The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

Michael Redgrave - Reformatory Governor
Tom Courtenay - Colin Smith
Alec McCowen - Brown
James Bolam - Mike
Avis Bunnage - Mrs. Smith
Joe Robinson - Roach
Dervis Ward - Detective

Tony Richardson had made and failed in an attempt at filming in Hollywood, his subject being an adaptation of Faulkner's Sanctuary, which seemed nerveless and disappointing. His next British film was The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, from a short story by Alan Sillitoe, about a Borstal boy who quite deliberately fails to win a cross-country race in order to spite authority, in this case a platitudinous, wrong-headed governor, played by Michael Redgrave.

The picture also introduced a new face to British films which, (like Rita Tushingham's) lacked the conventional film star gloss, but instead had a fascinating ugliness. It was that of Tom Courtenay. Again Richardson allowed style to swamp content. The story is told in a confusing series of flashbacks, suggesting reasons for the central character being in Borstal. The photography by Walter Lassally was lyrical and mysterious, with its treatment of early morning solitary runs through misty woods and dew-laden grass.

Fashionable borrowings from French prototypes, mostly Truffaut's Les Quatre Cent Coups, were incorporated almost like nervous tics; for instance, the reiterated device of the dialogue of the next scene overlapping on to the one preceding it, or jump cuts, or speeded-up action used not because they were relevant to the point of the film, but because they provided a veneer of trendiness. Such irritations detracted from the worth of the film and have consistently marred Richardson's skill as a director.