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Monday 5 March 2018

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Toerag


Many years ago I bought a secondhand first edition of an AlanSillitoe novel. I can’t remember which one but after reading I was unimpressed enough to pop it into a charity bag. However, not so long ago we took a trip down memory lane by watching The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

Wikipedia has the official middle class view of the film.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner is a 1962 film based on the short story of the same name. The screenplay was, like the story, written by Alan Sillitoe. The film was directed by Tony Richardson, one of the new young directors emerging from documentary films, a series of 1950s filmmakers known as the Free Cinema movement.

It tells the story of a rebellious youth (played by Tom Courtenay), sentenced to a borstal ('Approved School') for burgling a bakery, who gains privileges in the institution through his prowess as a long-distance runner. During his solitary runs, reveries of important events before his incarceration lead him to re-evaluate his status as the prize athlete of the Governor (Michael Redgrave), eventually undertaking a rebellious act of personal autonomy and suffering an immediate loss of privileges. The film poster's byline is "you can play by the rules...or you can play it by ear - WHAT COUNTS is you play it right by YOU...". The notion is echoed by other contemporary films, such as a rapid series of three contemporary Lone Ranger films.

The film depicts Britain in the late 1950s to early 1960s as an elitist place, bleak for working- to middle-class people. Sillitoe was one of the angry young men producing media vaunting or depicting the plight of rebellious youths. The film has characters entrenched in their social context. Class consciousness abounds throughout: the "them" and "us" notions that Richardson stresses reflect the very basis of British society at the time, so that Redgrave's "proper gentleman" of a Governor is in contrast to many of the young working class inmates.

I don’t think so. The film is well made and quite watchable but of its era and only interesting for that reason. Colin Smith, the “rebellious youth” is a feckless toerag, an idle thief and philanderer who seems to think the world owes him far more than he is prepared to offer in return. The film panders to this attitude as if none of Colin’s mean and stupid actions are his own responsibility. As if his entire life is the responsibility of someone else.

To my mind it is a watershed film, a clear indication of things going wrong because too many people were not clear-sighted and honest enough to see them going wrong. A washing away of personal responsibility in favour of a political blame culture where those who dare to take any responsibility are responsible for everything bad and nothing good. An incoherent nihilist ideology which has been at least partly responsible for where we are now.

6 comments:

Scrobs. said...

Good post.

One of my earliest forays into taking a lovely girl out, was to ask her if she wanted 'to go to the theatre'!

Got the line straight out of 'Room at the top'...

Sam Vega said...

Yes, a good observation. I think we are talking about a particular type of "Anti-hero" here. I'm tempted to try to define the watershed as tightly as possible (were there any before that film?) but my guess is that they've always been around. Dostoyevsky flirted with the idea, for example. The rot probably set in slowly, with the introduction of the anti-hero into popular culture in the 1950s, and then the full-on presentation of amorality and nihilism. It's interesting how taking the piss out of stuffy authoritarian characters (Kingsley Amis was very good at it) changed into ridiculing any authority at all.

When I look back at the comics and books I read when a child, there is a clear distinction between those that present traditional "heroes" (Biggles, anyone?) and the seductively exciting stuff that came later and which overturned the old assumptions. What happens to kids who never got any of the former?

Scrobs. said...

"What happens to kids who never got any of the former?"

I think they went straight into 'Private Eye', Sam...

Demetrius said...

As a squaddie I knew some real heroes. The General Hackett went in at Arnhem where he commanded a Brigade. The G1 Coaker had been with Skinners Horse in WW2 and was a leading polo player. A G3 got his MC at the Rhine Crosssings. The Colonel who ran the cricket team and was i'c the medical services was Kent and MCC and at Normandy. The Brigadier of Artillery, David Block won his MC at Monte Cassino and when opening the batting liked to he me at the other end staying put while he got the runs. We had that Monty visit once, courteous to a fault, if you knew your job. But when I did encounter snobbery it was a Marxist academic whose forebears made their money running cotton mills.

Sackerson said...

Possibly the post war generation was spoiled by parents who were determined their children weren't going to have the same plateful of cack they themselves had received. And of course there were many families where Dad didn't come back at all.

A K Haart said...

Scrobs - implies sophistication doesn't it?

Sam - I think you are right, the rot probably did set in slowly and accelerated in the 1950s. I'm not sure why, even though I lived through it.

Scrobs - yes they did, plus various radical publications which came and went.

Demetrius - "But when I did encounter snobbery it was a Marxist academic whose forebears made their money running cotton mills."

Interesting observation. I'm sure there's a story in there.

Sackers - maybe so and perhaps there was a post-war euphoria which relaxed their standards.