Intermezzo in English life With the power of the six-cylinder “Jaguar E-type”, from the admiration of which representatives of the press dislocated more than one jaw at the Geneva auto show, “New Wave” of ambitious directors broke into the cramped world of cinema of the foggy Albion. As the smooth lines of the body of the British sports car replaced the inexpressive post-war angularity, and the new generation of directors strongly protested against the “aristocratic” restraint of actors and tea drinking as the solution to all problems on the screen. Viewers were bored with the complacency of films extolling the charm of the middle class and completely depriving the ordinary person of privilege, giving him a gun and a simple-minded plan to rob a bank with a previously known fatal outcome.
By the early sixties, Lindsay Anderson had gained fame as an “angry” film critic and successful author of short films of a social orientation. Nevertheless, he embodied his first full-length work “Such a Sports Life” while at the ebb of the “New Wave” in 1963, presenting to the public court the result of a whole movement, ripe and saturated with energy of the lower social strata. The wind of change swept the sterile, existing on the verge of propaganda, the world with the mud of rugby stadiums, and the cozy English corner with smiling neighbors carried away to the distant past, where it belongs, baring the bottom of an industrial town with turtle houses and workers without a glimmer of hope for a better life. However, miner Frank Macini (Richard Harris) was lucky. Irish roots, in addition to a massive square jaw, awarded him outstanding dimensions and a claim to a better life. Coal dust is traded for a taste of blood in the mouth, and unbearable hard work underground – for a two-hour battle in the mud for the amusement of the rich public in the cozy boxes of the stadium.
It seems that before the viewer GOST sports drama about the right way of life, about a man from the bottom, a native of poor neighborhoods, whose portrait will one day decorate a small room with ripped walls as an example to follow. But a sudden blow to the head of the opponent, and, hastily exalted to the rank of superstar, the hero with the whistle of an air bomb falls to the ground. A broken nose spews blood streams flowing down the hollows of the face, and the knocked out teeth have disappeared under the mud cover of the field. In an instant, the hum of the audience fades, and the stubborn confrontation of characters along with the field is replaced by a small kitchen of a suburban house. Instead of the players’ furious faces, Margaret (Rachel Roberts) is the owner of the house where Frank lives. However, the feeling of comfort does not arise, for she is a fallen woman, a single mother who has lost the taste of life because of the death of her husband. Her detached gaze blows the cold of Alaska, and any attempt to start a dialogue with her turns into a wound for Frank from words. And consciousness begs the director to be transported back to the field. It is better to know your enemy. Someone who can safely hit without feelings of regret and unnecessary emotions. Lindsay listens to the pleas of the viewer and with a condescending smile returns the viewer to the field, to dirt, sweat and broken teeth.
There is no point in showering flashbacks with praise of the narrative, it is enough to understand that there is no “safety room” where the viewer could hide and feel calm. Became standard today, the technique is used to keep in suspense from the hopeless emptiness, relentlessly pursuing the hero and his environment. With the first successes on the field of yesterday’s miner, a thin ray of positive energy bursts into this gloomy cycle of uroboros. Buying a new Jaguar, an expensive suit and a director’s whisper between the lines “money is not happiness”...Everything is bought and paid, but at heart he remains the same worker with psychology – see, you go and take.
If your whole life is dirty, you look dirty and you can not hide it with the luxury of famous brands. Hatred of a high society emptied of gold bars gradually fades into the background, as does rugby itself, fading to the size of a necessary spoonful of tar in exchange for a honey barrel sterling. And the directorial egocentrism in Frank's relationship with sports for the time being hides the second bottom - the desire to win Margaret's favor and melt the ice around her heart. But conceit - the enemy of any successful person - imposes the will that everyone around must, because he is a hero, and they, the gray mass, are worthless weaklings.
That very broken nose with broken teeth is only the beginning of a series of failures and slides from the never conquered peak of life success. The star destroys itself by eating itself from within, as termites eat trees, thereby losing all meaning of existence. As a result, having lost hope and purpose, the symbolism of the number 13 on its uniform becomes a reflection of the fiasco, both in life and in sports. The sports press generally labels such people as “the prospectus failed” in a small note on the bottom page. But this is real life and the final nail of harshness has been left behind, leaving a fantasy of ghostly hope for optimists and moral exhaustion for pessimists.
The gloom, emphasized by the black and white palette, in the vision of English life caused a furore among the then film critics, slamming the door for the last "New Wave" so that the wall cracked, and the picture standing next to the happy aristocrats in the process of tea partying fell and fell into small pieces. Rough? Sorry, that's sports life. There's no place for stars here, just people like Frank Macini.