"Running's always been a big thing in our family, especially running away from the police." "It's hard to understand." "All I know is that you've got to run, run without knowing why, through fields and woods, and the winning post's no end, even though barmy crowds might be cheering their sens daft." "That's what the loneliness of the long-distance runner feels like." "Cheer up." "It'll soon be Christmas." "Miserable sort of bloke, ain't he?" "Back home again." "Nice little bunch we've got this time." " This lot?" "They'll be over the hill in a week." " Cheerful, aren't you?" "I sometimes wonder if I believe in all this setup." "When you've been in it as long as I have, you stop asking yourself that." " What the hell are those fools trying to do?" " Where did you come from?" "Idiot." "I'll get out and give you a lift, mate." "I might have guessed." "It's that imbecile outing again." "It's a waste of time but I hope the officer books him." "What a garbage dump." "It looks like the bloody place they shut Monte Cristo up in." " I tell you what, it looks like our house." " Look at that." "A right stackers' borstal." " Do what?" " Long-term place, mate." "Come on, sit down." "Let's get these bracelets off you." " Hope it's better than that detention center." " Yeah, I hope me ma's got the dinner on." " Come on, we haven't got all day." " All right." "Say sir when speaking to an officer." "Wants teaching a bloody lesson, that one." "In here, lads." "Line up in front of the officer." " Hello, Harry." "Still here?" " Working for that pension, such as it is." " Aren't we all?" " Hands out of your pockets, lad." "Come on, line up!" "Here you are." "Six new receptions." "And a right lot they are too." "Yeah." "Looks as if we're gonna have to fumigate them." "Keep it quiet." "What d'you think this is, a holiday camp?" "Now let's listen to your numbers." "988, 989, 990, 991, 992 and 993." " All yours, Mr. Craig." " All correct, Mr. Fenton." "Right, get your clothes off, all of you." "Put 'em on the floor." "Come on, move!" "Er..." "Underwear as well, sir?" "If it's not too much trouble, lad." "Get 'em off!" "Come on." "We're gonna put you in the latest fashions." "Pint-sized loudmouth." "Soon take care of him." "Yeah." "Come on, step on it." "The Governor's waiting to see you." "Good." " Chief, this is a great day for us." " How's that, sir?" "Something I've been hoping for a long time." "Gives one a real sense of achievement." "Come in!" "Fall in here!" "Look sharp!" "Line up in front of the Governor!" "Chins in!" "Chests out!" "Arms by your side!" "Shoulders back!" "Where's your tie?" " I..." "I..." " Don't answer back!" " What's your name, lad?" " Elliot, sir." " And yours?" " Smith." " Say sir when you answer to the Governor!" " Sir Smith." "That won't get you far here, lad." "Well, all I have to say to you is this." "I don't have to know what you've done." "You are here for us to try and make something of you, to turn you into industrious and honest citizens." "Well, as we see it, that shouldn't be too difficult." "We like things to run smoothly here, of course, both for you and for us." "The sooner we have your cooperation, the sooner you'll be out of here." "If you play ball with us, we'll play ball with you." "We want you to work hard and play hard." "Good athletics, sports, inter-house competition." "We believe in all that." "Come in." "There you are, Stacy." "Just a moment." "Well, as I was saying, we're divided into houses." "Now, none of you is proud of being here." "But there's no reason why you shouldn't be proud of your house." "Stacy here is proud of being the leader of Drake House, aren't you?" " I am, sir." " I'm going to put these lads in your charge." " You show them the ropes." " Right, sir." " Right, off you go, then." " Come on, move!" "Splendid news." "Ranley School is going to compete with us on our sports day." "That's the first time in our history that a public school has joined forces with us." " How's that, eh?" " That's good news, sir." "Congratulations." "Thanks." "Oh, but it's the lads I'm thinking of." "This'll give them a great kick." "Put them on their mettle." "Is Ranley competing in all events, sir?" "Yes, but they've offered a special challenge cup for the cross-country run." " I'd say that's our best chance, sir." " Stacy ought to win that challenge cup." "I doubt if Ranley School has anyone to beat him." "If they had, he'd have to be a champion, sir." "Mr. Brown, I hope your first impression of us won't be too critical." "I know you young chaps from training school think of us older men as back numbers." " Oh, not at all, sir." " Oh, yes, you do." "It's not surprising after all those newfangled theories that you've been stuffed with." "But theories don't always work out in practice." "I'm greatly looking forward to doing what I can to help these boys." "Though, of course, I realize that a borstal housemaster's job is not an easy one." "I suggest that you trail around after me for a bit to get the hang of things and then we'll let you loose to... do your worst, hm?" " What got you here?" " Oh, zip up." " Who do you think you're talking to?" " A cockney slag by the sound of it!" " You Liverpool ponce!" " All right!" "When we get inside, I'll write it out on your face with this!" " OK!" " I'll have the pair of you in a bit!" "You find something funny?" " No, no." " Well, is there anything on your mind?" "I was just wondering whether you were the, er..." "Governor's assistant." "You'll find it pays to play the Governor's game here." "All of us is graded and you don't get out till you make top grade." "I'm not losing any privileges 'cause one of you bleeders gets the house a bad name." "And always remember they've got the whip hand." "D'you know what I'd do if I had the whip hand?" "I'd get all the coppers, governors, posh whores, army officers and members of Parliament, and I'd stick 'em up against this wall and let 'em have it." "'Cause that's what they'd like to do to blokes like us." " Well, you'll learn." " We'll see." "Burn, Charlie?" "Snide." "Use your loaf." "He's the daddy, Stacy." " What's the daddy?" " He runs things round here." " You lost again." " What, again?" " Who's that big-headed git?" " Roach." "Right, boys, by your beds." "Come on, line up." "Come on, it's lights out, come on." "Come on, line up there." "Come on, look sharp." "Come on, Stacy." " Cold, lad?" " Not yet, sir." "Ready for the reception?" "No PT shorts, only your pajamas." "Take his name." "Right, come on, hit the sack." "Come on, socks off." "In that bed." "Quick as you like." "There we are." "Good night, lads." "Come in." " Colin Smith, 993, sir." " Good." "Come in, Smith." "Sit down." " Cigarette?" " No, thanks." "Sir." "Well..." " You're a new boy here, aren't you, Smith?" " Er... yeah." "Yes." "Well, so am I." "Two new boys together in a manner of speaking, eh?" " Well, perhaps we can help one another." " How, sir?" "Well, you can help me by telling me all about yourself." "Now, for instance, how did you come to be here?" "What's that tape recorder on for, sir?" " Don't let it worry you." " No, I won't, sir." "Anything you say is strictly confidential." "It won't go beyond these four walls." "OK?" "So, how did you come to be here?" " I got sent, didn't I?" " Yes, I know you got sent but why?" "I got caught." "Didn't run fast enough." " When you broke into this..." "What was it?" " Bakery." "Bakery, yeah." "What were you thinking about at the time?" "I wasn't thinking about anything." "I was too busy breaking in." "Erm, yes, but..." "Well, just describe the action to me in your own words." "Put me in the picture." "Got over the wall of this baker's yard." "Broke into his office." "Hm." "I think you can do a bit better than this, Smith." "Erm..." "Surely your nerves were on edge, weren't they?" "You felt afraid." "If I'd felt afraid, I wouldn't have broken in, would I?" "Well, all right." "Fair enough." "Look, I want you to help me." "I'm going to say a word and, erm..." "I want you to reply with any word that comes into your head, OK?" "Like, erm..." "If I say to you, "Food", what do you think of?" "Er..." "I'm sorry, I don't get the idea at all." "Well, erm... would you like to do it to me?" "Say a word to me." " Tape recorder." " Tape recorder?" "Desk." "I don't know why I said desk." "It just happened." "Now I'll say one to you." "Erm... water." " Football." " Football?" "Ah." "Sky." "Snow." "Snow indeed." "Erm..." "Girl." "Look..." "What are you trying to do to me?" "I don't understand." "Now, come, Smith, please." "I'm trying to help you." "Help me." "Girl." "Boy." "Boy?" " Have you got a girlfriend, Smith?" " What's it got to do with you?" "All right, all right." "Erm..." "Gun?" " Horses." " Knife." " Smoke." " Car." "Crumpets." " Father." " Dead." "Why do you say that?" "Is - is your father dead?" "Ah." " Right." "When did he die?" " The other week." "The other week?" "I'm... very sorry." "Your mother was very upset, I expect." " No." " She wasn't?" "Not very." "I think that'll be all for now." "Thank you." " You mean I can go now, sir?" " Yes." "Well, thank you very much, sir." " I hope you do well