The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

Tom Courtenay as Colin Smith.

"Running was always a big thing in our family, specially running away from the police. It's hard to understand. All I know is that you've got to run, running without knowing why, through fields and woods. And the winning post's no end, even though the barmy crowds might be cheering themselves daft. That's what the loneliness of a long distance runner feels like."

Those words are spoken over the opening scene of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner by its protagonist Colin Smith. A young man from a working class background, Colin (Tom Courtenay) has recently arrived at Ruxton Towers Reformatory after his conviction for robbing a bakery. Colin struggles to suppress his defiant attitude until his athletic ability unexpectedly changes his fortunes at Ruxton.

Michael Redgrave as the governor.

It turns out that Colin can run faster than any of the other lads. That draws the attention of the reformatory's governor (Michael Redgrave), who is obsessed with winning a cross country running competition with a private school. Colin's new privileges include being able to run alone outside the reformatory's walls. As he does so, he reflects on his life, his hazy future, and the events that led to his present situation.

Made in 1962, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner initially resembles the "angry young men" films popularized in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. Like the working class young protagonists in Look Back in Anger (1959) and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), Colin has a chip on his shoulder. He wants a job with good pay, but he doesn't want to work for anyone and lacks the initiative to start his own business. It's easier to commit small-time larceny. 

Yet, by conventional accounts, Colin is the type of juvenile delinquent that can be reformed. One could reason that he just needs some direction, some discipline, and a goal. The reformatory's governor believes that the rigors of long distance running can instill the discipline and that winning a championship cup for the school can provide a goal. Yet, what the governor doesn't grasp is that his goal may not be Colin's goal. 

In the end, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner is not about Colin's transformation. That might have made an interesting, inspirational movie. Instead, screenwriter Alan Sillitoe and director Tony Richardson choose to paint a portrait of Colin's life inside and outside the reformatory. It's a similar approach to the duo's earlier Saturday Night and Sunday Morning--except that Colin is much more appealing than Albert Finney's self-absorbed protagonist. Additionally, Colin's defiant attitude and independent spirit just might provide him with the strength to better his life.

While the cast includes veterans such as Michael Redgrave and Alec McCowen, this is Tom Courtenay's film. He's in almost every frame, fully inhabiting the complex character at the heart of the story. His performance earned him a BAFTA for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles.

In the same year he made The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, director Tony Richardson married Michael Redgrave's daughter, actress Vanessa Redgrave. The couple, who were married for five years, had two children who also became actresses: Natasha and Joely.

Terence Rattigan's The Browning Version

Michael Redgrave as Crocker-Harris.

After 18 years at a prestigious English boys' school, Andrew Crocker-Harris has accepted a less-stressful position teaching at an institution for "backward boys." Once a promising scholar, Crocker-Harris's career stalled many years ago and he's now plagued by ill health. He won't leave as a beloved teacher. The boys refer to him unaffectionately as "The Crock" and privately call him Himmler, a cruel reference to his disciplinary ways.

Terence Rattigan's film adaptation of his 1948 stage play The Browning Version traces Crocker-Harris's final days at his old school. It's a character study--an engrossing one--and the opening scenes paint a portrait of Crocker-Harris through the eyes of a colleague, his replacement, and a student. Later, Crocker-Harris reveals personal insights to each of those characters. He confides to his new colleague that he's well aware of his wife's infidelity, but partially blames himself for their disastrous marriage. He also reveals his failure as a teacher and that he gave up trying to reach his students long ago. Finally, he inadvertently shows his inner emotions to a student who unexpectedly gives him a thoughtful farewell gift.

Nigel Patrick as a colleague.

Rattigan's one-act play ended with Crocker-Harris receiving the gift. For the film version, Rattigan expands the story, providing the audience with a more complete look at the schoolmaster's likely future. The film ends with Crocker-Harris addressing a school assembly and departing from his prepared speech.

Acclaimed British film and stage actor Eric Portman played Crocker-Harris when the play opened in the West End. However, he turned down the opportunity to do the film in 1951. Rattigan and director Anthony Asquith then turned to Michael Redgrave, who was just 43 years old. It was a brilliant decision, for Redgrave breathes life into the ageing schoolmaster. He captures the "look" of a man that considers his life a failure as well as little idiosyncrasies such as Crocker-Harris's obsession with punctuality and following rules.

Brian Smith as the student Taplow.

Redgrave's supporting cast includes nice turns from Nigel Patrick, as Crocker-Harris's colleague and his wife's lover, and Brian Smith as the student Taplow. Jean Kent has a difficult role as Millie Crocker-Harris. First, her character is unlikable from the beginning, but she also comes across as too blatantly dismissive of her husband. A more subtle approach might have come across as more believable. Frankly, it's difficult to see what Millie's lover could ever have seen in such a cruel, self-centered woman.

