BrokenProjector.com

British New Wave, Part 4: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

This is a part 3 of the 4-part British New Wave series of posts. You can view the other parts here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

The film we will be looking at for the final episode of the British New Wave series also happens to be one of the last films to be made under the British New Wave banner. Beginning with Richardson‘s Tom Jones (1963), the British New Wave had officially ended its half a decade’s run. So as one of the last great New Wave films to come out, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (from henceforth referred to as simply ‘Loneliness’) is quite a classic.

Tony Richardson was in a dire rush to fly through the New Wave and make sure the spirit was kept alive. He produced Saturday Night and Sunday Morning in 1960, followed it up by his directional debut in feature films with A Taste of Honey in 1961 and within a few months of its release started filming on ‘Loneliness’. He brought Alan Sillitoe on board for an adaptation of one of his short stories also titled ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner’ (typing whose title is quite a rush in itself). He retained his crew from A Taste of Honey and immediately started work on what would turn out to be a lot on the lines of an amalgamation of ‘Saturday Night..’ and ‘A Taste of Honey’.

A Study of the Plot

‘Loneliness’ tells the story of a young man named Colin Smith (Tom Courtenay in his debut performance) who is serving a term at a borstal (a traditional British name for a juvenile reformatory). He is hard-headed, anti-social and of an extremely tough character. His hatred towards everyone around him and his constant spurts of poisonous dialogue are extremely comparable to that of Arthur Seaton from Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960, also written by Alan Sillitoe). The borstal is headed by the Ruxton Towers Reformatory Governor (Michael Redgrave in arguably one of his finest roles) who is a man of high dignity and the figure to be in good terms with. The governor proposes a competition with a boarding school and is delighted at the fact that they’ve agreed to participate. The governor encourages all the inmates of the borstal to start training and reminds them that it is a privilege for Ruxton towers to have a boarding school playing against them.

Over the course of a few days, the governor notices Colin’s impressive talent at long distance running. He assigns Colin to be their trump card and encourages him to practise everyday. Over the next few weeks, the Governor allows Colin to go on the long distance runs by himself without any supervision. This action shows the Governor’s rising trust in Colin and attracts some bad vibrations from Colin’s fellow inmates.

It is during these long distance runs that Colin begins to recollect (in flashbacks) his journey to the borstal. Colin was from a regular working class family with two younger sisters, a mother who is working hard to make ends meet and a sick father who refuses to take medication. He hangs out with his best friend Mike and is involved in acts of petty vandalism. His constant bad temper is further elevated upon the death of his father and the arrival of his mother’s new boyfriend almost immediately. He is somewhat shocked by his mother’s reaction to his father’s death and the fact that she only looked forward to the insurance money she is entitled to upon her husband’s death.

Colin and Mike steal a car and pick up two young girls Audrey and Gladys. Colin falls in love with Audrey, who is obsessed with the idea of going to London. The four of them take first class tickets in a train and have an expensive evening out, courtesy of Colin’s share of his father’s insurance money. Colin quickly runs out money and gets into a fight with his mother’s lover. Following these times of frustration and loneliness, Colin and Mike break into a bakery and rob some money. The police undertake an investigation and search Colin’s house. The money is not found initially but upon the officer’s second visit during a rainy evening, the money flows out of the gutter of Colin’s house where Colin had hid it.

Back to borstal and its time for the grand event. The boys from the boarding school and the inmates of the borstal meet officially and realize how similar boarding schools are to borstals. The school’s champion long distance runner is introduced to Colin and they both exchange friendly words of encouragement. The race is started and the participants are off!

During this final event, Colin has one last flashback about what had happened in his life so far and how he had fared out. He starts evaluating his concept of self-esteem and submission to his disillusionment of the social setting. He is clearly leading the race and the next competitor is several yards behind him. He has an internal dialogue just as he appears on the horizon of the finish line. The Governor and everybody is delighted, Colin is clearly going to win. As Colin approaches the finish line, he begins to slow down. Everyone is puzzled as to why he is doing that. He eventually slows down to a complete halt and let’s the runner behind him cross the finish line first. He grins at the Governor.

