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The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner [VHS]

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I saw this British film when it first came out in 1962 and never forgot it. I even remember an argument I had with my aunt about its controversial theme - that of an alienated angry young man who defiantly refuses to conform to the system. Shot in black and white, the video stars Tom Courtenay as a working class Nottingham youth who is sent to a reformatory because of a robbery. Michael Redgrave is cast as the warden, referred to as the "governor" as this is a British film. It is a modern reformatory, and plans are being made to for it to compete in sports with a private school. The long distance run is considered the biggest prize and Courtenay is granted special privileges as he stands out as someone who could actually win. He's allowed to take long runs outside of the reformatory gates each day, and the cinematography here is outstanding. During these runs, Courtenay experiences flashbacks of his life and we see a picture of its grimness. We see his anger at the system and admire him for belief in his ideals. And yet we also want him to win the race and move into a more privileged life. Finally the day of the run arrives. And young Courtenay makes his decision. It is startling and yet something we can understand. No wonder it's haunted me all these years.

Now, watching the video all these years later, I found it a little slow for my taste, especially since I already knew the ending. And, also, as with many British films on video, I sometimes wish there were subtitles. But this is a film that makes me think. I think about choices I've made in my own life. I think about how they turned out. And I think about the message of the film - still fresh after all this time. Recommended.

This British film is a stark masterful portrayal of a young working class man, and the urban world he is trapped inside. The black and white photography lends a honest depiction of his tough bare existence. Colin watches his foolish widowed mother fritter away her meagre inheritance, and he seems to be as incarcerated in this world, as in the reform school he ends up in, after a bungled robbery. His stolen cash, stashed away in a drain pipe at the front door, floats out during a rainy day at the very feet of a detective making inquiries at his house. So it goes for Colin, a man trapped at every turn. His life gets a lift when he joins the cross country team at the reform school. The scenes of him running freely through the woods during meets are poetry on film. Colin lashes out against his fate and lot with one bold pause at the end. His expression as he stands there is priceless. This film's images will last with the viewer for a life time. This is great art.

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.

Tony Richardon's grim evocation of the experience of one bottom feeder at the low base of Britain's crumbling class pyramid features editing as harsh - and cinematically effective, especially in the film's well-placed flahsbacks - as this story of hard-bitten young Colin Smith (grittily portrayed by Tom Courtenay). For a petty theft Smith is sentenced to borstal (reform school) where his speed in the long distance run elevates him, in the eyes of his inmate brethren, to become the "guvnor's blue-eyed boy", because the warden's goal is to win the special long distance running cup in the borstal's trial athletic competition against an upper-class public school. Smith finds himself trapped between the guvnor's self-serving, manipulative solicitude and the class-based peer pressure of his borstal mates. Courtenay plays out Smith's repsonse to his dilemma with breathless, bristling, teeth-clenched defiance that the film, grippingly, doesn't reveal until its withering dénouement.

Avis Bunnage lends a biting performance as Smith's mother: a woman hardened by her straitened life circumstance as the working class widow of a resentful factory worker, struggling on welfare to raise her children in a grimy, shabbily built, claustrophobic low-income dwelling. Alec McCowen, as the borstal's pyschologist, deftly adds depth to the story as a well-meaning advocate of fresh approaches to rehabilitating inmates, whose efforts are trumped by the warden's timeworn methods. As the warden Michael Redgrave communicates all that's right - and wrong - about the upper reaches of the class pyramid.

Developed from a short story by Alan Sillitoe (author of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and screenwriter of that eponymous 1961 film), rooted in industrial Nottigham, filmed in sooty, bleak black & white, 1962's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner may, in 2002, feel a bit dated, yet its theme of the bottom-of-the-food-chain working class individual clamped in the maws of animals and powers beyond his influence remains trenchant, timeless and thought-provoking.

Tony Richardon's grim evocation of the experience of one bottom feeder at the low base of Britain's crumbling class pyramid features editing as harsh - and cinematically effective, especially in the film's well-placed flahsbacks - as this story of hard-bitten young Colin Smith (grittily portrayed by Tom Courtenay). For a petty theft Smith is sentenced to borstal (reform school) where his speed in the long distance run elevates him, in the eyes of his inmate brethren, to become the "guvnor's blue-eyed boy", because the warden's goal is to win the special long distance running cup in the borstal's trial athletic competition against an upper-class public school. Smith finds himself trapped between the guvnor's self-serving, manipulative solicitude and the class-based peer pressure of his borstal mates. Courtenay plays out Smith's repsonse to his dilemma with breathless, bristling, teeth-clenched defiance that the film, grippingly, doesn't reveal until its withering dénouement.

