The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962)
September 20, 1962Release Date
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962)
September 20, 1962Release Date
Plot.
Where to Watch.
Currently The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner is available for streaming online, rent, buy or watch for free on: Amazon Video, Tubi TV, Apple TV, Google Play Movies, YouTube, Vudu, DIRECTV, Freevee
Streaming in:🇺🇸 United States
This Movie Is About.
Cast & Crew.
Michael Redgrave
Ruxton Towers Reformatory Governor
Tom Courtenay
Colin Smith
Avis Bunnage
Mrs. Smith
Alec McCowen
Mr. Brown
James Bolam
Mike
Joe Robinson
Mr. Roach
Dervis Ward
Detective
Topsy Jane
Audrey
James Fox
Willy Gunthorpe - Ranley School Runner
Julia Foster
Gladys
John Thaw
Bosworth
Ralph Brinton
ProductionDesigner
Ray Austin
Harry Craig
Tony Richardson
Director
Arthur Mullard
Chief Borstal Officer
Philip Martin
Stacy
Alan Sillitoe
Writer
John Brooking
Green
Raymond Dyer
Gordon
John Addison
Composer
Anthony Sagar
Fenton
Walter Lassally
Cinematographer
Peter Kriss
Scott
Antony Gibbs
Editor
Media.
Details.
Wiki.
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner is a 1962 British coming-of-age film. The screenplay was written by Alan Sillitoe from his 1959 short story of the same title. The film was directed by Tony Richardson, one of the new young directors emerging from the English Stage Company at the Royal Court.
It tells the story of a rebellious youth (played by Tom Courtenay), sentenced to borstal 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's poster byline reads "you can play it by the rules... or you can play it by ear – WHAT COUNTS IS that you play it right for you...".The film depicts Great Britain in the late 1950s and early 1960s as elitist, where upper-class people enjoy many privileges while lower-class people suffer a bleak life, and its Borstal system, of delinquent youth detention centres, as a way of keeping working-class people in their 'place'. Alan Sillitoe was one of the angry young men producing media, vaunting or depicting the plight of rebellious youth. The film has characters entrenched in their social context. Class consciousness abounds throughout: the "them" and "us" notions that Richardson stresses reflect the basis of the British society at the time, so that Redgrave's "proper gentleman" of a Governor is in sharp contrast to many of the young, working-class, inmates.