Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1963)

This Sporting Life" GcuiHCM Rati*? O O O Rating is for art houses. Powerful characterization by Richard Harris makes this memorable. Heavy dialect will hinder acceptance in mass market. A brutish lummox who, through sheer animalism, pummels his way to success on the professional football field, provides the catharsis that lifts "This Sporting Life" above the ordinary film. Brilliantly played by Richard Harris, who won the Cannes Film Festival award for his performance, the character becomes memorable. Told in the rather familiar British "slice-of-life" tradition, this Julian Wintle-Leslie Parkyn production transcends the factory-town background and heavy dialect that limited American success of some pictures of this genre, and achieves a more universal appeal. It will be one of the year's bigger grossers in art houses, better class theatres, and wherever adult, bold, thought-provoking drama can find its way. Harris is in the swaggering, gum-chewing Brando tradition, yet with an individuality of his own, while Rachel Roberts, through subtle shadings, conceals a torrent of neuroses and suppressed emotions to remain a touching enigma to the very end. Most of the supporting characterizations are sketchily presented as the two principals dominate the story. David Storey's screenplay, from his novel, is rambling, picking up and dropping characters with, apparently, indiscriminate abandon, with the result that climactic scenes, such as Miss Robert's death, appear arbitrary and overly pat. For all these faults, though, there is a harsh poetic quality in much of the writing. Both producer Karel Reisz and director Lindsay Anderson formerly were identified with documentaries, and, in this, their first venture into featurelength story telling, they utilize their experience to achieve a striking newsreel authenticity. As the film opens, the cameras depict, mercilessly, the body-and-bone-crushing brutality of a football (rugby) game in which blood-smeared Harris has his teeth smashed. Sitting in a dentist's chair, under anesthesia, he relives the recent past. Scene after scene passes in stream-ofconsciousness as the soundtrack lingers behind or, in some instances, advances to predict the coming scene. It is an interesting device that provides jagged continuity to what otherwise would be a disoriented jumble. In these ramblings, we meet the one human force on Harris' life— his landlady, Rachel Roberts. She is neurotic and introverted, obsessed with doubts about her husband's death, a possible suicide. She cannot see the sensitivity beneath Harris' boorish exterior, perhaps because, unknowingly, she is incapable of seeing beyond her own needs. When she offers him her body, it is because "it is Christmas and nobody should be alone on Christmas," — but it is her own loneliness, not his, that is in her thoughts. He, yearning to be loved and respected as a man, not as a football hero, is unable to convey his feelings, and, when she is close to eliciting human emotions from him, he regresses to the animal state and slugs and beats her. She drives him out. He returns, but she is in a hospital, dying from a brain hemorrhage. At her bedside, he, at last, finds words of tenderness and love, but it is too late. He returns to the sporting field where, masochistically, he can succumb to violence and fast money — and a life bereft of human emotions. Continental Distributing, Inc. 129 minutes. Richard Harris, Rachel Roberts. Produced by Karel Reisz. Directed by Lindsay Anderson. "Hand In the Trap" Plus Macabre horror film, slowly but fascinatingly developed. Will delight art patrons. A "thinking man's" horror film, combining the macabre with a sensual sweetness, this latest film from Argentine director Leopoldo Torre Nilsson ("End of Innocence ") should find eager response in art theatres. Hints of the bizarre story, and favorable word-of-mouth reaction will arouse public interest. Torre Nilsson chooses a slow pace, agonizingly so at first, to generate the proper Gothic mood. After the first half hour, the suspense mounts steadily until the film reaches an abrupt unforgettable climax. Everything is understated — there are no shock gimmicks a la Hitchcock — and the horror we realize after the story is over is only implied. Elsa Daniel, the virginal schoolgirl, gives a strange, low key, deliberately one-dimensional performance. It is so lethargic as to be zombie-like, yet she is always fascinating. Complementing her is Francisco Rabal, the aging playboy, who exudes a sexuality that will leave the women drooling. These two play together like match and flame and the seduction scene so simply presented — all that is shown is a watch fob swinging rhythmically from a dresser — achieves an almost unbearable eroticism. The subtitles do justice to the sparse dialogue provided by Torre Nilsson, Beatriz Guido, and Ricardo Luna. The setting is a gloomy castle-like mansion where it is said a monster, incestuously bred, is kept locked in a tower. Miss Daniel, home from a convent school, speculates endlessly about the prisoner upstairs, but her mother tells her she is too young to see such a deformed creature. The girl walks through sunlight and shadows as in a daze. It is the summer when girlhood fades and she is reluctant to leave the sweetness of innocence. To discourage hot-rod teenager Leonardo Flavio's advances, she diverts him with stories about the monster and finally enlishts him in a plan to penetrate the tower. What she finds there is not the twisted creature she had expected, but seemingly sane aunt Ines who has been living in self-imposed seclusion for 20 years. Shocked, the girl learns only that roue Rabal had something to do with her aunt's confinement. She seeks him out and then, unwittingly, places her own hand in the trap. While she tries to get him to free the aunt from her casket-like room, he is interested only in demonstrating his virility. He succeeds and then lets Miss Daniel lead him to the aunt. What happens after is grotesque as the trap, inevitably and forever, clamps shut on its victim. Angel Films. 90 minutes. Elsa Daniel, Francisco Rabal. Directed by Leopoldo Torre Nilsson. "Ordered to Love" German import has mild exploitation value. Entertainment values are nil in this German-made, dubbed melodrama. Despite obvious exploitation possibilities, the Wolf Brauner production stands little chance, even in the most indiscriminate markets. The screenplay, by Paul Markwitz and Max Vorweg, supposedly deals with Hitler's "Lebensborn" breeding camps where hand-picked young girls were ordered to spawn a "master race." In this ludicrous yarn, however, virgins remain pure, preferring death to dishonor, and the experiment never really gets underway because, we are led to believe, the Germans really despised Hitler and the whole National Socialist theory. The cream of the Luftwaffe and SS appear to be working overtime to win the war for the Allies. Under Werner Klinger's direction, the "sex" highlight of the film is a fertility rite that could easily pass for a Campfire Girls rally. The participants dance, ring-around-the-rosy style, about a big bonfire, and sing "Deutschland ueber Alles ", or some such thing. Maria Perschy appears as a loyal party member who falls in love with a traitor. He tells her the truth about the German military machine, and she falsifies records and plans escapes. Her lover is shot and she is sentenced to be hanged. A conveniently-timed Allied bombing raid saves her just as she is about to be taken to the gallows. In the rubble, she finds a baby she vows to raise to be a "good" German. M C. Distributor Release. 82 minutes. Maria Perschy. Produced by Wolf Brauner. Directed by Werner Klinger. Film BULLETIN July 22, 1963 Page 13