This is a brief review of "If", "This Sporting Life", "Britannia Hospital" and "O, Lucky Man!", four films by director Lindsay Anderson.
One of the defining films of the British New Wave, "Sporting Life" revolves around Frank Machin (Richard Harris), a short tempered guy who becomes a star on the rugby circuit. Eschewing the style of Anderson's later films, which tended to be stylised satires, it offers a gritty portrait of a Northern England rife with failed relationships, class anxiety and human despair. As Anderson cut his teeth as a run-and-gun documentary filmmaker, the film crackles with the energy of post-war Neorealism.
"This Sporting Life" would prove a big influence on Martin Scorsese's "Raging Bull". Replace Scorsese's boxing scenes with Anderson's frenetic rugby brawls and swap the tough-but-dim Jake LaMotta for the equally tough-but-dim Frank Machin, and you have virtually the same tale. Both also make extensive use of flashbacks, are shot in black and white, are preoccupied with masculinity and personal anguish, feature violent romances, mix poeticism with realism, follow the same narrative progression and are about men who express their inner turmoil through external violence.
Where "Bull" differs from "Life" is in the former's refusal to put Jake within a larger social context. This is a direct result of a broader shift; from modernism to post-modernism, from art as social engine to art as social withdrawal. And so in Scorsese's film, Jake LaMotta essentially has no external motivation. "I didn't want to give LaMotta any motivations," Scorsese would say in interviews (not quite true; LaMotta is reduced to a Catholic body bag, a suffering Christ who exists to absorb penance for his earthly sins), before going on to state that "all motivations are cliché". "Reasons? We never discussed reasons!" he would tell the New York Times in 1980. Scorsese's dismissal, the unconscious stance of post-modernity, is chilling.
But "understanding" is not necessarily "cliche", rather it is the essential component of character. La Motta's boiling anger in Scorsese's film does not make him a human being, especially once you've read how articulate and self-analysing LaMotta is in his autobiography. That makes the film, for all its power, somewhat shallow.
In comparison, "Life" has more direct ties to the Neorealist movement. It portrays sporting clubs as the playthings of the wealthy, shows how club owners become Mephistophelian menaces, is resoundingly class conscious, portrays the sports community as being intertwined with the mining community, shows how celebrity and sports are seen to be a form of financial and psychological escape etc etc.
And so Anderson's films are, at their best, rebellions against the inherent conservatism of British culture, akin to the plays of Harold Pinter and Arnold Wesker, and the contemporary working-class novels of John Braine, Alan Sillitoe, Stan Barstow and David Storey, the screen adaptations of which, in the late 1950s and early 60s, ushered in a new era of British film and formed the core of what was to be known as the British New Wave.
Scorsese has never spoken of "This Sporting Life", but in the late 1970s he did mention to David Sherwin that the name of his central character in "Taxi Driver", Travis Bickle, had been chosen as a homage to Mick Travis, Malcolm McDowell's character in Lindsay Anderson's "If". It should be no surprise, then, that "Taxi Driver" is essentially a remake of "If", now set in New York.
"If" is about life in a highly authoritarian British boarding school. We watch for an hour as teachers, prefects, priests and various other authority figures essentially make the lives of the students miserable. One young outcast called Mick Travis, however, refuses to put up with this any longer; he finds a stash of guns and, during a climactic, pseudo-fantastical sequence, guns down the school's staff from a clock tower.
It's a great film, though it does, like many similar films of the era, degenerate into a simple revenge fantasy, revolutions - unashamedly cathartic - brought about by bullets and violence. Compare this to fare like "The Magdalene Sisters", Jean Vigo's "Zero De Conduit" or perhaps "Clockwork Orange" and "Zabriskie Point", where the "fantasy cliché" at the end is reversed and the "anarchist" is absorbed/enfolded/manipulated into the very fabric he lashes out at.
"If" found Anderson developing a new aesthetic. He employs Brechtian distance and an acerbic, satirical tone. He'd develop this style further in "Hotel Britannia" and "O, Lucky Man!", both of which feature the Mick Travis character. A precursor to Terry Gilliam's "Brazil", both are also dystopian fantasies preoccupied with revolution, anarchists and abuses of state/corporate power. Attempting to portray life in a capitalist society dominated by powerful mega corporations, "O, Lucky Man!" (1973) was the more popular of the two films. "Hospital" (1982), though, was the more ambitious. Using a hospital to encapsulate the social mores and ideological underpinnings of pre-Thatcher, mid-1970s Britain, the film tackled everything from class bigotry to imperialism to problems of equity to Britain's love affair with monstrous dictators. Ironically, the film's release coincided with the "Falklands War", and so was sunk by a rise in nationalistic fervour.