here." " I hope you do, sir." " What?" " In a manner of speaking." "Oh, I see." "Right." "Thanks." "They certainly drive themselves hard on the playing field." "They're high-spirited, Mr. Brown." "If they weren't, they wouldn't be here." "Each of us has to expend our energy on something, you know." "Mens sana in corpore sano, eh?" "That's better than some of that psychiatric stuff they shove at us." "You mark my words." "Yes, but surely you believe that an emotional readjustment might be the answer to some of their problems?" "Of course I do." "If I didn't, I wouldn't be here, would I?" "No." "But how do we tackle the basic aggression which these lads obviously feel?" "By channeling it in the right direction." "I was wondering whether life wasn't a little more complicated than a football match." "Go on!" "Go on, then." "Come on!" "You see that?" " Right down the middle with it, Don!" " Get it!" " That's a foul, ref!" " Oh, come on!" "Swallowed your whistle, ref?" "Dirty bastard!" " Come on!" " Go on, Colin!" "That's the one!" " Go on!" "Get round him!" " Come on, Col!" "Go on, Col!" "That's it!" "You're on your own, boy!" " Shoot!" "Shoot!" " Come on!" " Well done, mate!" " Marvelous!" "Quiet!" "Quiet in the shower!" "All correct, sir." "Class 22." " That new lad Smith scored that goal." " Yes, sir." " He can run." " He's not bad, sir." " Well, we'd better keep an eye on him." " Right, sir." " Where is he?" " He's in the shower." " Right." "Come along, Brown." " All right, now, get on with it!" "Get moving!" "That was a good goal, Smith." " A good goal." " Oh, thank you, sir." "Well, it's often a moment like that can make a big turning point in a lad's life." "It's not hard to guess what sort of home life that lad had." " Where the bloody hell have you been?" " Out." "You're never around when I want you." "Here am I struggling'." " And I don't get a blind bit of help from you." " He's always out, he is!" " He goes out about!" "He goes out about!" " He goes out about!" " Shut up." " Shut up, you lot!" " How's Dad?" " The doctor's with him now." "Poor devil." "It breaks your heart to see him." " I dunno." "This is the last thing I expected." " It'll be all right, Mam." "Don't worry." "Don't be daft." "Even the doctor says it's no use hoping'." "He's trying to get your dad to go to hospital." "But I know he won't." "Can I have some money to go t'pictures?" "No, you can't." "You can go to Auntie Vi's and look at her television." "Don't want to." "She's only got BBC." "Be quiet." "Can't you see your mam's upset?" "You won't get me to go to no hospital!" "I'm no bleedin' guinea pig for anybody!" " When's Dad going to die, our Colin?" " He isn't gonna die, Johnny." "Doctor told Mum he was yesterday." " We'd do best to leave him." " It seems so, but he's very poorly." "He's in quite a lot of pain and won't even have anything to help it." "I'll leave you to see he takes this, though." "It's a difficult time, but all we can do now is see that he's comfortable." "I'll look in tomorrow." "I'm not going to no hospital, you hear?" "I'm not going to no hospital!" "All right, we know you're not!" "I'm going to be late for work." "Billy, take that round to the chemist's." " I'm not taking any pills!" " Suit yourself." "Shut up!" "Shut up!" "Don't bother about the chemist's." "He won't take it." "Here you are, run round to Mrs. Raleigh's and get some of that herbal painkiller." "Mike!" "Hang on a bit." "Hello, Col." " How's your dad, then, Col?" " Oh, he's asleep." " Are you coming?" " Where to?" "I don't know." "Come on." "Hey." " Where did you learn to drive like this?" " My cousin had a taxi." "Hey, look, keep death off the road." "Hey, get a load of this gear in the back." " What's in here?" " I'll wear that." " Hey, d'you want a fag?" " Great." " Here you are." " Thanks." " Where shall we go to, then, James?" " Who d'you think I am?" "The chauffeur?" "Go on, run him over." "Better luck next time." "Let's go to London." " We haven't got enough petrol." " Oh." "Hey, birds." " Slow down, then." "Slow down." " We'll have these." "Hello, gorgeous." "Coming for a ride?" " Who are they?" " I don't know." " Take no notice." " Scoot, show-off." "Don't be like that." "I'm trying out me new car." " Birthday present from the old man." " I bet it isn't his." " It is, honest." "Right, mate?" " That's right, yeah." " You coming?" " Where you going, then?" " Where d'you want to go?" " London." "Me as well." "We're going to, aren't we, Colin?" "You can count me out." "I've got better things to do with my time." "Don't be like that, darling." "We could've been there and back by now." "I said you can count me out." "Anyway, I bet it isn't your car." " It is, honest." "Come on." " Hey, come on, let's go for a ride." " I've got to do me mam's shopping today." " Do it tomorrow." "Oh, shut up, you." "I'll help you if you want to do it later." "Come on, duck, don't play hard to get." "Come on, Audrey." " Well, not too far, then." " In you get, then." " Make yourselves comfortable." " I mustn't be long." " All right?" " Yeah." "Away we go." "Ooh, I'm puffed." "Your old man must be laughing buying you a car for your birthday." "Yeah, he is." "Where did you get it from?" " Found it on a rubbish heap, didn't we?" " Yeah." " But keep it to your sen." " You pinched it, didn't you?" " Say I borrowed it." " You ought to be ashamed of yourself." "I wanted a breath of fresh air." "I'll take it back tonight." " You'll end up in prison one of these days." " If he ain't careful." " Ooh." " It'd get me out of this dump." "It ain't the only way to get out of it." "Tell me another way, then." "You can stop that for a start." "London's a place I've always wanted to live in." "I went there once with a friend." "We went on a day excursion." "I looked all around the shops." "Ooh, Oxford Street was lovely." "Eeh, you should've seen Piccadilly Circus." "Oh, it was wonderful." "All lit up like day." " They get all the films there first, too." " Yeah, I know." "Our Phyllis had a fair job dragging me to the station." "I wanted to stay there, get a job." "There's other places besides London." "Well, I don't think so." " Well, I'm off home now, anyway." " Why?" " Come on, Gladys." " What?" "Oh." " I'll drive you back." " Don't bother." "We'll take the bus." "Suit yourself." " Where did you dump it?" " Where we found it." "Nobody saw me." "He won't know till he looks in the back and sees somebody's pinched his hat and coat." "That's me last." "That's five bob up the spout." "Get out the way." "I'll get it out." "Hey, great." " See ya." " Ta-ra, then." " Hey." " Eh?" " Come on." " What?" "Share and share alike." "All for one and one for all." "United we stand, divided we fall." "You're a bloody poet, aren't you?" "Here y'are." "Anybody at home?" "I'm not taking any pills!" "Suit yourself." "Dad?" "Last lap." "This is where Stacy always leaves 'em, sir." "You keep back, Smith!" "Well, slow the bastard down, then!" "Well, well run, Smith." "Well run." "I thought you were a sprinter when you scored that goal, but you're a stayer too." "That was a good sprint just now." "You put it on just at the right moment." " Just happened, sir." " What do you mean happened?" "Instant?" " Sir?" " You didn't plan it?" "You didn't think it out?" "Just..." "Just found I could do it, sir." "It was a good effort, anyway, and you don't get anywhere without effort, do you, lad?" "No, sir." " Eh, Stacy?" " No, sir." "I used to be a runner myself." "Quite a useful one, too, but a bit of a plodder." "We might think of training you for that long-distance cross-country run." "With Stacy's help here, of course." "And who knows, with a bit more style and more strategy and, of course, effort, you might win that cup for us, eh?" "Sir." "Well, be off with you." "And you too, Stacy." "Anyway, the competition will put Stacy on his toes." "We've got to win that race." " What the...?" " Creeping bastard!" " What's up with you?" " I told you to hold back, didn't I?" "Come on!" "Hit him, Stacy, go on!" "Go on!" " And again!" " Go on, knock his head off!" "Stacy, go on!" "Break it up, break it up!" "Come on, break it up!" "Stop fighting!" "What's happening here?" "Put their names on report, Mr. Roach." "I'll see them tomorrow at three o'clock in my office." "All right, get inside there!" "Get moving!" "Come on, inside!" "Don't force it." "Use the pliers." "Keep this out of there." "You're gonna be our champion runner now." " Don't talk so daft." " Well, you beat Stacy." "We'll both be in the block on bread and water by the time the Governor's finished with us." "Nah." "Look, if he thinks he can make you win that cup, he'll make you his favorite." "I'm nobody's favorite." "If I could run as fast as you I'd be out of this place." "Well, what's the point of scarpering?" "The best thing to do is to be cunning and stay where you are." "You see, I'm gonna let 'em think they've got me house-trained, but they never will, the bastards." "To get me beat, they'll have to stick a rope round me neck." " That's a job they don't mind doing." " Oi!" "The old man's coming!" "The lads in here are dismantling equipment for scrap and