If you want two hours of enjoyment, forget about it. This is one of the most depressing films ever made. Every grim feature of post war North of England is piled on in black and white - chimneys, mean terraces, cooling towers, mucky fields, stunted ambition and rising damp. A contemporary view of the early 1960s, you're given all the warts and none of the glitter.
But both performance and plot reek with power and there is a compulsive attraction to see a story through to a bitter end that you know has no trace of sentiment. The tight coldness of Margaret Hammond (Rachel Roberts), steadfastly refusing to let herself be happy for a second time in her life, grinds against the macho world that Frank Machin (Richard Harris) has climbed into.
It is one of Harris's two great roles and came near the start of his career (the other being Bull McCabe in "The Field" which came near the end) and possibly came closest to the forces that drove him through his life. His skill at and love of rugby gives the sporting dimension of the film a realism that very few others can match. Much of the passion that he showed on the screen came from experiences on the playing field in a career that was cut short through illness before he could realise his full potential. Anger at that lost opportunity is seen better in this film than in any other he made.
There are many other films in this genre when British cinema turned its back on elegance or heroism but none has captured the mood of resentment better than this. More than forty years on, it's still as raw as ever.
But both performance and plot reek with power and there is a compulsive attraction to see a story through to a bitter end that you know has no trace of sentiment. The tight coldness of Margaret Hammond (Rachel Roberts), steadfastly refusing to let herself be happy for a second time in her life, grinds against the macho world that Frank Machin (Richard Harris) has climbed into.
It is one of Harris's two great roles and came near the start of his career (the other being Bull McCabe in "The Field" which came near the end) and possibly came closest to the forces that drove him through his life. His skill at and love of rugby gives the sporting dimension of the film a realism that very few others can match. Much of the passion that he showed on the screen came from experiences on the playing field in a career that was cut short through illness before he could realise his full potential. Anger at that lost opportunity is seen better in this film than in any other he made.
There are many other films in this genre when British cinema turned its back on elegance or heroism but none has captured the mood of resentment better than this. More than forty years on, it's still as raw as ever.