This Sporting Life
Tags: storytelling

Plot synopsis:
Set in Wakefield, the film concerns a bitter young Yorkshire coal miner, Frank Machin (Harris). Following a nightclub altercation, in which he takes on the captain of the local rugby league club and punches a couple of the others, he is recruited by the team's manager, who sees profit in his aggressive streak.
Although at first somewhat uncoordinated at league, he impresses the team's owner, Gerald Weaver (Badel), with the spirit and brutality of his playing style during the trial. He is signed up to the top team as a loose forward (number 13) and impresses all with his aggressive forward play. He often punches or elbows the opposition players throughout the game.
Off the field, Frank is much less successful. His recently widowed landlady, Mrs Margaret Hammond (Roberts), a mother of two young children, lost her husband in an accident at Weaver's engineering firm but received no financial compensation because the death was ruled a suicide. Frank eventually has sexual relations with Margaret, but in her grief she cannot return any affection. She sometimes insults him, referring to him as "just a great ape", and finds his boorish behaviour at a smart restaurant off-putting. He is occasionally violent towards her. He leaves and stays at a homeless men's shelter after a row over her late husband. He has another quarrel with Weaver and his predatory wife, whose advances he rejects, much to her chagrin. Intending a reconciliation with Margaret, he finds that she is in a hospital. She is unconscious, having suffered a brain haemorrhage shortly after their split, and she dies without regaining consciousness. In the end he is seen as "just a great ape on a football field", vulnerable to the ravages of time and injury.

Review: As he rises within his own world, Frank has more resources and more opportunity but a strained affair with his landlady Margaret and his inability to shake off his basic roots see him frustrated and pained with his journey.Like many others have said in relation to this film, British cinema did have something at one point.
"This Sporting Life" is one of the most famous of the British "kitchen sink" dramas of the 1950s and 1960s ("kitchen sink" films were very gritty, social realist films which were very popular in Britain at one time).Frank Machin (Richard Harris) is a brutal, young miner in a city in northern England.
He uses his fame and fortune, along with physical violence, to try to force his widowed landlady (Rachel Roberts) to fall for him.Photographed in bleak black-and-white, the film's scenes of emotional and physical domestic violence are still shocking today.
Richard Harris gives a performance of a lifetime as a rugby player who, both on and off the field of play, seems able to express himself only through violence.Lindsay Anderson directs wonderfully, insisting on gritty realism, and stripping everything of any hint of cinematic glamour.
Harris is profoundly convincing as the miner turned Rugby League player who pursues the arctic charms of his widowed landlady played with sublime restraint by the late Rachel Roberts.
Having seen the film several times I can relate to the lifestyle of the characters, I was a child in the sixties and my memories of life back then are reflected in the atmostsphere that the film generates.I have read various comments about the film looking dated, and yes it does, but it is a true reflection on life at that time.It is also a great historical piece as many of the towns and sports arena's used in the film have changed drastically or no longer exist.I particularly remember the MECCA social club in Wakefield and the various coffee bars that surrounded it, Belle Vue where the Rugby League scenes were shot has stayed remarkably unchanged over the years and I still enjoy the atmostsphere as I watch my favourite team Wakefield Trinity Wildcats.To see the massive cooling towers in the background stirs memories of being there on a Saturday afternoon with my late Father Norman.I have a real soft spot for this film and I'm sorry that I have concentrated on my memories rather than the films content..
You know, the more I watch English movies from the 1960's, the more I fall in love with them, Films like I'm all Right Jack, Darling, Alfie, and now, This Sporting Edge, always feature the U.K. as this gritty place, where living is tough, and the people are tougher.
Now, whether that's true to life I'm not sure (though I'd be interested to find out) but I sure get a kick out of these films, and I'm glad to add This Sporting Life to that list.Richard Harris just acts the hell out of his role as a Miner who finds his forte as a star Rugby player.
Anyways, Richard Harris's character, Frank Machin, maybe is a brilliant rugby player, but sort of not so in life, but that doesn't stop him from trying to succeed with what he has.