later we try to find them something more constructive, to find out if a lad has any special aptitude or skill." "And that's not always easy, of course, because sometimes they can prove, well, a bit uncooperative, and then, or if they're unsatisfactory in any other way, a lad is sent back here." "It's not exactly a punishment, they just have to start all over again." "It's the only way." "Right, well, I'll lead the way, shall I?" " All correct, sir." " Morning, Craig." "Well, you can see what these things are." "Or were." "I would be careful, sir, there." "It's, you know, sometimes..." " Oh, look." " I'm sorry." "Never mind." "Oh." "Thanks, Smith." "Hm." "Bread and water, my foot." "You won't see the inside of no cell." "He smiled at you, actually smiled." " Mam, isn't Dad coming back any more?" " Shut up." "He's dead." "Come on, get inside, you lot." "I'll get your dinner ready." " Ta." " Mrs. Smith." " And this is your son, is it?" " That's right." "Won't you sit down?" "I was sorry to hear about your husband." "He was a jolly good worker and served the firm well." "We've arranged to pay you the £500 insurance in cash." " That was what you wanted, wasn't it?" " That's right." " You're the new breadwinner now, are you?" " Yeah." "Well, he will be when he gets a job." " We could always fix you up here." " Er, no, thanks." "Would you sign this receipt, please?" "It's a shame you had to wait for the poor devil to die... before parting with 500 quid." "Come on." "Goodbye to you both." ""Served the firm well. " Like hell he did." "I expect they're glad this happened after that last strike." "Dad won out all right." "He got a raise as well." " Did you see him all right?" " Yes, thanks." "Mam!" "Mam!" "Have you been good while I've been away?" " Johnny kicked me!" " Oh, shut up, you big, fat..." " Hey, that's enough!" " Shut your big cakehole!" "That's enough." "That'll do." "What's up, then?" "Couldn't you wait for the poor devil to get cold?" "I just nipped in to see if you needed any help, love." "Don't get like that." "I don't need any help with this." "I can manage right enough." "I'm not after your money, love." "I earn enough on me own." "Cor, look at that." " Look at that paper." " They're fivers." " What shall we do with them?" " Burn it." " You take after your dad." " How much is there, Mam?" " Don't bother me." " Shut up!" " You can buy hairspray!" " A hairdryer!" " Run and buy some gobstoppers." " Buy me a hairdryer!" " Come on, do as your mam says." " Hey, keep your hands to yourself." " I'm the gaffer now." " You think so?" "I don't think so, I know so." "Colin, haven't we had enough trouble?" "Well, I'm going out." "I'll pick up that television set." "All right, gaffer?" "Look at little Miss Muffet with the hose." "You little bastard!" "I've enough on my plate without you lot starting." " Moody darling." " What's got into you, Stacy?" " I don't know, I can't get a word out of him." " I'm browned off." "D'you mind?" "So what?" "So are a couple of hundred other perishing inmates." " But are we downhearted?" " Oh, no." "Oh, drop dead, you muppet." " Come on, Stacy, have a cigarette." " Two's up." " Go and look after the screw." " Oh, all right." " I tell you, chum, I'm right up to here." " Why?" "Everything's going fine and now what?" "Discharge up the wall and who knows what else?" "Don't talk so daft." "Just 'cause the Governor caught you having a punch-up." "Yeah, you'll only get three days' bread and water." "Make a nice change." "Stuff their horse meat." " Yeah, and their lousy taters." " And their duck on Thursday." "You kid yourselves." "The Governor'll have it in for me, being his house leader and all." "The Governor only bets on certs, and if you're not a laid-down cert, mate..." "Well, you are." "I was." "Screw's coming." "All right, lads, in line here." "And Stacy, cut that hose off." "Put the tools away." "Come on, the rest of you, move!" "Right, quick march!" "Come on." " I think Stacy's gone away." " Do leave off!" " I've been with him all morning." " It's down to that bum Smith." " Hold up." "Screws." " All right, lads?" " Have you seen Stacy?" " He's got a late lunch." " How many late lunches you got?" " Four late lunches." "Stacy's not one of 'em." " What party was he on this morning?" " Cooper, what party?" "Come on, lad." " Gardening party, sir." " I'll check it out with the officer." " Robbins, you know where Stacy is." " Leave me alone." " Walsh, you're his mate." " I ain't seen him since yesterday." " How about you?" "Where is he?" " He's gone on his honeymoon." " What's the matter?" " When did you last see Stacy?" " Just before lunch." "I'll check and find out." " Right." " We've got one away." "I'll get the Chief." " Yeah." "Never mind about one away." "This potato tastes like cement." "All complaints to the cook." " This gravy's like water." " All right, cut it out." " They trying to keep this meat a secret?" " You want to kill it before you give it to us." "Yeah, if my old woman knew I was eating this rubbish, she'd go bleeding' nuts." "Cut it out." "Break it up." " Cut it out." " Come on, break it up." " Cut it out!" " Break it up!" "Cut it out!" "Now cut it out!" " Keep it quiet!" " Come on, quieten down!" "Come on!" "Johnson, break it up!" "Shut up!" "Come on, break it up!" "Shut up!" "Quiet!" "Quiet!" "Now come on!" "Cut it out!" "It's this bloody table!" "Now keep it down!" "The food in this place stinks!" "Break it up now!" "Stop that!" "What d'you think you're playing at there?" " Let's hear what you think, Roach." " It might have been Smith's fault, sir." " He's a somewhat complex character." "I..." " There's nothing complex about a fight." "In my opinion, Stacy may have provoked him to it." "In any case, with Stacy gone, there's no action that I can take, so that disposes of the fight." "What do you say, Fenton?" "I suppose it's possible, sir, that Stacy took it a bit hard." "He was proud of his position." " It meant a good deal to him." " Yes." "Mr. Fenton, surely it's part of our policy here to drive a boy hard and then when he's in a tight corner watch the reaction?" " I suppose it is." " Of course it is." "By putting pressure on a boy, you begin to know what he's worth." "No news of Stacy yet, sir, but we have the others under control." " All quietened down?" " We have the ringleaders in the cell block." " I don't think we'll have any more trouble." " Good." "Chief, it wouldn't surprise you in view of what's occurred if I put off tonight's concert?" " No, sir, it would teach them a lesson." " Perhaps." "But I've decided against it." "The concert will take place and we'll have our sports day." "Chief." "I hope that you and the staff know me well enough to believe that the last thing I'd do would be to make your work here any more difficult" " by in any way undermining discipline." " Certainly, sir." "If we make too much of this spot of bother, we may damage our relations with the public" " and with the governors of Ranley School." " Quite, quite." "But it's no secret to any of you that I regard this opportunity of joining forces with a public school on our sports day as a great step forward in our history, in borstal history." "So there's no need to cancel any of your arrangements for tonight's concert, except I want to talk to the lads before it starts." " Very good, sir." " Well, gentlemen, I think that's about all." " Mr. Brown, may I have a word with you?" " Certainly, sir." "Something on your mind, Roach?" "It's a pity about Stacy, sir." "He'll be badly missed at the sports." "Don't worry, we'll take that cup from Ranley." "You're thinking about Smith?" "Well, I've seen some runners in my time." "Believe me, he'll surprise us all." "I am certain this morning's demonstration in the dining hall is something that I shall have to make a pretty good effort to forget." "If you have any reasonable complaint about the food it must be made at the proper time and to the proper person, to me." "Now understand that and remember it." "Of course, I know what sparked this off." "A boy has absconded." "As it happens, he was a boy that we thought very highly of." "He will be caught, he'll be brought back and severely punished." "I'm told that one of the reasons he did it was that he was disappointed." "Disappointed?" "I wonder if he realizes how disappointing this is for me." "This place has a very good record and anybody who lets that record down is letting each one of you down." "And now to look on the brighter side." "You all know about the sports day against Ranley, with Ranley, with boys very much like yourselves, except they've had several advantages that you have not." "I want you to win and in particular I want you to win that challenge cup for the long-distance." "For that, if for no other reason," "I've decided to let the curtain go up on our concert tonight." "So enjoy yourselves and give our friends here a good hand." "Now, lads, we are very lucky to have here tonight a very old friend of yours, and of mine," "Mr. Roland Benton with his, er... bird imitations." "So let's give him a really warm welcome." "Thank you, friends." "And I'd like you now to come with me on a walk