Avis Bunnage lends a biting performance as Smith's mother: a woman hardened by her straitened life circumstance as the working class widow of a resentful factory worker, struggling on welfare to raise her children in a grimy, shabbily built, claustrophobic low-income dwelling. Alec McCowen, as the borstal's pyschologist, deftly adds depth to the story as a well-meaning advocate of fresh approaches to rehabilitating inmates, whose efforts are trumped by the warden's timeworn methods. As the warden Michael Redgrave communicates all that's right - and wrong - about the upper reaches of the class pyramid.

Developed from a short story by Alan Sillitoe (author of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and screenwriter of that eponymous 1961 film), rooted in industrial Nottigham, filmed in sooty, bleak black & white, 1962's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner may, in 2002, feel a bit dated, yet its theme of the bottom-of-the-food-chain working class individual clamped in the maws of animals and powers beyond his influence remains trenchant, timeless and thought-provoking.

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.

" 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" ?

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.

Alan Sillitoe described once having been offered a cottage in Harsfordshire by a friend: "I was sitting in a sort of parlor there one day, writing. And suddenly I saw someone run past the window, along the lane outside. With shorts on, white shirt and so on. And it seemed to me such an unusual image that I wrote down at the top of a sheet of paper, `The loneliness of the long-distance runner.' I didn't know where he had come from. I didn't know where he was going. He was simply a sort of vision, floating by the window. And I put the line away. I thought I was going to write a poem with this sort of line in it. It seemed rather a nice line."

Instead of writing a poem, Sillitoe wrote a short story with the "nice line" as title. The line also served as title for a book collecting that and nine other short stories, published in 1958. Along with a novel titled Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, this launched his career as one of the decade's "Angry Young Men," a radical who championed the British working class. In many respects, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner is less about running and more about the pervasive effects of poverty.

Several years later, Sillitoe wrote the screenplay made into a film starring Tom Courtenay as Colin Smith, a robber turned runner. The director of Loneliness was Tony Richardson, who in 1964 would win two Oscars (Best Picture and Best Director) for Tom Jones.

Loneliness was black and white, a "foreign" film whose characters spoke in working-class accents not easy on American ears. You almost need sub-titles to understand what the characters are saying; except none are available on the version of this film still available on Amazon.com and Netflix. Given the film's half-century age, few runners today have seen it and, certainly, even fewer have read the short story from which it sprang. Ask anyone about Loneliness and most often they refer to it as a "book," which it is not. They know the title, but misunderstand the meaning of that title. Was the long-distance runner portrayed by Sillitoe, really "lonely" with all the negative connotations associated with that word?

View this film and find out. As a contributing editor for Runner's World and author of 35 books (not all of them about running), I consider this the best film about long-distance running every made. It captures our sport as no film has before or since.

(This review is an excerpt from Hal Higdon's memoir on the sport of cross country, titled Through the Woods: Parts 1-4, available in the Kindle Store.)

Tony Richardson and Allan Sillitoe have combined again for another great movie about the British working class. The trouble with this and other such movies about this subject is the emptiness it conveys. Growing up in America is decidedly different although there will be many who would dispute that. However, what comes across clearly in movies such as this, "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", "Look Back in Anger" and others is that there is no hope for the young working class to raise their status. It's the factory line or the unemployment line and the disdain of those who seek more out of life is its' own punishment. The case of Tom Courtney's character is an example of a young man with little options. He eventually discovers (as did the Richard Harris character in "This Sporting Life") that success in sports (at least in the 1960's) did not provide a bridge to crossover. The movie ends intentionally akwardly as our anti-hero realizes the futility of efforts. Along the way, we are treated to an outstanding combination of writing, acting, directing, and film editing. This is a classic movie of its' genre but it is a genre that leaves one empty.

One note about the music; I recognized the tune that kept appearing in the film. I eventually connected it to a haunting piece that I had heard before in "Chariots of Fire" (talk about the opposite side of the tracks!). No, it wasn't THE tune from "Chariots" but I tried to find the title to the tune which emerged vocally as the reform school's song but was unable to with the limited credits. I wondered whether or not the producers of "Chariots of Fire" put that tune in their movie as a tribute to "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner".