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Rating:  - Borstal Blues
Tony Richardson's "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" requires a lot from the viewer because it paints a pretty bleak picture of Britain in the early Sixties. Young Colin Smith(Tom Courtenay) is angry and rightly so. His father has died and his employer gives the family a pittance for his life's work. Mum indiscrimently wastes the money on silly things. Before Dad's body is cold Mum has already moved a male lover into the house. Society offers Colin little hope outside of mandatory conscription into the military or a dead-end factory job that probably bought his father an early grave. How does Colin lash out? A few wreckless acts like pinching an auto or breaking into a bakery and stealing a cash box. The last act lands Colin in reform school. At least there Colin can hope for some equity. No, not really because there's a pecking order there that usually depends on athletic prowess. So Colin takes up long distance running. Why does Colin run? Only he knows for sure and he's not telling. Courtenay is absolutely brilliant in a role that requires him to emote very little but convey the anger that seethes beneath the surface. Richardson expertly handles the different story threads here. The narrative requires him to go back and forth in time and the film is edited brilliantly. It's easy to lump this film with the other "angry young man" films that emerged from that time but "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" stands the test of time.
Rating:  - DVD is slightly cropped
This is a wonderful British film and the DVD is an excellent transfer, except for one detail -- it has been cropped from its original 1.66 ratio (the prevailing British standard for the time) to 1.85. I wish they'd left it in its original form, as they did Julie Christie's Darling. It's a small bone of contention but to the purist these things matter.
Rating: - An incisive portrait of british establishment
" The loneliness of the long-distance runner " is a honest expresionist portrait of british working class. Director Tony Richardson developed a short-story by Alan Sillitoe,who collaborates as scripwriter in the film, for what's probably the movie that synthesizes better than any other the subversive spirit of Free Cinema, a cinematographic social phenomenon that joined a group of angry young men revolted against the narrow borders of a manipulative and hygienic industry interested in keeping under latch the miseries and contradictions of british establishment. The film condenses wonderfully almost everything of the innovations and social worries that have converted Free Cinema in the most important experience of british cinematography: the use of documentary film tecniques following the example of Humphrey Jannings' movies and the documentary school of John Grierson; independent production; antiestablisment criticism;antiacademic performances;the rebound of glamour and stylism; the use of montage strategies inspired in political russian cinematographers and innovative technologies as portable cameras; and the interest in reflecting underground social subjects.
Colin Smith(Tom Courtenay)is an intelligent and desillusioned teenager who has been sent to a reform school for youths from the low step of the british class pyramid due to a petty robbery in a bakery. Soon the reformatory governor ( Michael Redgrave ),obssesed in discipline and sports and in winning a cross country running competition against a local private school, ingratiates with him once he has could evaluate Colin's excellent background as long-distance runner, circumstance that supposes for him the favour of the reformatory governor and a excellent chance of getting a fast "freedom". During his "privileged" solitary runs outside the reformatory Colin reminds his life just before his incarceration, balancing his paradoxal situation. In the following lines I describe what I think are three representative moments of the combative ideology of the film and the " fresh " spirit of Free Cinema:the scene when the inmates revolts against their superiors in the reformatory's dinning-room for which Tony Richardson uses wisely montage tecniques learned of vanguardist russian directors as Eisenstein or Dovzhenko;the ironic portrait of the "society of comfort" where we see Colin's family spending the money of the insurance in a succcession of vignettes preceded by "advertising curtains" and enclosed with a sardonic music and,finally, the brilliant parallel-action montage where we see the inmates singing a patriotic song in the chapel of the reformatory while at the same moment in a looser cell of the building the inmate who had got to runaway days before is wildly punished. Another of the much achievements of this extraordinary film is the expressionist use of jazz music in the sequences of the solitary runs of Colin outside the reformatory gates.
For when another "free cinema" ?
Rating: - The British version of The Longest Yard
This was the story later used in the American film with Burt Reynolds, The Longest Yard. British actor, Tom Courtenay, in his first major film role plays the downcast, but likeable youth from the seedy side of town.
Courtenay's character is saturated with events in his life for which he has no control. He lives in poverty, his father dies, his mother's waiting in the wings-boyfriend is a jerk, and he has no job skills or future. He is ultimately placed in a youth detention facility where he finds, to his warden's joy, that he has athletic ability. He is ambivalent about this skill, but he can obtain privileges and possible early freedom if only he wins the running trophy for the warden.
The Burt Reynolds film, centered on his character developing an interest in his fellow prisoners to decide on how to respond to the warden's promised rewards and punishments. The British version focuses almost completely on the character's internal conflict. Ultimately, his decision is based on how he could best gain an aspect of control in his life. His decision is based not for his peers, and not for the authorities, but for his own sense of self. Aspects of the youth prison may seem funny by today's standard, but the story remains fresh and interesting. I highly recommend it.
Rating: - I cant believe its still not on DVD!
This is one of the great classics that I watch every couple of years. It has no Hollywood cosmetics. The people look and feel very real and there is truth to their emotions. It's such a great movie I can't believe its not on DVD yet!
You certainly get the feeling you've ran a mile in his shoes and that it was worth the ride.
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