down a... an English country lane." "And over there, what do we see sitting on Farmer Giles's fence but a... a blackbird?" "# I'd lay me doon" "# And dee #" "Now, lads, I want you to join with us in singing that fine old hymn you've heard so often in chapel, Jerusalem." "Thank you." "# And did those feet in ancient time" "# Walk upon England's mountains green?" "# And was the holy Lamb of God" "# On England's pleasant pastures seen" "# And did the countenance divine" "# Shine forth upon our clouded hills?" "# And was Jerusalem builded here" "# Among those dark satanic mills?" "# Bring me my bow of burning gold" "# Bring me my arrows of desire" "# Bring me my spear!" "O clouds unfold!" "# Bring me my chariot of fire!" "# I will not cease from mental fight" "# Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand" "# Till we have built Jerusalem" "# In England's green and pleasant land #" "Well, have you nothing to say for yourself?" "I'd just like to say that it was as much my fault as Stacy's, sir." "We can leave Stacy out of this." " He's in far more serious trouble." " Yes, sir." "We can't have you fighting like a wild animal." "If you want to try your strength, I'm sure Mr. Roach here will be glad to take you on." "Anyway, now I've some more cheerful news for you." "You've shown yourself a willing worker." "We're going to take you out of the shop and upgrade you to the garden." "Thank you, sir." "I want you to promise me that you'll keep up your running." "It's my ambition to see you take that challenge cup from Ranley School for us." " What do you say?" " I'll do me best, sir." "I'm sure you will." "Come on, now!" "Wakey-wakey!" "Wakey-wakey!" "Let's be having you!" "Rise and shine!" "Come on, Robin!" "Jump to it!" "Let's be having you!" "That's the boy!" "What do you think you're doing?" "You can't stay there all morning!" "Come on!" "You've got sleeping sickness!" "Let's be having you!" "Are those socks?" "Housemaster's report." "Come on!" "Get out there!" "Come on, let's be having you!" "All out, then!" "Come along!" "Come on!" "Come on!" " What's the matter with you, Smith?" " All right, shut up!" "All right, ten minutes, PT, and no skiving!" "Come on, come on!" "Now let's be having you!" "One, two!" "One, two!" "One, two!" "Higher up with those knees!" "Left, right, left, right!" "Knees up higher, Smith!" "Much higher than that!" "Left, right, left, right!" "Higher up still!" "Keep your chin up!" "Left, right!" "One!" "And two!" "And one!" "And two!" "One and two!" "Touch your toes, touch those legs." "And get your head lower." "One!" "Two!" "Three!" "Four!" "One!" "Two!" "Three!" "Four!" "Stretch those elbows back there!" "One!" "Two!" "One, two!" "One, two!" "One, two!" "Faster!" "One, two!" " One, two!" "One, two!" "Come on!" " Morning, Craig." "Morning, sir." "All present, sir, 34, five hospital, two cooks, one duty cook, sir." " Carry on, Craig." " Class, stop!" " Roach." " Good morning, sir." "I see from the sports report that Smith is making good time in these practice runs." " Better than I expected, sir." " Hm." " I think you were right." " You still don't trust him, do you?" " I wouldn't like to say, sir." " Well, we'll soon see." "Stand 'em at ease." "At ease!" "Lads, you've all heard me say that if you'll play ball with us, we will play ball with you." "I've told a boy here that I and the staff were prepared to trust him." " And we keep our word." "Smith." " Sir?" "Unlock the gate, Mr. Craig." "Smith, off you go." "The usual run." "You've done it many times under supervision, this time you'll do it alone." "Be back at the usual time, hm?" "Off you go." "Yes, sir." " What are you gonna buy me, Mam?" " Where are we going first?" "You know what I want, don't you?" "Ooh, I like this." " Oh, stop it." " Come on." " Whoops." " Get ahold of yourselves." "Oh, that's nice." "Could we go in there, Mam?" " Let's buy that one." " Let's get in there and see what we want." "That's it." " Quick." " It's mine." "This ought to keep them quiet." "Not bad for 20 quid, eh?" "Marvelous." "Marvelous how cheap things are when you can pay cash." " Let's hope it lasts." " Don't worry, it will." " It had better." " Now, then, you two, behave." "You've both been good to me so don't let's have any arguments." "Here you are, Colin." "That's for all your help." " Oh, no, it's all right." " It isn't all right." "Take it." "Go on, take it." "Ooh." "Oh, that'll be the man." "# He'll see a girl in a Roller Roy" "# Boys love a girl in a Roller Roy" "# She looks nice, they look twice" "# Roller Roy # Listen to the fellas yellin'" "# Give me a girl in a Roller Roy" "# Cute little girl in a Roller Roy" "# Wash and wear!" "Easy care!" "# Roller Roy!" "Roller Roy!" "#" "Smith." "Come on, get your skates on." "Oh." " Here you are, love." " Thank you, love." " Here's your change, Colin." " Ta." "You get the fags?" "Yeah, I got 'em." "Here you are, smoke yourself to death." "Ta." " Hide that for us, will you?" " Audrey." "The bloke behind the bar wouldn't serve me at first." "Said I was underage." "Good mind to go back and slap him in the teeth." " Ah, don't be a mug." " Ah, makes you sick." "What did you tell your mum and dad?" "I told me mam that I was gonna be with Audrey all night." " I said I'd be with Gladys." " You crafty pair." " Well, skin off your lips." " Here's to us, then." "Cheers." "Four to Skegness, please." "Four to Skegness." "First class." " I heard you." " Didn't sound like it." " You shouldn't waste your money like this." " There's more where that came from." "Come on, lad." "I haven't got all night." "Miserable bloke." "Oh!" "Whoa!" " Colin!" "Put your hand down!" " Wait for me!" "Stop pushing." "Ooh!" "Now get these down." " That's right, love." " That's a good idea." "All right, doll, give us a kiss." "Hey, stop it." "That's enough." "Ah, we don't want that." "Hey, come on." "Hey, what you doing?" " You're married, are you?" " Yes." "People get married young nowadays." "Well, you can pay me now, then." "It's a pound each room." " There you are." " Come on, you two." "Sleep well." "Ha." "Boing." "Brrr!" "Come on, then!" "Come on!" "First in the water gets wet!" "I came to Skegness with me mam and dad when I was four." "They were happy that day and flush with money." "And while they were paddling in the sea, I ran away to try and get lost and I did get lost." "But I couldn't stay lost for long because after about four hours they found me sitting on the steps of this big building singing away at anybody that went by." "I didn't half cry when they took me back to the beach." "I was always trying to get lost when I was a kid." "I soon found out that you can't get lost, though." "Come on, then." "What's up with you?" " What are you going to do now?" " Get a job, I suppose." " What did your old man do before he died?" " He was a laborer." "Sweated his guts out for £9 a week." "He never had it so good." "It's about the same for everybody." "There was always rows in our house, though." "Mostly it was about money." "Mam and Dad fought like cat and dog." "Dad threatened to bash Mam's face in because she was doing it on him with other blokes." "Mam cursing Dad for not bringing enough money into the house." "That's how most people live." "I'm beginning to see that it should be altered." " Go on, try and catch me." " No, come back!" "Oops." "Whoop!" "Col?" "Col!" " Oh, Col, where are you?" " Hey." "I'm after you." " Col?" " Boo." "Oh!" " Oh, I've got sand in me eye." " You all right?" " Mm." " Oh, it's nice up here." "Smashing." "What are we gonna do when we get back to Nottingham?" "Live, I expect." "Enjoy ourselves." "Work." "I used to think it'd be marvelous being grown-up." " I reckon it is." " It is, but not in the way I thought, though." " Why, what did you think?" " Oh, I don't know." " Maybe we don't know much yet anyway." " No." "I know enough to... to want to know more." "I've been learning a lot lately." "Trouble is that now I'm not quite sure what I've been learning." "I'll tell you one thing I do know." "I like you a lot, Audrey." "I wish we could stay here forever." " It's nice, in't it?" " Mm." "Have you ever been out with anyone before?" "Aye, yeah." "But... not like last night." "How about another cup of coffee?" " I've only got enough for our fare back." " Third class." " Hey." " Oh, shut up, crumb." "Oh, don't be like that, duck." "Look, knock it off, can't you?" "I can't help it if we've got to go back." "Back, back, back!" "I wish we never had to go back." "Don't you?" "Oh, come on." "Let's go." "I want to talk to you tonight about the challenge of prosperity." "Patriotism is out of favor with the intellectuals now." "But I believe that Britain is emerging into an age" " when she will be greater than ever." " Hear, hear." "And I ask you to hold fast to this faith because this is our strength." " What I am looking for..." " I know what I'm looking for." "...is a spirit of rededication such as we feel at a coronation or at a royal birth." " Oh, dear, look at him." " Have a crown." "In these days when we are all enjoying greater luxury" " than ever before..." " Huh!" "...with our unemployment benefits and