This Sporting Life

1963 drama

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A miner impresses enough to land on a rugby team, but he is unable to impress the widow he's shacking up with.

1) Richard Harris has an intensity that reminds me of Brando, a man who seems like he's larger because there's something inside of him that is bursting to get out.

2) My favorite moment with this character is when he slow rolls with quad kings, a stylish move if you ask me. That might be everything you need to know about the character.

3) I searched for a list of books the protagonist reads, but I couldn't find anything. I thought there might have been some significance with the titles. The only one I caught was Cry Tough!

4) "You're a man! You're a bleedin' man!" cries Rachel Roberts' character, a widow with a cute nose. The poor guy--because as much as a bastard as he is, it's hard not to be sympathetic--just doesn't know how to be a bleedin' man. He doesn't really understand what a man is supposed to want. He doesn't know how to show feelings appropriately. He only knows how to lumber around with burly shoulders and scowl, how to crack jokes at the expense of others, and how to boil. He's a man searching for validation, and the tragedy is that he doesn't find it.

5) Man, Richard Harris can sure chomp on gum.

6) My favorite moment with this character was an awkward date that reminded me a little of Travis Bickle's in Taxi Driver except he doesn't take his date to a pornographic movie. This really does remind me of a 1970's movie that came out in 1963.

7) Apparently, I have two favorite moments with this character.

8) "Umpah whoa yeah yeah." There was that song, and a few other songs at parties or in bars. The score is from Roberto Gerhard. It's atonal, adds to the building tension in scenes, and is generally really interesting. I guess a lot of the score was cut by Lindsay Anderson, and Gerhard stopped doing music for movies.

9) There's a scene with a spider near the end that apparently critics thought was a little "on the nose," but I thought it had a wonderful ambiguity to it.

10) Richard Harris's character's main competition is a dead man's pair of boots. My favorite moments with this character are any scene when he stares at those boots.