Terence Rattigan's plays also served as the basis for two other strongly-recommended films: The Winslow Boy (1948) and Separate Tables (1958).

Incidentally, The Browning Version has been remade multiple times with stars such as Albert Finney, Peter Cushing, and John Gielgud. These are fine actors, but it's hard to imagine anyone being better than Michael Redgrave in the lead role.

Nuanced Terror - Jack Clayton's "The Innocents"

Light and shadow flicker across the screen. Sobbing is heard as a pair of praying hands, clasping and unclasping, come into view. The sobs continue.

A woman’s suffering face appears above the tortured hands. Birds twitter…her distraught voice whispers…

All I want to do is save the children not destroy them. More than anything I love children. More than anything they need affection, love, someone who will belong to them and to whom they will belong.

And then, as a man’s voice asks Do you have an imagination?, the screen focuses, suddenly revealing a well-appointed office, an elegant gentleman and the woman we have already seen…who now sits in a chair and speaks animatedly with the man who continues to ask questions and explain the situation he offers.

Director Jack Clayton

These first moments of Jack Clayton’s masterful 1961 film, The Innocents, set the stage for a chilling and absorbing tale of bewitchment.

Deborah Kerr stars as Miss Giddens, an anxious, fragile-seeming young woman who begins her first assignment as a governess for two orphaned children on a remote estate.

Michael Redgrave briefly portrays the gentleman, Miss Giddens’ employer, whose questions and revelations prime and subtly spook her, before she sets foot in the stately home where events will unfold.

The action intensifies when Miss Giddens arrives at Bly, a magnificent manor that far exceeds her expectations in its grandeur and beauty. She is “very excited, indeed” to be there and her two “angelic” and precocious charges easily charm her. An earthy housekeeper, Mrs. Grose (Megs Jenkins), serves to ground the excitable governess…whose journey proceeds from enchantment to confusion, to torment and disintegration.

Henry James

American novelist Henry James wrote The Turn of the Screw in 1898 while living in England in a large rambling mansion. James has recorded that the story was suggested to him by an anecdote he heard from the Archbishop of Canterbury. This scrap of a tale concerned young children haunted by the malevolent ghosts of a pair of servants who tried, again and again, to lure them to their deaths.

The James novella depicts a young governess on her first assignment, the care of two children living in a grand mansion on a vast estate. The plot deepens when the young woman, daughter of a vicar, begins to suspect the presence of the evil spirits of two deceased servants.

It was several years after James’ book was published before critics began to wrangle in earnest over the interpretation of the story. By the 1920s several had proposed that The Turn of the Screw was less a ghost story and more the tale of inexperienced and high-strung governess who succumbed to hallucinations and madness. A 1934 essay by prominent critic Edmund Wilson dramatically advanced this view.

Henry James himself was equivocal about his intentions, and statements he made on the subject have been cited to support both apparitionist and non-apparitionist views.

Fascination with The Turn of the Screw hasn't waned over the years and it has been adapted from the page to other mediums including opera, the stage, TV and film. In February 1950, Peter Cookson’s production of William Archibald’s stage adaption of the James novella debuted on Broadway as The Innocents; Beatrice Straight starred as the governess.

Eleven years later, the play was adapted to film by British director, Jack Clayton (Room at the Top). Though William Archibald was involved, it was Truman Capote who was primarily responsible for the polished screenplay.

Truman Capote

Capote endeavored to maintain the story’s ambiguity as he felt Henry James had originally conceived it – are the ghosts real or are they the fantasies of a governess gone mad?

Taking the modern view, it’s not difficult to interpret The Innocents as an intricately staged reflection of an unstable woman’s descent into madness: the film closely follows the increasingly erratic behavior and visible deterioration of the omnipresent governess; no one but the governess actually “sees” the ghosts she claims are present; by the film’s end, even the sensible and supportive housekeeper is at odds with the hysterical young woman…and there are many visual clues that the governess may be projecting her own imaginings onto her surroundings. It is no stretch these days to believe that a deranged governess would be capable of terrifying a frightened child to death.

But, viewed from another perspective, the tale can also be read as the story of an inexperienced but well-meaning young woman confronted with the supernatural in the form of malicious spirits. Her fervid determination to save the children from possession could explain her unorthodox behavior. And that is what most people believed when The Turn of the Screw was first published.

Enigmatic and haunting, The Innocents leaves the audience to its own conclusions.

A luminous turn by Deborah Kerr (in her own favorite film performance), Freddie Francis’ cinematography, the script of Archibald and Capote and Georges Auric’s original music all mesh under Jack Clayton’s accomplished direction to create the acknowledged masterpiece among the many adaptations of The Turn of the Screw.