MAGNET contributing writer Jud Cost is sharing some of the wealth of classic films he’s been lucky enough to see over the past 40 years. Trolling the backwaters of cinema, he has worked up a list of more than 100 titles—from the ’20s through the ’80s—that you may have missed. A new selection, all currently available on DVD, appears every week.
This Sporting Life (1963, 134 minutes)
Years before he became a household name as the tortured vocalist on Jimmy Webb’s seven-minute 1968 pop hit “MacArthur Park,” Richard Harris appeared as a hard-boiled rugby player in Lindsay Anderson’s This Sporting Life. The film was a bulwark of Britain’s “kitchen-sink realism” movement with angry young men (or women) speaking in regional dialects in gritty movies such as Look Back In Anger, A Taste Of Honey and The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner.
“How is he?” inquires George (Ken Traill), the team’s trainer, of the barely conscious footballer laid out in the locker room. “He’s just a bit dazed,” replies an assistant. “How do you feel, Frank?” asks George of Frank Machin (Harris), now missing his front teeth after being elbowed in today’s match. “You won’t be able to shoot your mouth off like you used to, at least not for a few days.” Frank mutters, “Can you fix me up with a dentist?” “Well, I don’t know, Frank. It’s Christmas,” says George. “I want it tonight,” insists Frank.
With his dog on a leash, George escorts Frank, bundled up to the mouth in a bulky scarf, toward the limousine of the team’s owner, Gerald Weaver (Alan Badel). Dad Johnson (William Hartnell), a silver-haired team supporter in glasses and a cloth cap, greets the injured player anxiously, “Hello, Frank, how are you, lad?” “Not now, Johnson, we’re in a hurry,” says George brusquely. Weaver opens the trunk and says to George, “You can put your little doggie in the boot.” He turns to Frank and, glancing at Johnson, says snidely, “What about your dog, Frank?” “That’s not very funny,” says Frank, helping the old-timer into the car.
As a gas mask is placed over Frank’s nose in the dentist’s chair, and as he begins to lose consciousness, he recalls a conversation with his landlady, Mrs. Hammond, a young widow with two small children. “I’ve been thinking. Why don’t we go for a walk?” asks Frank as Mrs. Hammond (Rachel Roberts) does her hand laundry in the kitchen sink. “Why on earth do you want us to go walking about in the bloody pitch-dark?” she snaps. “You must be mad to think I’d go walking with you. I don’t want you poking your nose into my affairs.”
Shaking his head, Frank replies, “Don’t you want to be happy?” “If I’m left alone, I am happy,” she says firmly. “I’m not going about all day with a grin on my face just to make you think I’m happy.” “I don’t mean laughing all the time,” he replies. “You just don’t look happy.” “You make me sick!” she says. “I am sick. I’m bloody sick of living here!” shouts Frank. “That’s easily settled, Mr. Machin,” she says. “Just stop living here. We’ll be better off without you!”
