© 2006 William Ahearn
In England, from the mid-50s to the early 1960s, the work of the
so-called Angry Young Men fascinated theatre and film audiences. These were
down and dirty narratives of the class wars and they defined British culture
for a generation. They would also erode the Hays Production Code in the US
as American ticket buyers wondered why Hollywood wasn’t making films
about real people in real situations. Playwright John Osborne, who wrote the
play Look Back in Anger is probably the best known of the Angry Young
Men but other writers such as Alan Sillitoe, David Storey, John Braine and
Shelagh Delaney contributed just as much and probably more.
Of all the films in this bunch, Tony Richardson’s “A
Taste of Honey” based on Shelagh Delaney’s play remains the most
powerful. Richardson was a producer and director whose contributions to the
Angry Young Men consisted of producing Alan Sillitoe’s “Saturday
Night and Sunday Morning” and producing and directing “A Taste
of Honey,” John Osborne’s “Look Back In Anger” and
“The Entertainer” and Sillitoe’s “The Loneliness
of the Long Distance Runner.” As with most of Richardson’s films
during this period, the author of the original work usually wrote the screenplay
and the grit of the films reflect the desire to maintain what drove the work
to begin with.
“A Taste of Honey” is the story of a young white
underclass girl who gets impregnated by a black sailor. (It starred Rita Tushingham
in her debut role.) Her single mother is an aging party girl and her best
friend is a young homosexual. In the US at the time – 1961 – half
of this movie couldn’t have been produced and the rest would be played
as the tragedy of a good girl gone bad. But Delaney wrote it straight out
and Richardson delivered a very funny movie that doesn’t pretend to
have a social agenda or slow itself down in liberal apologia.
(One historical oddity: That song. If you’re a fan of ‘60’s
music, you’ve undoubtedly heard some variation of the song “A
Taste of Honey.” The Beatles did it. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass
did it. Martin Denny did it. Tony Bennett did it. It was everywhere. Except
in the movie. The film inspired the composers to write the tune and it came
out after the movie was released.)
The best Hollywood had to offer at the time was the overrated
and overwrought “Rebel Without A Cause” directed by Nicholas Ray.
To see Ray’s “Rebel” now is to see what seems like the most
intense episode of the American TV show “Happy Days.” How “Rebel”
maintains its status as a classic is way beyond me. If James Dean had lived
to a ripe old age, I doubt anyone would think twice about this film.
One of the problems of bringing staged works to film – besides
the obvious difference in location possibilities – is translating the
language of playwrights into the more naturalistic speech patterns of the
cinema. Playwrights tend to write speeches and conversations that appear stilted
on film. In “A Taste of Honey” Richardson nailed it. But “Look
Back in Anger” and “The Entertainer” still retain some of
the staginess of the originals and even a great cast can’t shake the
staginess from their voices. They’re still worth watching but if you
watch these films as a group, “A Taste of Honey” will just slip
across the screen as the story unfolds.
It’s difficult to talk about the films of Tony Richardson and
not mention one of the strangest movies that he – or anyone else –
ever made. “The Loved One” (1965) is based on a novel by Evelyn
Waugh and the script is by Terry Southern and Christopher Isherwood (whose
I Am A Camera became the basis for “Cabaret”). Check
out the cast: Robert Morse, Jonathon Winters, Dana Andrews, Milton Berle,
James Coburn, John Gielgud, Tab Hunter, Rod Steiger, Liberace, and the list
goes on. (There is also Jamie Farr from the TV show “M*A*S*H in a non-speaking
part.) The incredible Haskell Wexler is the director of photography and it
shows in every frame. It’s a satire of the funeral industry, English
manners in a boorish Los Angeles, and numerous other things and Richardson
keeps it subtle and moving right along. It just never clicked with audiences
and its probably because it’s unlike other comedies and satires in the
way it’s presented. This isn’t slapstick or cardboard characters
that give you permission to laugh. To me, that just makes it all the more
funnier. Not many other people seem to agree.
Richardson wasn’t the only director plumbing the anger in post-war
England. Lindsay Anderson directed “This Sporting Life” written
by David Storey. (Storey also wrote the play The Contractor that
was produced for PBS decades ago. It’s a very interesting piece of theatre.)
“This Sporting Life” is the story of the rise of a star rugby
player. It is a brutal and depressing film and if that’s your cup of
tea, you’ll love this flick. It’s really well done with a notable
performance by Richard Harris.
“Room at the Top,” is also a well-known film from this
era, starring Laurence Harvey and Simone Signoret. Based on a novel by John
Braine and directed by Jack Clayton, it’s the story of a social-climbing
ex-prisoner of war who will do anything to rise above his working-class background.
A cautionary tale more than anything else, it suffers from some bizarre decisions.
The story should take place in 1946 but it was shot over ten years later and
so the main character would have been too young to be in the war. The acting
is really good – check out Hermione Badderley in one of her excellent
character roles. At this point, the story just seems overplayed and dated.