our family allowances," " and our old-age pensions..." " I wouldn't mind drawing mine." "I believe that a new mood of self-discipline" " is abroad in the land." " Take ahold of yourself, lad." "Our young people have never been infected..." " Yes, yes." "... by the disease" " of continental existentialism." " Mm." "Hear, hear." "And all who sail in her." "Unlike the Americans," " our cousins in affluence..." " Look." "...we have shown ourselves strong in the face of the virus of the state..." "Hey, look, the Telly Boys!" "...entirely to the general release of Lady Chatterley's Lover." " What's going on, then?" " We don't want the sound on." " Well, I do." "D'you mind?" " Yes." "I told you, this is our house." "You're a real mixer, aren't you?" "Always stirring it up." " And I give the orders here." " Not to me you don't." "Why are you so narked?" "You nicked the bloody thing, didn't you?" "I did not." " You got a fag?" " No, don't make a monkey out of me, chum." "And as for you, I've just about had e-bloody-nough." " You cheeky young bastard!" " Get back!" "What the hell are you playing at?" "He's telling me what to do in me own house!" " I'll knock your block off!" " Shut up, you!" "Everything in this house belongs to me." "So get that straight." " Nothing belongs to you." "Now turn it up." " Do it yourself." "Don't you talk to me like that." "Turn it up." " I'm not having anybody order me about." " That's what you think." "I slave from morning till night and you sit around with that gormless good-for-nothing." "You brought your fancy man in here before me father was cold." "Get out." "And don't come back till you've got some money!" "...of the great Elizabethan age." "You idiot!" "I'm cold." "I could do with a new coat." "Should have thought of that when your old lady was in the money." "We had a good time at Skeggy, though, didn't we?" "We did and all." "Hey, Col. What's the first thing you'd do if you won 75,000 quid?" "Count it." " How do we get over?" " Cup your hands." " Huh?" " Come on." "We shouldn't have come here, we won't find owt." "Ah, don't talk so soft." "Hey, d'you know anybody who wants to buy some flour?" "Put it out, you daft loon." "This is more like it." " You found owt?" " Not yet." "Ah." " Hey." " This is it." "Come on." " Maybe there's some more." " No, this is all we'll take." "Come on." "Hey, Colin!" "We'll get a few quid for this." "Oh, it's too heavy, innit?" "Put it back." "And switch that light off." "Don't bang the door." "Oh, we're home." "Look at you." "You look like a pregnant duck." "Now, then." "What's that lump in your guts, lad?" " What lump?" " That lump there." " Oh, it's a growth." " A growth?" " Cancer." " Cancer?" "A lad at your age?" "It's in the family." "Me Uncle Albert passed away with it last month." "I'm going this month, by the feel of it." " Had it in the guts, did he?" " No, he had it in the chest." "I had it in the chest, only it slipped down." "A lad in your condition should be in hospital, not roaming the streets." "Come along with me." "Get out of it." "Let's get this open." " Can you get it open?" " Yeah." "No, no, no." " Who's that?" " It's only me." "Oh, you're back, are you?" "What's all that noise?" "Nothing." "We're just cracking a coconut we won at the fair." "There's enough nuts in this house." " Have you got no home to go to?" " I've just come in to say good night." "Be quick about it, then." "And make less noise." "Good night, then." "Forty-five pounds, fifteen and fourpence ha'penny." "How much have you got?" "Twenty-five pounds ten shillings." "That's 25 pounds 10 shillings, and 45 pounds, 15 and fourpence ha'penny." "Seven... 71 pounds, five and fourpence ha'penny." " You coming to Skeggy with us, then, duck?" " What with, you cheeky thing?" "Seventy-one pounds, five and fourpence ha'penny." "Yes, but we're not going to Skegness, not yet." " Why not?" " We'll hide it." "Hide it?" "What for?" "We don't want to be like our Jack down the road, do we?" "He got 200 quid when he robbed that office." "As soon as he gets it, he goes downtown and gets hisself a teddy boy suit and a set of skiffle drums." "Even takes a taxi back." "Everybody knew he'd done a job." " Soon as he gets home, there's coppers." " Somebody gave him away, you can bet." "There's always somebody who wants to do a good turn for the coppers." "If they've got tuppence more than you have, they think you want it." "You've got to use a bit of cunning, a bit of this, if you want to get anywhere." "Where are we gonna hide it?" "What, up there?" "Will it be OK?" "Safe as houses." "We may be thieving bastards but we're not green." "I feel tired after thinking up an idea like that." " You're a genius." " Go and get some fags." " Eh?" " Go and get some fags." "What am I gonna use for money?" " What's that, bread and dripping?" " Oh, aye." "Hey, what about this?" "We can't leave it here." "You've got something there." " She'll never notice anyway." " No, we're laughing." "In you go." "If they can't find this and they can't find the dough, they can't pin anything on us." "How's that?" "All right?" "A bit more on here." "Hey." "We can water it in the morning." "Colin!" " What?" " There's a man to see you!" " Who?" " I don't know." "Come on, get up!" " Colin Smith?" " Yeah?" "I'm just asking a few questions." " Why?" " Routine." "Do you know where Papplewick Street is?" "Oh, ain't it off Alfreton Road?" "There's a baker's halfway down on the left-hand side." " I know." "Next door to a pub." " No, it's not." "I'm sorry, I don't know it, then." "If you want to know, he never leaves that television set, so you've got nowt on him." "You might as well look for somebody else, 'cause you're wasting the rates you get out of my rent standing there like that." "All I want to know is where you were last night." "Minding me own business." "There was a break-in last night and some money taken." "Tell me where that money is and I'll try and get you off with probation." "Do I look as if I know anything about money?" " Hey, what's up, then?" " Just a few questions." "You his father?" "No, I'm bloody well not." "Get me breakfast on the table, would you?" "You can't con me, you know, so it's no use trying." "Tell me where that money is." "What was it?" "Was it three and eightpence ha'penny?" "You thieving young bastard." "We'll learn you to take money that doesn't belong to you." " Mother, get me lawyer on the blower." " All right, Colin, just a sec." "Clever, aren't you?" "We won't rest until this is cleared up, you know." "Look, it's all very well us talking like this, you know, like it was a game, but I wish you'd tell me what it's all about because I just got out of bed and here you are at the door" "talking about me having pinched a lot of money I don't know anything about." "You've got money on the brain, like all coppers." "I want an answer from you." " I tell you what." "I'll do a deal." " What sort of a deal?" "I'll give you all the money I've got, that's one and fourpence ha'penny, if you'll stop this third degree and let me go inside and get me breakfast." "It's bloody cold and I'm clambed to death." "Can't you hear me guts rolling?" "All right, my lad." "But you'll be hearing more about this, you know." "Be careful with that." "You can mend it while you're at it!" " D'you mind?" " Blame your lad, not me." "I'm just trying to clean up the mess you've made." " See ya." " Hey, Sherlock Holmes!" "I hope all the banks have been robbed while you've been mucking around here." "Come to our house and all." "They're no wiser, though." "Just go on telling lies till you're blue in the face." "Why don't we get the money out now?" "We could take Audrey and Gladys to Skegness before we get sent down." "We won't make court and we'll have a good time later on." "I hope you're right." "Hello." " What were those coppers doing?" " Minding their own business." " I'm not talking to you." " Trying to pin a robbery on him." "Aye, I bet they had good reason." "Listen, I don't like living in a thieves' kitchen." "Who's asking you to?" " Is that you, Gordon?" " That's right, love, yeah." "The telly's conked out again." "Will you come and fix it?" "Righto." "I've never been in trouble with the police." "You mean you never got caught." "Come on, let's find the girls." " Just a few chips." " And one cod." "Our luck's right out." "Had the cops at our house today." "The bastards looked all over." " What are they looking for?" " What do you think?" "Money." " I wish you wouldn't pinch things." " It's all right." "They can't pin anything on me till they find the dough." "And they won't find that." "Be careful, love." "It's all right." "Soon as the heat's off we'll go to Skeggy for the best time we've ever had." "Table over here." "Why don't you get a job, though, Col?" "What's it got to do with you?" "Col!" "Don't worry, love." " Wonder what's the matter with them." " I don't know." "Maybe I will get a job." "It's not that I don't like work." "It's that I don't like the idea of slaving me guts out so that the bosses can get all the profit." "Seems all wrong to me." "My old man used to say the worker should get the profits." "No, that's