Home > Drama >

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

Watch Now

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962)

September. 21,1962
|
7.5
|
NR
| Drama
Watch Now

A rebellious youth sentenced to a reformatory for robbing a bakery rises through the ranks of the institution through his prowess as a long distance runner. During his solitary runs, reveries of his life and times before his incarceration lead him to re-evaluate his privileged status as a prized athlete.

...

Watch Trailer

Cast

Similar titles

Reviews

Stometer
1962/09/21

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

More
ChicRawIdol
1962/09/22

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

More
Doomtomylo
1962/09/23

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

More
Jenna Walter
1962/09/24

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

More
James Hitchcock
1962/09/25

Alan Sillitoe seems to have gone down in literary history as a two-hit wonder, the two hits being his first two works, the novel "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" and the short-story collection, "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner". Few, if any, of his later works achieved the same success. In the late fifties and early sixties, however, he was a leading light in what became known as the "kitchen sink" social-realist movement in English literature, and both books became key texts of that movement. The British cinema was going through a similar social-realist phase at around the same time, so (like several other key kitchen-sink texts, such as Shelagh Delaney's "A Taste of Honey" and Stan Barstow's "A Kind of Loving") both "Saturday Night..." and "The Loneliness..." were inevitably adapted for the screen. "The Loneliness..." tells the story of Colin Smith, a youth from a working-class Nottingham family, who is sentenced to a term in borstal for burgling a bakery. (A "borstal" at this period was a special prison for young offenders). In the original short story he was simply called "Smith", but Sillitoe, who also wrote the screenplay, evidently felt that he needed a Christian name for the screen. The film is essentially a study of class conflicts in the Britain of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The two main characters are Colin and the Governor of the borstal. The Governor is, on the surface at least, a humane and decent man. He claims that his job is to reform and rehabilitate the young men in his charge rather than to punish them. The Governor's ambition is to run his borstal along the lines of a public school. (His accent suggests that he is probably a public schoolboy himself). He is keen to encourage his boys to take up sport as part of his rehabilitation programme, and Colin becomes a protégé of his when he discovers that the young man is a talented athlete. Colin is entered into a cross-country race in an athletics meeting against the boys of a nearby public school. The account of Colin's time in the borstal is intercut with a series of flashbacks showing his previous life in Nottingham. An event which had a great effect on him was the death of his father, not because he had any great affection for the old man but because he saw him as a symbol of the downtrodden, put-upon working-class little man. From what we learn, Smith senior appears to have worked all his life in a badly-paid dead-end factory job, with little to show for his hard work. He was badly treated by his bosses and cuckolded by his sluttish, sharp-tongued wife who moved one of her lovers into the family home almost as soon as he was dead. (Colin may have had no great affection for his father, but he positively detests his mother). Colin's resentment of "the System" may derive from a determination not to allow himself to be trapped in the same way as his father was. I have always been in two minds about Colin's famous final act of rebellion, but then I think that Sillitoe deliberately intended it to be ambiguous. On the one hand, some have seen it as a magnificent revolt against the System and against the Governor and his old-school-tie Establishment values. Others, however, have seen it as a pointless gesture by a young man who actively wants to be a loser because he is too cowardly, or too apathetic, to be anything else. I think that Sillitoe also wanted us to be in two minds about Colin himself. For all his talk of working-class solidarity, he is actually very self-centred. He can talk the language of "them and us" when what he really means is "them and me". When he robs the bakery he gives no thought to the workers whose wages he is stealing; his only thought is to spend the proceeds on a trip to Skegness with his partner-in-crime and their girlfriends. The alacrity with which the police make him their Number One suspect, even when they have no hard evidence against him, suggests that this is far from being his first brush with the law. Sillitoe himself had left-wing sympathies, as did the director Tony Richardson, but he may have intended Colin as a portrayal of the "phoney radical" who uses the language of political protest in order to justify his own selfishness and criminality. I think that we are also supposed to see the Governor as an ambiguous figure. On the surface he may seem decent, but it is implied that beneath this surface veneer he is less humane than he seems and that he turns a blind eye to brutality carried out by his officers against the inmates. He talks about his concern for his charges, but we suspect that he may only care about a favoured few, especially those who share his interest in sport. If Colin is a phoney radical, the Governor is a phoney liberal. There are two fine performances, one from that pillar of the British theatrical Establishment Sir Michael Redgrave as the Governor, a pillar of the British penal Establishment, and the other from Tom Courtenay, one of the emerging Angry Young Actors of the early sixties, as the angry young Colin. The contrast between their two very different styles of acting- Redgrave superficially gentlemanly and urbane, Courtenay feral and aggressive- symbolises the clash of social classes and of values which lies at the heart of this fine film. 8/10

