difference being that Liz is perpetually in motion. Not in the “spinning his wheels” manner in which Billy moves in order to maintain his lies and cover up his deceits, but in making her way through life. Liz is walking through the city in her first scene and she is in motion at the film’s conclusion.
Billy Fisher is just as sociopathic and narcissistic as Arthur Seaton (Albert Finney) of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. However, Seaton takes life by the horns and is fearless, whereas Billy is static and only “lives” in his numerous fantasies. His most outlandish fantasies are the ones he keeps to himself, except for the scene at the park when he momentarily lets Liz into his world and offers to let her share a life together.
Billy Liar simultaneously captures a time and place, firmly taking place in 1962, but it also manages to chronicle a “turning of the page.” The film witnesses the cultural, architectural, and pop cultural changes taking place in Britain. For its protagonist, it’s a tragedy, as his inability to act on even his more realistic, attainable daydreams.
My Rating: 8 out of 10.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
But Jim, you missed out the funniest bit of whole film, when Tom Courtney daydreams and turns into a German soldier spraying his nagging family across the room with a schmeisser machine gun !! Genius comedy.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Check out Those People Next Door, 1953, stars Jack Warner, Jimmy james, Anthony Newley.
Class drama about a young man's titled parents who object to his working class fiancee.
Not strictly 60s kitchen sink but has amusing moments and although set wartime, has some elements of what you like, and lots of Britishisms, especially in the working class home.
One bit made me laugh. Siren goes off for air raid and theyre all rushing to shelter, and airhead daughter says "I've forgotten me lipstick"
Another bit made me laugh in local London pub. A bloke collecting for charity rattles tin n says "Doctor Barnardo's Home?" And local ducker n diver swerves his tin n says "Is he? I didn't know he was away" 
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Posted: |
Sep 18, 2024 - 4:40 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Hurdy Gurdy
(Member)
|
Although I've probably left this genre of film in the past, along with MY OWN PAST*, I have to admire your dedication to these films and TV shows, James, and really enjoy reading your astute synopsis and reviews of these important classics of yesteryear.
Please keep em-a-comin.
* I must have lived through some of those smoke-stacks, grimy North B&W vistas, but I only remember the sunny mid 70s and beyond. Even my earliest memories, holding my mum's hand and throwing up those twirly-wirly's that fell off trees and descended like helicopters, as she walked me to infant school, are all recalled in GLORIOUS FULL COLOUR.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Posted: |
Sep 18, 2024 - 6:24 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Thor
(Member)
|
Yeah, I echo Kev. I've seen this thread pop to the top for months now, and I've been meaning to read through it, but other things have come in the way. Will need to set aside time soon, maybe with something in the glass, and read it all, as I am a fan of the genre. From KES to GET CARTER (gangster film, but plenty of kitchen sink influence in it) to Ken Loach, I love both the rough and the ugly beauty of it all (although Loach's latest, THE OLD OAK, was a misfire).
|
|
|
|
|
|
Another bit made me laugh in local London pub. A bloke collecting for charity rattles tin n says "Doctor Barnardo's Home?" And local ducker n diver swerves his tin n says "Is he? I didn't know he was away"
Reminds me of one of may dads jokes , from when we were younger-
Knock at door, dad opens it, yes says dad
I'm collecting for Bernardos says the caller.
Oh says dad and shout us, 4 kids. We come running and my dad says how many do you want. Hilarious and true.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
Sep 18, 2024 - 12:52 PM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Jim Phelps
(Member)
|
Although I've probably left this genre of film in the past, along with MY OWN PAST*, I have to admire your dedication to these films and TV shows, James, and really enjoy reading your astute synopsis and reviews of these important classics of yesteryear.
Please keep em-a-comin.
* I must have lived through some of those smoke-stacks, grimy North B&W vistas, but I only remember the sunny mid 70s and beyond. Even my earliest memories, holding my mum's hand and throwing up those twirly-wirly's that fell off trees and descended like helicopters, as she walked me to infant school, are all recalled in GLORIOUS FULL COLOUR.
Yeah, I echo Kev. I've seen this thread pop to the top for months now, and I've been meaning to read through it, but other things have come in the way. Will need to set aside time soon, maybe with something in the glass, and read it all, as I am a fan of the genre. From KES to GET CARTER (gangster film, but plenty of kitchen sink influence in it) to Ken Loach, I love both the rough and the ugly beauty of it all (although Loach's latest, THE OLD OAK, was a misfire).
Thank you, gents. I appreciate the kind and encouraging words. I also greatly appreciate everyone who's commented, especially our BillCarson who has provided additional, "off the beaten path" viewing suggestions.
The genre has been a long-deferred interest of mine, so it's been highly rewarding to go through the films and that era.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