what I think." "That's what it'll be like in the future." "It will if I have anything to do with it." "The thing is, I don't know where to start, though." "What do you want to do, Col?" "Don't know, really." "Live, I suppose." "See what happens." "Stay out with me tonight, Col." " Hello." "You here again?" " I've got some news for you." " What?" " You've been identified." "Who by?" "There's a woman swears blind she saw you and your mate leaving that bakery." "She's a menace, then, to innocent people, because the only bakery I've been in is down our street to get some bread for me mother." "Now stop messing about." "I want to know where that money is." "Money?" "Oh, you should have said." "That's Mother." "She took it to work to get herself some tea in the canteen." "Couple of bob, I think it was, because I put it in the telly vase last night." "I nearly had a fit when I saw it was gone because I was hoping to get some fags with it this morning." "All right, my lad, but you'd better watch your step." "'Cause if I can nick you, you'll go away for a bloody long time." "I don't think life's worth living without a fag." "You couldn't even pick 'em up in the street in this weather." "You could dry 'em out but they wouldn't taste the same." "The rainwater changes 'em back into hoss-todds only without the taste." "If I do see that money I'll let you know on the blower." "Because two bob's two bob, ain't it?" " You don't see 'em lying in the street..." " You thieving little bastard!" "Morning, sir." "Good morning, sir." "All correct." " Morning, sir!" " Morning, lads." " Morning, sir." " Oh, Smith." "I've had a word with the doctor about your check-up." " You're as sound as a bell." " Oh, good, sir." "Thank you, sir." "That's important, if you should ever think of taking up athletics in a big way." "I don't suppose there's any honor that would give a man greater satisfaction than to represent his country at the Olympic Games." " Oh, no, sir." " Hm, the Olympics." "I still think that's one of the best ideas that civilization ever had." "Is your mother coming down for the big day against Ranley School?" " It's a bit too far for her to come, sir." " Oh." "Well, when the time comes for you to say goodbye to Ruxton Towers, you may find you have a great future ahead of you as an athlete." " If you put your back into it." " Yes, sir." " Keep up those evening runs." " Yes, sir." "Thank you, sir." "A couple of new recepos." "All right, campers!" "Get your keys at reception!" "Here, mate, what you having?" "Bed and breakfast or full board?" " I need more than this." "I'm a growing lad." " Scurry." "You'll get me into bother." " Here comes flash Smith." " Drop back, mate." "This guy's the daddy." " That's me dinner." " Shush, moosh." "That's daddy Smith." " Come on, bring it up." "Keep moving." " Give him another." " Keep it moving!" " What's this?" "Sit over here with me." " How did you get here?" " I got caught nicking a car." "I kicked the copper." "Gladys was put on probation." "Hard luck." "How's Audrey?" "She's all right." "She'd like to hear from you." " She can't wait till you get out." " Neither can I." "I notice a funny kind of smell." " Horrible smell." " Hm, diabolical." " Wouldn't be you, would it?" " We'll have to get you cleaned up a bit." "Lay off him." "He's a friend of mine from home." "I thought I could smell Nottingham." "Stinks worse than Liverpool." " I said knock it off, didn't I?" " I can take care of meself." "Sure you can." "That's why you're here." " Bad luck, that's all." " Your mate's king of this borstal." " How d'you mean?" " He's a great sportsman." "Yeah, goes like a bleedin' greyhound." "Absolutely." "They've got me on this long-distance running kick." " What?" " Racing against berks from a public school." "They're turning me up like a racehorse, only I don't get so well looked after as a racehorse." "He wants me to be a professional runner." "I'm pleased to work for money, at a bob a puff, rising to a guinea a gasp, and retiring with an old-age pension at 32." "But just think, though." "Think of that load of cake." "Have a great big Jaguar and a fancy tart answering your fan letters." "Think of it, Smudge, mobbed in the streets." "Not this one." " Whose side are you on all of a sudden?" " He's the Governor's blue-eyed boy now." " Headmaster." " Hello." "You know the chairman of our board of governors." " Of course." " Indeed." " I'll go and have a word with my boys." " I'll see you presently." " I say, this is good of you to come." " Oh, not at all." "My spies tell me you have a champion running." "I think so." "We're hoping he'll take away that long-distance challenge cup from you." "Between you and me, Dick, I rather hope he does." " Very generous of you, Peter, old boy." " Oh, not at all." "I know how much it means to you." " Come and have a glass of sherry." " Good idea." "Now listen, you lot." "You'd better not let me down today." "I don't want any bloody messing about." " Oh, hello." "How do you do?" " My name's Mr. Craig." " Mr. Scott." " Your boys take the pegs this side." "Right, thank you." "This way, fellows." " Hello, fellows." "Nice to see you." " Hello." " Hi." " Hello." " Hello, fellows." " How do you do?" "Hello." " What's this joint like?" " Bloody awful." " It can't be worse than ours." " Want to bet?" " How about your nosh?" " Pardon?" " Food." "Grub." " Oh, pretty dreary." "Oh, we do have a lot in common, don't we?" "Yes, we ought to get together and join forces." "Yeah, that's an idea." "Bit of a revolution, eh?" "Join Castro." "Have a go." "Huh." "Very good." " Hey, you haven't got a burn, have you?" " A burn?" " Yeah, a fag, you know." " No, sorry." "We're not allowed to smoke." "Yeah?" "What happens if you're caught?" "We get beaten on the backside." " D'you pay to go to this school?" " Well, our parents do." "Stone me!" " Are the staff here tough?" " The screws?" "They think they are but we can handle 'em." "Yeah, we've got our skids under them all right." " Who's the opposition here today?" " Right over there." "Well, good luck, then." "Oh, ta." " Good luck to you." " You'll need it." "You haven't got a chance." "Come along, lads." "Here we go." " After you." " Er... no, after you." "OK, come on." "Sure you don't want to lock your gear up before you go, fellas?" " Good afternoon." "Good luck." " Jolly good luck to you boys." " Good afternoon." " Good luck." "Jolly good luck, chaps." "Good luck to you boys." "Now you're the one we've got to watch out for from Ranley." "Yes." " Good luck." " Good luck." "Good luck." "Good luck to you." "Jolly good luck." " This is Smith, sir, I was telling you about." " I've been hearing great things of you." " Out to beat Ranley School, are you?" " We'll do our best, sir." " That's the idea." " We're counting on you, Smith." "Well, on all of you." "Shall we go on, sir?" "Now, Roach, you take over, will you?" "I have a bet on number seven, Gunthorpe." " My son Willy tells me he's the best runner." " I hope you're a good loser, Colonel." " As soon as you're ready, Roach." " Right, boys!" "In position for the start!" " Who do you fancy?" " Number 14." " Smith?" "Rather disloyal to Willy, isn't it?" " It's Willy I'm thinking of." "If our son doesn't pull out of that ghastly Chelsea set he's in with, that's where you and I will be next year." "Ladies and gentlemen, this is a five-mile cross-county event between Ranley School and Ruxton Towers." "Are you ready, lads?" "On your positions." "Keep those knees up!" "Smith, higher up!" "When the day comes for you to say goodbye to Ruxton Towers, you may find you have a great future ahead of you as an athlete." "If you put your heart into it." "Big Jaguar and a fancy tart answering your fan letters." "Mobbed in the streets." " If you'll play ball with us..." " Thieving young bastard." "...we'll play ball with you." " Goes like a bleedin' greyhound." " Your mate's king of this borstal." "Athletics, sports..." "# Roller Roy!" "Where have you been?" "Mam!" " He hit me!" " Oh, shut up!" "Hey, that's enough!" "He goes out about!" "# Girl in the Roller Roy!" " # Boys love a girl in a Roller Roy..." " Stop that for a start." "I'm not taking any pills!" "Shut up, you!" "Everything in this house belongs to me." "So just get that straight." " Wants teaching a bloody lesson, that one." " He'll learn." "They should be halfway around by now." "It's my ambition to see you take that challenge cup from Ranley School." " Keep back, Smith!" " Slow the bastard down!" "You think you're clever." "Tell me where that money is." "I'll get you off with probation." "You his father?" "Tell me where that money is." "What's the first thing you'd do if you won 75,000 quid?" "Girl." "Can't understand why you're always trying to run away from things." "Why?" "Why, then?" "They're coming over the top of the hill." "Someone's coming over the top of the hill." "We can't see who it is yet." "Is it gonna be Ranley School or Ruxton?" "It's Smith!" " Looks like your man." " The guv's right!" "He's well in the lead." "He's got a wonderful lead there." "It's an easy win for Ruxton." "I can't see who it is yet behind him." "Wait a minute." "It's