This Sporting Life - Review
Lindsay Anderson's This Sporting Life is often characterised as a 'kitchen sink' drama, a representational form marking the tail end of the British new wave of social-realist cinema. Yet, while This Sporting Life uses many of the techniques associated with social-realist cinema, it is set apart somewhat by the director's attention to personal rather than social material.
This Sporting Life is a realist film yet it transcends a sociological reading by focussing on the intimate relationship between Frank (Richard Harris - less drunk that normal) and Mrs Hammond (Rachel Roberts). The focus of the narrative is on believable characters dealing with common problems and setbacks. The joyless landscapes of the muddied rugby field and the cramped government housing estates are captured in stolid black and white photography. There is also an emphasis on the banalities of working class life seen through the daily domestic chores of Mrs Hammond who is constantly washing, polishing or sowing. Yet, while Anderson contends the film is essentially about the relationship between Frank and Mrs Hammond there is also important social commentary. This is expressed most lucidly through the way in which Slomer and Weaver, as the middle class owners of the rugby team exploit the players for reasons of ego and vanity.
Self-important middle-class characters exploiting the lower class is one of the common themes of This Sporting Life. In Anderson's film sport is portrayed as a false salvation for the working class. The rugby scenes are filmed with vitality and energy as though they are outside the general malaise of urban life. Nonetheless, rugby is seen as just another way in which the working classes are manipulated and abused, a familiar trope of the realist films of the era.
Ultimately it is the personal nature of the narrative of This Sporting Life that isolates it from the 'kitchen sink' series of films. It goes beyond conventional authenticity to a new level of realism because of its unique characterisations and general lack of social representation. The emphasis of the film is not so much socio-political but rather personal. In other words, the film is less about displaying working class frustration, anger and repression, and more concerned with Frank as an individual in a doomed relationship with the puritanical Mrs Hammond.