The next day, everything is back to normal at the borstal and the Governor refuses to treat Colin with special attention as he previously had.

The Role of Colin Smith

Tom Courtenay delivers an Oscar-worthy debut performance as the short-tempered Colin Smith. As with every other Richardson‘s films, the role of Colin Smith took life only after the casting of Courtenay. The pure contempt that Colin holds for the society can be clearly seen in his eyes and without a doubt he says every words as if he really means it.

Colin represents the disillusionment that was clouding over the youth of Britain in the 1960s and embodies the street attitude that came as an outcome of it very well. Writer Alan Sillitoe had seen out of his window, a lonely figure running in the horizon. He immediately wrote down the line: ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner’. He then left the parchment where he had written on and only discovered it several years later. He was then reading a lot of books on borstals and crime detention centres for youth. He says the story fell in the slots by itself. Clearly, the character of Colin is a very deep one. Through out the flashbacks we see what events led to his so called anti-social behaviour. We see it start in his home. His father is sick and refuses to intake any medicine prescribed by the doctor. His mother is less than keen to see her husband recover. His two younger siblings are oblivious to anything that is happening in their house. His only faithful companion is his best mate Mike with whom he indulges in petty crimes, more for the thrill and less as an act of desperation. He eventually meets Audrey and falls in love with her. Even after Audrey comes into his life, he has this burning contempt for society and how the rich and the privileged always get the better of the working class.

This is the same division that he later finds in the borstal in the form of the Governor. He sees the dignified personality of the Governor as the very upper class society that he has come to hate. But still he is pleased with the special treatment that he receives from him due to his running skills. He starts believing that the Governor truly favours him. It is only in the end, during the final race that he realizes that the Governor had been doing what he remembers the upper-class society does best: use the working class for their selfish personal glorification. This is the thought process that leads Colin to halt before the finish line the final race and hence gain the self-respect that he has been searching all this while for.

In many ways it can be said that Colin is an amalgamation of Arthur Seaton and Jo (from A Taste of Honey). He shows all the fire and temper of Arthur and at the same time he is as much a victim of disillusionment as Jo. In either way, Colin becomes a character that the viewers come to sympathize and relate with.

Groundbreaking Cinematography

Walter Lassally does a fine job behind the camera on this film. It can even be called one of his finest and the only other work besides his Oscar-winning effort on Zorba The Greek (1964) that deserves an Oscar award. Lassally creates a fine amount of tension with the quick intercuts between long track shots and hand held camerawork in the cafeteria scene of the film. This is a significant part of the film where a mini-riot breaks out between the inmates and the guards. Lassally also creates remarkable scenery of trees floating by as Colin is on his long distance runs recollecting his past. This particular series of shots as Lassally says were inspired by the forest shots in Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon(1950).

But the best scene in the entire film, one that was one of the most unique shots ever made is the one scene where Colin Smith wakes up early in the morning for his practise run. The frame shows a small silhouette of Colin starting at the rightmost corner against the horizon with a crescent moon and as Colin runs across to the other side and beyond, the camera pans left and reveals a rising Sun! This is undoubtedly one of the best shots taken in the history of Cinema.

In Closing

This 4-part series on British New Wave was a long standing idea of mine to document one of the greatest movements of world cinema. I’ve watched all three films that I have written about through the wonderful DVD collection of The British Library in Hyderabad. These films have become three of my most beloved moments in cinema and there is no doubt that they continue to inspire me endlessly. At the core, the main message of the British New Wave was to provide an accurate depiction of society as it was in the 1960s Britain and introduce Cinema as an art form that communicates against the usual expectation of entertainment.

1963 brought a new challenge to Tony Richardson and his Woodfall films. He embarked on his first major commercial project Tom Jones (1963), a period comedy starring Albert Finney and Susannah York. Richardson went onto win 4 Oscar awards for this film as the British New Wave had quietly died.