This Sporting Life

Richard Harris gives a tour-de-force performance as Frank Machin, a bitter Yorkshire coal miner whose aggressive streak make him a successful rugby player, but a loser on the battlefield called love. Rachel Roberts plays his love interest, disillusioned landlady Margaret Hammond. Both Harris and Roberts received Oscar nominations for their performances, with Roberts winning the BAFTA award for ‘Best British Actress’.

Thanks to behaving like a brute in the local nightclub, Frank Machin is signed up to Wakefield’s local rugby team by Gerald Weaver (Alan Badel). Behaving like a brute on the football field too, Frank slowly but surely manages to earn the respect of his fellow players and team leader.
It is a different story as far as his private life is concerned… for Frank falls hard for his recently widowed landlady Margaret, a still attractive woman with two little sons. However, the fact that she received no compensation from the firm in which her late husband died, as his death turns out to be suspected suicide, leaves the widow bitter and frustrated, and filled with grief over the death of her beloved. Rejecting Frank’s advances only make him more determined to win over her love, but to no avail. Margaret looks upon her admiring lodger as a mere ape in human form, with little social etiquette and next to no manners. True enough, the more Margaret rejects him the more he turns into a brute and his behaviour becomes harsher towards those around him, but also towards himself. Things come to a boiling point however one evening, when Frank takes Margaret out to a posh restaurant and makes a spectacle of himself, deeply embarrassing her in the process. After a huge row, she chucks him out of his lodgings – forever concerned as to what the neighbours might think of her and her lodger…

Weeks later, as his rugby glory increases, he suffers an emotional meltdown as he begins to miss Margaret. Convinced that he is deeply in love with her and that time will heal her depression and aversion towards him, he has high hopes for a reunion. Making his way to her house, he is informed that she in in hospital as she suffered a brain haemorrhage after their violent row. He rushes to hospital to be beside her, but she dies without regaining consciousness. A broken man inside, Frank carries on with his brutish behaviour on the football field…

Shot in stark b/w, This Sporting Life is a gritty look at working-class life in the bleak surroundings of industrial Northern England. Richard Harris and Rachel Roberts are perfectly cast as disillusioned and tormented characters who are both unable to shake off their own demons.

The Blu-ray release of This Sporting Life is featured here in a High Definition transfer made from original film elements in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio.

SPECIAL FEATURES
[] Original Theatrical Trailer (SD)
[] Four image galleries, including extensive promotional and behind-the-scenes shots
[] Promotional material PDFs
[] Commemorative booklet by film historian David Rolinson