number seven." "Number..." "Number seven is Gunthorpe." "Your chap hasn't a hope of catching him now." "Gunthorpe trying to catch up but he hasn't got a chance." "Gunthorpe's trying hard, but he's never gonna make it." "Come on, Smith, lad." "Come on, Smith." "He's got a good lead there." "He's got energy in reserve." "Gunthorpe's trying to catch him." "He'll never make it." "Come on, Smith." "The sooner we have your cooperation, the sooner you'll be out." "They've got the whip hand." "What do you want to do, Col?" "If we get you down to the nick you might get a few bruises for your trouble." "You'd better come along with me." "What the...?" "I can imagine no greater honor than for a man to represent Ruxton Towers at the Olympic Games." " ...athletics, sports..." " On the playing fields of the national..." "You'll learn to trust yourselves and we'll go on trusting ourselves and then there'll be a bit of trust all the way around." " That's what you think." " Understand that." "Back!" "I wish we never had to go back." "Don't you?" " What's the matter with him?" " D'you think he's all right?" "Taking a breather, I expect." "We had a runner who used to stop a minute from the line to show what he thought of the slowcoaches behind." " He's the governor's blue-eyed boy." " You'll learn." "Whose bloody side are you on?" "You don't get anywhere without effort." "I'm no bleedin' guinea pig for anybody!" "Run!" "Run!" "Run!" "Run!" "Run!" "Run!" "Run!" "Run!" "Run!" "Run!" " Run!" "Run!" " Come on, Smith!" " Run!" " Come on, Smith!" "Run!" "Run!" "Run!" "Run!" "Run!" "Run!" "Run!" " Run!" "Run!" "Run!" " Come on, Smith!" " Run!" " Smith!" " Run!" " Come on, old boy!" " Come on!" " Smith, come on!" " Run!" " Come on, Smith!" "Run!" "Run!" "Run!" "Run!" "Run!" " Run!" "Run!" " Smith!" "Go on, run, run!" "Smith!" " All correct, sir." " Right, carry on." " Have all this cleared up, Mr. Craig." " The lad at the end there, pick it up!" "Move, lad!" "Come on, Smith, get a move on!" "# Bring me my chariot of fire" "# I will not cease from mental fight" "# Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand" "# Till we have built Jerusalem" "# In England's green and pleasant land #" "(Robert Murphy) Of all the British New Wave films, this was the one that worried the censors most." "It might seem mild enough now, compared to later films about young offenders, like Alan Clarke's Scum, but never underestimate the perspicacity of the censors." "It's their job to recognize dangerous new trends and, if possible, stamp them out." "And they right to detect here hints of the youth rebellion which was to dominate the '60s." "It was written by Alan Sillitoe, who'd had a huge success with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning." "But The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner was a short story, so it had to be expanded considerably." "(Sillitoe) I had the task of writing original material and plowing it into that framework until it came to the commercial running time of one hour 29 minutes." "So there are difficulties in short stories because when you do that kind of thing the result may make the film, the longish film, a little unwieldy or seem unwieldy or a little disjointed, which may be something of what happened in Long Distance Runner." "Because the story, basically, is about a race." "There's a section in the middle which shows how Colin Smith got to the borstal but that doesn't take a lot of time to narrate, so we had to fill it in, give him a girlfriend," "extend certain incidents, et cetera." "And finally, we did get it to the correct length." "(Murphy) This is the late John Thaw, who was Tom Courtenay's room-mate at RADA, making his debut here with a Liverpool accent." "He's from Manchester, actually." "It was directed by Tony Richardson, who had already made Look Back in Anger," "The Entertainer and A Taste of Honey and had been the producer on Saturday Night and Sunday Morning." "He's the key figure in this New Wave of British cinema." "Sillitoe, though he tends to get classified with the other working-class Angry Young Men, like John Osborne and John Braine, wrote Saturday Night and Sunday Morning when he was living in Majorca, convalescing from tuberculosis on his small RAF pension." "(Sillitoe) Now, the thing is that in my 20s, I was living in Majorca and I was reading books by Camus, The Outsider, I'Étranger," "Sartre, the Americans - Salinger, Mailer, Styron." "I wasn't really reading many of the modern novels from England, although I think I read Lucky Jim and Hurry On Down." "Now, at the same time, it was difficult to get books." "We were in exile, you might say." "We borrowed a certain amount from Robert Graves, who lived in the next village." "We borrowed some from a one-armed major, who had a very good library, across the valley." "Now the third source was from the library of the British Institute in Barcelona, 131 sea miles north of the island." "The system was that every month, they would send us a box of 30 books, and with that consignment they asked, on one occasion," ""What subjects are you interested in?"" "So I filled in a form and said on it that I was interested in criminology." "Why I said that, I simply don't know, at least, I can't remember." "And in a week or two, back comes this big box of books on criminology, prisons, borstals, recidivism, juvenile delinquency, all written by prison governors, sociologists, politicians." "And I read these books with tremendous interest and then sent them back." "Now, what I saw on reading these books was that I was getting the views of people who lived, as it were, on the other side of the hill." "Before that time," "I had only known my cousins who were sent to prison and borstal, friends who were sent to remand homes and so on, all sorts of people I knew from my childhood and youth who had been criminals and who had been sent to prison eventually." "So I think that that sunk into me." "Now, quite soon afterwards, I was sitting..." "I think I was in England at the time on a short visit and I saw someone running by the window in a vest and a pair of shorts and I wrote at the top of the piece of paper" ""the loneliness of the long distance runner"." "I thought I was going to write a poem but nothing else came, so I put the piece of paper away." "A year later, we were in Alicante in Spain, and we were fed up with living the life of the exile and we decided that we were going to England and I remember I was packing up all my papers, sorting them out," "burning a lot of manuscripts because we couldn't afford to carry them on the railway, and while I was packing up, with the taxi due in about half an hour," "I came across this piece of paper which said across the top," ""the loneliness of the long distance runner"." "And immediately, I began to write the story." "Now, the story seemed to be dictated." "I wasn't thinking, I was simply writing, the pen racing over the paper." "And I think I must've written half the story when my girlfriend said," ""For God's sake, the taxi's here, we've got to go."" "So I threw this half-finished story into a trunk and we went off to the railway station." "Ten days later, we arrived in England, we went to live in Brighton, at the house of my girlfriend's parents, and when I was unpacking I found this half-completed story and without unpacking anything else, I finished it in a couple of days." "And that again, it was dictated." "I simply don't remember thinking." "And when I typed it, I hardly altered it." "Now, when I write a short story," "I sometimes rewrite it as much as eight times but with The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner," "I doctored it a little bit but not very much and then typed it and I sent it out." "(Murphy) There's a whiff of class warfare in Sillitoe's original story, expressed in Colin's division of the world into 'us' and 'them'." "It's the runner's uncompromising hostility to authority which worried the censors." "Audrey Field, the censor who dealt with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, complained," ""I am very much disappointed in this script." ""I liked Saturday Night and despite the hero's trying little ways, I liked him," ""because I felt he had the makings of becoming a decent human being" ""who would take people as he found them" ""and not go on forever taking refuge in a lot of claptrap" ""like all army officers and policemen are bad and all workers are good." ""But this story is blatant and very trying communist propaganda" ""and particularly worrying for us because the hero is a thief" ""and yet he's held up to the admiration of silly young thugs." ""If the leading citizens of Nottingham didn't like Saturday Night" ""because they thought the hero was not a good representative of that city," ""I don't know what they will say about this epic."" "She labels Colin "a good hero for the British Soviets"" "and she was perplexed by his determination to deliberately lose the race after showing that he could clearly win it." ""It is true party-line stuff." ""I can never see, myself," ""what the objection is to an honest-to-goodness prize," ""openly