Criterion Sunday 417: This Sporting Life (1963)

The idea of watching one of these 60s British ‘kitchen sink dramas’ never really thrills me, but yet they have often been really compelling. Billy Liar showcases Tom Courtenay, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning does the same for Albert Finney, and here we have Richard Harris as Frank, a typically laddish rugby player (though, being from Yorkshire, he’s less posh than many who play the game in the south of England). His performance has that Brando swagger to it, as he punches his way through early scenes, told in flashback from a dentist’s chair as he gets his teeth extracted following a particularly vicious blow on the field. He recalls his life and ascent to rugby stardom (of a sort, a very local kind of stardom), which also lay bare his difficulty with women — part of which you suspect just comes down to the very poor role models he must have had, and certainly the rather leering sporting life he leads doesn’t help much — and a fundamental emptiness at his heart that the film’s end seems to suggest is just going to continue.

CRITERION EXTRAS:

• Among a few of Anderson’s short films is Wakefield Express (1952), a modest half-hour film, a documentary in the old style (where scenes seem a little more staged for the camera) about a local Yorkshire newspaper putting together its pages. The first half largely puts across a sort of mythical vision of small-town England, with idealistic reporters getting out and about, picking up local gossip and interacting with all the main sources of news in their community (in the pub, flagging down the postie, chatting to the priest, a bus driver with a fondness for budgerigars). It’s the later sequence of the newspaper being put together which seems particularly alien now, all those typesetters and proofreaders, hot lead type and moulds being poured in an environment far more like a foundry. It’s a real insight into just what a lot of work it was to put out even a small regional newspaper.

---

FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Lindsay Anderson; Writer David Storey (based on his own novel); Cinematographer Denys Coop; Starring Richard Harris, Rachel Roberts, Alan Badel, Vanda Godsell, William Hartnell; Length 134 minutes.

Seen at home (DVD), Wellington, Saturday 17 April 2021.

Criterion Sunday 29: Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

Unlike the recent run of Criterion films, what’s challenging about this release isn’t anything that’s depicted on screen (there’s no violence or body horror or even bad language): it’s what’s not depicted. It’s an elegant, beautifully-filmed and languorous film, but there’s a gaping void at its heart, which is the lack of explanation for its central mystery — the disappearance of three young women and their teacher at the titular setting. It’s implied (both here and in the Joan Lindsay novel it’s based on) that the events really happened, but in a sense this is a red herring, because the events are pushed into a mythical realm of nostalgia and memory. The director, Peter Weir, and cinematographer Russell Boyd make bold use of a gauzy filter for the camera, imparting a hazy nostalgia to the proceedings. There’s also a bold stylisation to the acting (dreamy and absent gazes abound), while the scene of the girls’ disappearance as their classmate screams after them is a masterclass in channelling the uncanny through the simple expedient of not having them react or look back. More recent films like Innocence (2004) and this past year’s The Falling channel some of the same emotional terrain that Weir set out so long ago (40 years now!), but Picnic at Hanging Rock retains its eerie primacy.

Criterion Extras: David Thomson introduces the film in a short video piece, but the highlights are a contemporary Australian television on-set visit (featuring interviews with the novel’s author Joan Lindsay, and some of the key cast and crew), as well as a more recent return to interview Peter Weir and Anne-Louise Lambert among others. Finally, the dual format set comes bundled with a copy of the source novel, which makes for a fascinating comparison to the final film, and focuses quite a lot more on the aftermath of the events than the film does (I can recommend it, and doesn’t take too long to read).

---

FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Peter Weir; Writer Cliff Green (based on the novel by Joan Lindsay); Cinematographer Russell Boyd; Starring Rachel Roberts, Anne-Louise Lambert [as “Anne Lambert”]; Length 115 minutes.

Seen at a friend’s home (DVD), London, Sunday 22 March 2015.