The 'Loneliness' of the Angry Young Sportsman
2005; Volume: 35; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/flm.2005.0041
ISSN1548-9922
Autores Tópico(s)Political and Economic history of UK and US
ResumoIntroduction The war between the classes has never been joined in British films as openly as it was this week. In the forties the working class were idiom-talking idiots, loyal or baleful. In the fifties they grew rightly articulate and angry. Now we get what may be the prototype for the sixties: Colin Smith, borstal boy hero of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, a youth beyond anger, almost beyond speech, joining battle. (cited in Hill, 1986: 213) So wrote the Sunday Telegraph film critic P. Williams in a review of the Tony Richardson film of aforementioned title upon its British cinema release in September 1962. The film—based on the 1959 novella of same name by Alan Sillitoe (the screenplay for the film version was also written by Sillitoe)—was produced by the independent film company Woodfall, started by Richardson and playwright John Osborne as an avenue for the making of films affording 'artistic control' to directors. According to Richardson, 'It is absolutely vital to get into British films the same sort of impact and sense of life that what you can loosely call the Angry Young Man cult has had in the theatre and literary worlds' (Hill, 1986: 40). Click for larger view Figure 1 The Lonliness of the Long Distance Runner in paperback Courtesy of www.theprisonfilmproject.com
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