This Sporting Life

PëRMBLEDHJE

Director Lindsay Anderson's first feature film is his best, giving Richard Harris and Rachel Roberts the roles of their lives. Harris stars as the miner who becomes a ruthless professional rugby player; Roberts plays the repressed, widowed landlady with whom he can only communicate through violence. Adapted from David Storey's novel, it includes some remarkable scenes of confrontation - one particular quarrel between the two is painfully honest - and the northern town where it all takes place is as evocatively depicted as the setting of that other kitchen-sink classic Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (which producer Karel Reisz directed). This numbers among the early ripples of the British New Wave and it still hits hard.