More
Leofwine_draca
1962/09/26

THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER is director Tony Richardson's follow-up to A TASTE OF HONEY and another kitchen sink drama. However, this one's much better than his previous constrained effort, as this explores working class life and struggles on a much grander tableau. The main character is a teenage running champion whose life in a borstal is explored in the grittiest of detail while his back story is explored via flashbacks.The story is well cast and accentuated by the ring of authenticity. Tom Courtenay is exceptional as the protagonist, never smiling, never happy, but at the same time proving ultimately sympathetic given his background and story. A strong supporting cast including Michael Redgrave, James Bolam, and even John Thaw help to propel things along. The situations remain interesting and are surprisingly undated given the film's age, and there's always some drama to keep your mind occupied. I particularly enjoyed the ending, which would seem insignificant to an outsider with no knowledge of the film's plot, but which becomes almost an epic struggle to those who have sat through the preceding narrative.

More
Klaus Ming
1962/09/27

UK 104m, B&W Director: Tony Richardson; Cast: Tom Courtenay, Michael Redgrave, James Bolam, Ray Austin, John Thaw, Alec McCowenThe Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner is a brilliant expose of social class, poverty and youth disillusionment in Britain during the early 1960s. Sentenced to reform school for petty crimes, Colin Smith is a rebellious youth from a poor family who is encouraged by the headmaster to train for an inter-school cross-country championship race. During Colin's many hours of training, we witness in flashback the events which led to his incarceration, and the underlying reasons for his defiance against authority. Taking advantage of special privileges to train, Colin uses the freedom to escape from his grim surroundings. Recognizing that he is being used, he surprises everyone by with a wonderfully unforgettable act of defiance at the finish of the championship race (Klaus Ming September 2013).

More
Robert J. Maxwell
1962/09/28

There were a whole spate of British movies in the early 60s that introduced us to the shabbier side of everyday life among the wreckage of the Industrial Revolution. They launched the careers of a number of actors and directors -- Albert Finney, Richard Harris, Julie Christie, Tony Richardson, and Tom Courtenay among them.Here, Tom Courtenay is a juvenile delinquent who lives in a crummy house with his sour puss Mom, his dying father, his noisy younger siblings, and, later, a dressed-up dude who is his Mom's guest. He can't wait to get out from under it all.Busted for a minor crime he's sent to a reform school where the well-intentioned manager, Michael Redgrave, spots his ability as a long-distance runner and encourages him to train and to enter the contest against the local public school. Imagine -- a Borstal boy taking the cup from a team of pampered poufs! Running is hard but it suits Courtenay well, as it gives him a sense of escape from his drab and unpromising surroundings. Alas, when the big race against the Aryans who all speak with the received pronunciation arrives, he discovers that you can't run away from your background. He strikes a blow against the establishment by deliberately stopping before crossing the finish line. Michael Redgrave, who had visualized Courtenay in the Olympic games, is not pleased. In his own mind, Courtenay has struck a blow for the underprivileged working man, but only at his own expense.These movies about the shabby lives of the working class with its small-reward system were refreshing and new at the time. It had hardly been done before with such style. They were as fascinating as some tribal ethnography of Amazon head hunters. In retrospect, a lot depends on how involving the plot was. Episodes illustrating the minor flaws, the dirty brick, the rough bonhomie, don't add up to much unless there is a narrative peg strong enough to hold their weight. This movie qualifies just barely. We don't see much running, and Courtenay's life may be unfocused and its texture abrasive, but he's not particularly lonely.I knew a marathon runner once. Like all the others he was more than six feet tall and had the long legs of a giraffe. When he crossed the finish line he was panting and sobbing, not merely tired.I kept thinking about the interaction between genetics and environment. Take a soul with Courtenay's inborn characteristics -- that talent for running, especially long-distance running which takes more than momentary concentration. Give him that adventurous and slightly iconoclastic spirit. Then, instead of having him born to a poor and dysfunctional family, give him to a middle-class household with a sensitive mother and a healthy father and send him to that hoity toity public school. He'd cross that finish line with a grin a mile wide and go on to be a clever lawyer.

More