It's not entertaining to watch by any means, but if you brace yourself for the film's depressing impact you will probably find it rewarding.Several commentators on this site have suggested that the movie doesn't work because the central character, Frank Machin - played by an excellent Richard Harris - is too thuggish and unsympathetic.
As for the acting, Richard Harris and Rachel Roberts really do give the roles of their live in This Sporting Life, and are both absolutely brilliant as the ruthless professional rugby player and repressed widowed landlady with whom he can only communicate with through violence, and they are finely supported by the likes of Alan Badel and William Hartnell.
...but if you've had a bellyful of that whole 'angry young working class man' era (1950s through to the 1970s) of film-making, replete with gritty depictions of how hard life - and the people living it - were (and this was true for the majority of Brits...for the majority of the 20th century!), you'll give this a miss, despite the excellent acting from acting luminaries such as the young Richard Harris and Rachel Roberts, etc (indeed, it's difficult to fault ANY of the performances in this film) and the then-cutting edge directing and relatively unusual theme of rugby in a working class area (generally known as the sport used to toughen up privileged middle-to-upper-class boys at private schools - no doubt it made for an excellent foreshadowing of the military, for which many of those boys were destined!).
Personally, I found the whole thing compelling (due to the performances and the 'slice-of- history' aspect - before my time, but definitely well within the living memory of several of my English relatives) yet ultimately deeply depressing - and far two long/desperately in need of an edit; for one thing, the endless adaptations of 'real life' novels featuring working class animal-sexuality hero has been done to death in British cinema (pioneered of course by DH Lawrence, who was roughly 30 years ahead of his time and didn't live long enough to see the triumph of his 'type', though he, personally, paid a fairly high price for pioneering it); for another, the closed-down-emotions of various men and women/widows clearly suffering from various forms of unexplained post-traumatic stress syndrome (though it is never explained explicitly, it is clear that the leading lady's husband committed suicide because he was suffering from depression as a result of sustaining trauma during service in the war - something so many men struggled with; therefore, though she is attracted to the brash young (too young to have served) lodger who clearly wants her, he cannot relate to the extent of her own trauma of loss, grief and insecurity, which he clumsily attempts to 'snap her out of' in various mostly misfired ways, receiving absolutely no support or guidance from her or anyone else as to how to gain her trust and win her heart and hand!) - I just find watching this kind of mass misunderstanding and miscommunication and mangled affections and misread gestures of love and good intentions akin to watching a train wreck!!.
To my mind, and to many others, This Sporting Life is the essential, character-driven British exponent of that 1960's realism, 'kitchen sink' drama.With its moody and stark black & white photography and a similarly moody and stark, career best (my opinion) performance by Richard Harris - and the settings are as they were in Northern England back then.
For an ambitious man, that wasn't quite enough for Frank Machin (Harris) and so, when his way of showing off and 'getting the ladies', Saturday afternoon rugby league turns good, he milks it dry.
Lindsay Anderson's first film of consequence also provided Irish actor Richard Harris with his first leading movie role  following his scene-stealing appearance alongside Brando in Mutiny on the Bounty'.Frank Machin is a rough-and-ready rugby player, and although the film does centre on that aspect of his life, it isn't just a film about the sport.
In this film the widow Maragaret was denied compensation when her husband died at work, though her tenant, coal miner Frank Machin gets a big signing bonus to play for the local league team, whose owner also employed Margaret's husband at his factory.
Both Harris and co-star Rachel Roberts (playing a widowed landlady who he romances) received Oscar nominations for their roles, and both deliver fine turns, coming across as real human beings struggling to make it in a world where the odds seem stacked against them.
British New Wave auteur Lindsay Anderson's feature debut, a "kitchen sink" drama of the first order, stars Harris as Frank Machin, an aggressive coal-miner-turned-rugby-player in Wakefield, who lodges in with a widow Ms. Margaret Hammond (Roberts) and her two young children.
He is a rough diamond type, an indomitable "ape" on the field, but constantly perturbed by dissatisfaction and loneliness, he is pining for being wanted, especially by Margaret, who always gives him cold shoulder over his benevolent advances.The film starts with intimate close-ups of the men-to-men action during an ongoing game, which echoes with its bleak ending, the same Frank in the field, doing the only thing he is really good at, to continue his life.
The use of black-and- white photography helped the feeling of desolation, melancholy and emotional emptiness.Requires some patience though - starts slowly.Good performances by Richard Harris and Rachel Roberts, both of whom received Oscar nominations for their efforts.Worth watching..
Watching Richard Harris' performance as Frank Machin in Lindsay Anderson's 1963 masterpiece "This Sporting Life" you might be reminded of Marlon Brando's work in "A Streetcar Named Desire" or indeed of Robert De Niro's Jake La Motta in Scorsese's later "Raging Bull", (Scorsese's film owes a great deal to "This Sporting Life" without ever quite measuring up).
A lower-class young man (Richard Harris) makes his mark as a particularly violent, tough rugby player, while trying, in his awkward, coarse way to seduce his landlady (Rachel Roberts).
Classicly, the fatal flaws are laid out from the outset: single minded ambition, fated love, and a working class hole that the hero just will not be allowed to climb out of.Anderson also achieves miracles with his low budget - the game of rugby - as experienced by the players - is superbly portrayed - and the (literally) cardboard extras in the stands, perform better than any real crowd ever could, for the purposes of this film.
Like a football pools winner, he flaunted his newfound wealth by purchasing the most expensive car on the market, and one that was the most inappropriately vulgar and had to be parked in the street - a sort of nose thumbing at who?My main problem was not with the depiction of working class life in the industrial West Riding of Yorkshire and the disparity with the middle class comfort, but with the casting of Richard Harris as Frank.
Harris deserved all the acclaim he got for his Frank Machin, but it's the way Anderson places him in the frame, in the shot, that makes the character and the story work and that underpins its tragedy.
These three things are: Rugby (or any sport/hobby someone does  Golf is quite popular between businessmen these days), working down the mines (a modern office for today's men) and the landlady-come-love interest.This little montage at the beginning is basically the starter gun that gives the film its reason to propel onward.
Not only this but the 'rags to riches' tale is put across and told in such a well paced and interesting manner, you just have to watch the whole thing in one go all the time whilst on the edge of your seat.Frank is a very 'laddish' guy but un-relentlessly likable; thus, his downfall and the way the film sinks to its lows of human emotion and experience as fate and 'death' strike again in the lives of these people is as tragic as it is gripping  all this build up and life experience before dropping the bomb on the whole thing.This Sporting Life is a fantastic look at Britain in the era it was made and highly entertaining  at times it felt like Frank was joining a local crime syndicate I was so involved.
With his first fictional feature Lindsay Anderson looks a life in live in a Yorkshire Mining town, with it's grim style repeated in films like Kes, Nil by Mouth and This is England.Richard Harris plays Frank Machin, a tough and rough coal miner who gets a chance to play for his local rugby league club.
Anderson was able to mix flashbacks and real-time to great use, showing Frank rise as a sporting star and his relationship with the people in the past to his present downfall.The one major criticism is the film is too long and should have been under two hours..
The central sport is hardly of any relevance and could be any tough game, although the film gives the impression that rugby players were better paid than they really were.This is one of those sixties films that forms part of the "kitchen sink" genre and won the Palm D'or for Richard Harris as the inarticulate and love struck star.
With practically no chance of making anything better of himself, he stays with a woman (Rachel Roberts, looking almost exactly like Elizabeth Montgomery) as a sort of surrogate husband, but his self-destructive lifestyle prevents them from having a relationship.Watching the movie, it's hard not to understand the grimness that Frank feels.
It's the definitive 'kitchen-sink' drama with the powerhouse performances of Richard Harris and Rachel Roberts.The film follows Frank Machin (played by Richard Harris) who is lucky enough to escape life working in the mines to become a town hero for its rugby league side in the gloomy locales of Yorkshire.
When watching the film and analysing its scenes depicting domestic disputes and in particular the rugby matches, it's easy to see where Martin Scorsese was inspired for elements of Raging Bull with the visceral depiction of the sport involved and the heated and uncomfortable domestic disputes that the film entails.Richard Harris is simply fantastic as Frank Machin; a man who desperately tries to fit in and prove himself to Margaret.
British New Wave director and film critic Lindsay Anderson's feature film debut, which was written by English playwright and novelist David Storey and based on his first novel from 1960, tells the story of Rugby player and coal miner Frank Machin who is a tenant in Yorkshire, North of England at a house where a widow named Miss Margaret Hammond lives with her two adolescent children.
Richard Harris plays a tough rugby player in love with a bitter widow (Rachel Roberts) who is attracted to him but feels it's wiser to stay away.
The tight coldness of Margaret Hammond (Rachel Roberts), steadfastly refusing to let herself be happy for a second time in her life, grinds against the macho world that Frank Machin (Richard Harris) has climbed into.It is one of Harris's two great roles and came near the start of his career (the other being Bull McCabe in "The Field" which came near the end) and possibly came closest to the forces that drove him through his life.
Frank Machin (the late Richard Harris) is a miner turned rugby player rooming in the home of Widow, Margaret Hammond (Rachael Roberts, also passed).
"This sporting life" is too clever by far,a positive plethora of directors' tricks,flashy camera-work and nostalgie de la boue.Richard Harris overacts wildly with that grim determination to be true to life that ends up being nothing like real life at all.Rachel Roberts ,poor thing,spends most of the film looking dead before she actually does pass away.Many British thesps polish up their sort "a"s and nobody says"There's trooble at 't' mill" as far as I can remember,but much of the dialogue is at that level.Mr Anderson carried on in much the same vein for some years and gained the reputation as a sympathetic chronicler of the working class.Well,sympathetic he might have been - accurate he wasn't.With sympathy and £1.99 I can buy a Big Mac..
Very much in the 'angry young man' tradition, this film, based the novel and screenplay by David Storey, received two Oscar nominations in 1963: Richard Harris (for Best Actor) and Rachel Roberts (for Best Actress).This Sporting Life ranks as No. 52 on the BFI's Top 100, while If...
The angry young man in this film is Frank Machin (Richard Harris) who rooms in the home of a young widow, Margaret Hammond (Rachel Roberts), and her two small children.
I thought I might not like this for I do not like football at all.But I was wrong ;only 10 minutes on the field (in a 2 hours+ movie)."This sporting life" is a psychological drama ,the story of two misfits ,masterfully played by Richard Harris and Rachel Roberts .The champion thinks he will make his way of life in football ;but even if he makes money ,he realizes he'll never be like the folks of the hill because he will remain a crude uneducated brute ,who don't feel at ease in the chic restaurant (like Margaret in her fur coat).His background remains mysterious ,we know he worked as a coal miner but we never see his parents:he may be an orphan ,or he 's severed all links with a (maybe alcoholic) family .That may explain why he wants Margaret to love him.Margaret is not exactly what you call a babe but she represents for this homeless boy the promise of a family :he tries to be a father to them ,buys them presents and play with them.Margaret is also a misfit:she lives in a memory ;she is faithful to her late husband's memory .She has no relationships with her fellow men;the only time she has guests on Christmas night is revealing:the dead man's sister and her husband .Her only reason to live is to to know that she made her husband happy.Harris and Roberts are one of the best actors team you can see in the British movies of the sixties.Although we know they'll never be together -the hero destroys the woman's husband figure ,and thus destroys her and psychologically does away with himself-we can feel a mutual sexual attraction ,even from Margaret:those angry young men of the sixties had probably read Tennessee Williams and the couple has something of Blanche Du Bois/Stanley Kowalsky.This is a depressing but rewarding black and white drama by Lindsay Anderson;his hero is too old for rebellion;the students of "if" will have their revolution..
This is a brief review of "If", "This Sporting Life", "Britannia Hospital" and "O, Lucky Man!", four films by director Lindsay Anderson.One of the defining films of the British New Wave, "Sporting Life" revolves around Frank Machin (Richard Harris), a short tempered guy who becomes a star on the rugby circuit.
Then I watched This Sporting Life, the 1963 black and white debut film of Lindsay Anderson, starring Harris as rugby star Frank Machin and.WOW!
Basically, set in 1960's Yorkshire, Wakefield, Northern England, lives coal miner Frank Machin (Oscar and BAFTA nominated Richard Harris) who has the ambition to become a star rugby player.