Alan Sillitoe’s “Saturday Night, Sunday Morning”
is directed by Karel Reisz, a guy who seems to have better things to do than
push actors around. In the last 50 or so years, he’s only directed thirteen
flicks and “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” and “Who’ll
Stop The Rain” are examples of his work. His oddest film has to be “Morgan:
A Suitable Case For Treatment.” When I was at Harpur College we used
to get stoned and watch this film. In the late-‘60s to early ‘70s,
it was something of a political comedy classic. This is the film with the
Communist artist running around in a gorilla suit, if that rings a bell. It
doesn’t really hold up too well but it’s worth it if you’re
a fan of quirky English comedies.
“Saturday Night and Sunday Morning” is the story of a
completely unsatisfied and pissed off worker. It’s Albert Finney’s
first starring role and this flick is worth it for the acting alone. Sillitoe
is one of my favorites so I’m partial to the this-is-how-it-is attitude
of the movie. This is an excellent example of the Angry Young Men and how
they influenced the culture of early ‘60s England.
Of all the flicks that came out of England in those days, it was
“The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” that would change
my life. Movies had always been a fascinating diversion for me, an escape
from my suffocating family and the petty criminal distractions of an early-1960s
working class neighborhood in New York City.
One night I’m up late – I guess I was about fifteen
years old then – and there’s a Brit flick on the local PBS station,
Channel 13. For the first time I had a cinematic experience that was truly
personal. The story is simple: A young working class rebel named Colin Smith
(Tom Courtney) is sent to reform school for robbing a bakery and is groomed
by the reformatory warden (played by Michael Redgrave) to win a long distance
race against a respected private school where the students are free and there
by choice. Smith is given privileges unavailable to the other boys. He can
run without a minder, gets better food, and is treated with some deference
by the other boys and the guards.
At some point about midway through the flick, I was overtaken by
a sense of dread. Colin Smith was someone who I could feel a real affinity
toward, I could talk to this guy, I could bang around the railroad tracks
and the windblown beaches with this guy and somehow I felt a sellout ending
to the flick on the horizon. But I hung in there and for the first time a
film spoke directly to me, showed how I hoped I would act in a similar situation,
didn’t muck up a simple tale of real rebellion with blathering sociologists
who attempt to relate to and understand how Colin thinks. For once, it wasn’t
about them. It was about us: All the angry, semi-delinquents who despised
this culture and all the empty suits with their spin, their keys and their
guns. I’m almost tempted to use the word affirming but that
word has been gutted by the soulless therapy survivors.
“The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” isn’t
a great film but it is one of my favorites and seeing it again recently brought
back so many memories that it will be one of those films that I’ll need
to see more often. “Cool Hand Luke” is a lame attempt at similar
material. Colin Smith is a troubled young man in a hopeless situation; Lucas
Jackson is just an empty angry self-important jerk. It’s amazing to
me that American audiences love the doomed so-called rebel. Randle Patrick
McMurphy from “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” is a perfect
example. As is Lisa Rowe from “Girl Interrupted.” Jack Nicholson
and Angelina Jolie won Academy Awards for their performance and they’re
both performers whose work I admire. Paul Newman was nominated but didn’t
win and if you check the 1968 winners,
you’ll see why.
Olivia de Havilland was nominated for an Oscar for “Snake Pit”
but she didn’t have her brains blown out or get strapped down for life
so she didn’t win either.
Jackson, McMurphy and Rowe are pretty much empty characters.
That is no reflection upon the actors who play them. It has to do with the
content of the film. The films essentially say that you either have to be
a loser or insane to go up against the system and if you do, the system will
either kill you or hook your brain up to a car battery. And it’s also
important for the hero not to have any political solutions since that will
just split the affinities of the beautiful loser-loving audience. In effect,
“Cool Hand Luke,” “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”
and “Girl Interrupted” are anti-rebel movies and “The Loneliness
of the Long Distance Runner” isn’t. And it accomplishes its rebellious
end without violence or overwrought drama or false victories. It is at heart
a subversive flick and that’s one of the reasons that it’s one
of my favorites.
While watching “Good Will Hunting” I thought of the Richardson
flick and knew – casting Robin Williams was a dead giveaway –
that it would end up as the typical Hollywood sellout. That film had such
potential to be a real flick about intelligence and class and they just pissed
it away and it’s one of those movies that just made me angry when it
was over.
Colin Smith isn’t killed at the end of the movie and
he doesn’t have his mind erased or his brain lobes butchered. It’s
their game but he wins it on his own terms in a beautiful and simple way.
And that’s what makes “The Loneliness of the Long Distance
Runner” such a remarkable film. It tells the story of Colin Smith the
way it needs to be told and could care less whether or not you approve.
And that’s exactly what I’m looking for in a flick.