"This Sporting Life" – 8.5/10, "If" – 8.5/10, "O, Lucky Man!" – 7.5/10, "Britannia Hospital" – 7/10
One of the defining films of the British New Wave, "Sporting Life" revolves around Frank Machin (Richard Harris), a short tempered guy who becomes a star on the rugby circuit. Eschewing the style of Anderson's later films, which tended to be stylised satires, it offers a gritty portrait of a Northern England rife with failed relationships, class anxiety and human despair. As Anderson cut his teeth as a run-and-gun documentary filmmaker, the film crackles with the energy of post-war Neorealism.
"This Sporting Life" would prove a big influence on Martin Scorsese's "Raging Bull". Replace Scorsese's boxing scenes with Anderson's frenetic rugby brawls and swap the tough-but-dim Jake LaMotta for the equally tough-but-dim Frank Machin, and you have virtually the same tale. Both also make extensive use of flashbacks, are shot in black and white, are preoccupied with masculinity and personal anguish, feature violent romances, mix poeticism with realism, follow the same narrative progression and are about men who express their inner turmoil through external violence.
Where "Bull" differs from "Life" is in the former's refusal to put Jake within a larger social context. This is a direct result of a broader shift; from modernism to post-modernism, from art as social engine to art as social withdrawal. And so in Scorsese's film, Jake LaMotta essentially has no external motivation. "I didn't want to give LaMotta any motivations," Scorsese would say in interviews (not quite true; LaMotta is reduced to a Catholic body bag, a suffering Christ who exists to absorb penance for his earthly sins), before going on to state that "all motivations are cliché". "Reasons? We never discussed reasons!" he would tell the New York Times in 1980. Scorsese's dismissal, the unconscious stance of post-modernity, is chilling.
But "understanding" is not necessarily "cliche", rather it is the essential component of character. La Motta's boiling anger in Scorsese's film does not make him a human being, especially once you've read how articulate and self-analysing LaMotta is in his autobiography. That makes the film, for all its power, somewhat shallow.
In comparison, "Life" has more direct ties to the Neorealist movement. It portrays sporting clubs as the playthings of the wealthy, shows how club owners become Mephistophelian menaces, is resoundingly class conscious, portrays the sports community as being intertwined with the mining community, shows how celebrity and sports are seen to be a form of financial and psychological escape etc etc.
And so Anderson's films are, at their best, rebellions against the inherent conservatism of British culture, akin to the plays of Harold Pinter and Arnold Wesker, and the contemporary working-class novels of John Braine, Alan Sillitoe, Stan Barstow and David Storey, the screen adaptations of which, in the late 1950s and early 60s, ushered in a new era of British film and formed the core of what was to be known as the British New Wave.
Scorsese has never spoken of "This Sporting Life", but in the late 1970s he did mention to David Sherwin that the name of his central character in "Taxi Driver", Travis Bickle, had been chosen as a homage to Mick Travis, Malcolm McDowell's character in Lindsay Anderson's "If". It should be no surprise, then, that "Taxi Driver" is essentially a remake of "If", now set in New York.
"If" is about life in a highly authoritarian British boarding school. We watch for an hour as teachers, prefects, priests and various other authority figures essentially make the lives of the students miserable. One young outcast called Mick Travis, however, refuses to put up with this any longer; he finds a stash of guns and, during a climactic, pseudo-fantastical sequence, guns down the school's staff from a clock tower.
It's a great film, though it does, like many similar films of the era, degenerate into a simple revenge fantasy, revolutions - unashamedly cathartic - brought about by bullets and violence. Compare this to fare like "The Magdalene Sisters", Jean Vigo's "Zero De Conduit" or perhaps "Clockwork Orange" and "Zabriskie Point", where the "fantasy cliché" at the end is reversed and the "anarchist" is absorbed/enfolded/manipulated into the very fabric he lashes out at.
"If" found Anderson developing a new aesthetic. He employs Brechtian distance and an acerbic, satirical tone. He'd develop this style further in "Hotel Britannia" and "O, Lucky Man!", both of which feature the Mick Travis character. A precursor to Terry Gilliam's "Brazil", both are also dystopian fantasies preoccupied with revolution, anarchists and abuses of state/corporate power. Attempting to portray life in a capitalist society dominated by powerful mega corporations, "O, Lucky Man!" (1973) was the more popular of the two films. "Hospital" (1982), though, was the more ambitious. Using a hospital to encapsulate the social mores and ideological underpinnings of pre-Thatcher, mid-1970s Britain, the film tackled everything from class bigotry to imperialism to problems of equity to Britain's love affair with monstrous dictators. Ironically, the film's release coincided with the "Falklands War", and so was sunk by a rise in nationalistic fervour.
"This Sporting Life" – 8.5/10, "If" – 8.5/10, "O, Lucky Man!" – 7.5/10, "Britannia Hospital" – 7/10