and honestly competed for and judged."" "Colin is played by Tom Courtenay in his first film role, though he was already making a name for himself on the stage playing Billy Liar." "Courtenay makes a big impact." "Even the most hostile reviews have good things to say about him, and Sillitoe thoroughly approved of him." "(Sillitoe) I think Tom is, in a sense, nearer to my fictional representation of Colin than Albert was to Arthur Seaton in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning." "Tom is perfect." "I mean, in a different way." "Albert was very good, there's no getting away from it, but physically, at least, he has that lean, hungry, aware look, which Colin Smith had to have in order to come around to not winning the race." "(Tom Courtenay) It was very exciting because Woodfall Films were the company, you know, it was John Osborne and Tony Richardson." "It would be the equivalent now if Hollywood called up a young actor and said, "You're going to play the lead in this very exciting new film."" "And it was amazingly exciting to see Tony Richardson, what, a few weeks after I'd left drama school." "John Osborne had seen me in The Seagull with the Old Vic company, which I joined immediately on leaving RADA." "And he said to Tony Richardson that, "I've seen your runner in The Seagull" ""at the Edinburgh Festival with the Old Vic company."" "And Tony asked me to go to the Royal Court where he was rehearsing The Changeling with Robert Shaw and Mary Ure." "And I went to see him and I stood before him and after about two minutes he said," ""You'll be absolutely marvelous in this part."" "And I couldn't believe my ears and something told me he meant it and he would stick by it." "And although it was over a year before the film was made," "I pretty well knew that I'd get it." "(Murphy) Richardson worked well with actors and liked filming on location, away from the restrictions and interference of studio bosses, and he recalled A Taste of Honey and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner as two of his happiest filmmaking experiences." "(Courtenay) We all used to impersonate the funny way he talked but he was very kind to me - well, he knew he had to be." "Because he used to find somebody to pick on." "He used to like to pick on Jimmy Bolam and he used to like someone to tease and be awful to but he knew it wouldn't work with me and he was very kind to me and very gentle - better not pick on me because I'd cry. (Laughs)" "He knew also that the less takes I did the better that would be." "And I never remember doing more than one or two takes, except about on one occasion." "He loved improvisation, and in fact the scene when I see the psychiatrist, Alec McCowen, was very difficult for Alec because he'd learnt the scene and I'd been warned the day before that we were going to change it" "and we did that word game thing." "It was rather difficult for Alec but quite easy for me because I'd been told about it." "The improvisatory aspect of things appealed to him, and we'd get on the set and there was the scene and he'd see how we could make it more lively or..." "I mean, he often used to say to me, "Say what you like." (Chuckles)" "(Murphy) Alec McCowen was a very experienced actor with quietly impressive performances behind him in films like The Cruel Sea, The One That Got Away and Time Without Pity." "Michael Redgrave - Sir Michael Redgrave - had been a star since his role in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes in 1938." "His appearance in this relatively low-budget film probably had something to do with the fact that Richardson had married his daughter Vanessa in April 1962." "But Richardson had staged the first production of Look Back in Anger and was very well-respected in the theatre, so he was the sort of director actors wanted to work with." "I think it's important, in view of Audrey Field's complaint about the film being communist propaganda, showing all the workers as good, and all the representatives of authority as bad, to point out that Redgrave's governor is much less of a caricature" "than he is in the story, where he's dismissed as a "potbellied, popeyed bastard"" "with "lily-white, workless hands"." "Redgrave's got a wonderful capacity for vulnerability and here, I think, he's quite moving as an unhappy man whose good intentions have been eroded into platitudes." "He sees in Colin the chance to regain his self-respect and recapture his belief that he is doing something worthwhile and I think the film benefits in complexity from the fact that Colin's victory against authority is also a defeat for someone we don't necessarily feel contemptuous of." "Of course, I'm looking at the film as a man in his fifties." "I think most young people are as dismissive of the governor as Colin is of him, but that cruelty of youth is partly what the film is about." "Courtenay points out that there's an awful mixture of accents among the cast." "He's from Hull, not Nottingham, his brothers and sisters have Cockney accents, his best mate's a Geordie and his girlfriend seems to come from Birmingham." "But there's an awful lot of talent among this supporting cast." "Avis Bunnage, who'd worked with Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop, and played the mother in a stage production of A Taste of Honey, the part Dora Bryan plays so well in the film." "Peter Madden, playing the dying father." "And this is Peter Duguid, who got fed up with being typecast as a doctor, and became a director and producer in television." "Sillitoe's story is written in the first person." "It's basically Colin Smith expressing his thoughts as he does his practice runs and the big race, which he decides to deliberately lose." "Although the film starts with Colin's voiceover, it doesn't come back again, and I think the film is quite bold in getting us to see Colin's point of view without this crutch of us hearing his inner thoughts." "Ostensibly, he's not a very nice person and most people wouldn't automatically identify with him, so the film has to be carefully structured so that we do." "In the borstal, we are prepared to take his side because he's cheekily defiant towards the authorities and he's set up against the unpleasant Stacy." "When we flash back to his home life, there's the grim reality of his dying dad, which allows Colin to act in a caring way and allows us to sympathize with him." "And, of course, there's Tom Courtenay's performance." "Even the most hostile reviews acknowledged that this was a remarkable new actor making an outstanding debut." "Courtenay is physically like Sillitoe's runner and he's certainly working class but he doesn't share his world view." "He was one of those bright working-class boys who took advantage of opportunities for social mobility which were created in the wake of the Second World War." "(Courtenay) I had read Sillitoe's novella," "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner." "My being in the role made it different, it made the part more like me than perhaps it was in Sillitoe's story." "Tony got it from me that I wasn't a hardcase." "It was the way I was brought up, you see." "I was brought up to work hard and hoped to get on in life and with aspiration." "I had opportunities because of the 11-plus and I was aware of that, that's why I couldn't be wholehearted about that aspect of the character that, you know, that he hated everybody and everything." "I mean, I suppose the fact of his running, he wanted to do it for himself rather than for someone else, that I could... that I could relate to." "I was absolutely not an 'angry young man'." "I didn't have that attitude at all." "But I had no trouble in tapping into my working-class roots because I'd only just recently left them." "But it was the first time, wasn't it, that working-class boys would be that well educated." "Also, I was very interested in getting educated, having had the chance through the 11-plus, but I loved classical music, I was very well read." "And I remember Dirk Bogarde, years later, referring to me as "the fishwife's son", not maliciously." "But I thought, "I wonder if his mother was as well read" ""as my working-class mother?"" "Or if he was as well read as I was or knew music as well as I did." "Probably not." "I mean, I was delighted to be asked to do the part but I wasn't interested in the political aspect of it." "It had a romantic thing, the boy with a gift who wants to go and run." "It was the romantic appeal of it, rather than the political that took hold of me." "(Murphy) The film would've had a much sharper edge with someone like Tom Bell or Courtenay's friend John Thaw as the runner, but Courtenay, who has honesty and decency stamped through him like a stick of Blackpool rock," "is perfect for the gentle poetic realism which constitutes Richardson's style." "Teamed with James Bolam, a young actor from Sunderland, who had previously appeared in the film of Arnold Wesker's The Kitchen, his crimes seem little more than high spirits, a couple of likely lads having a bit of fun." "There's a real innocence in this relationship between the two boys and the girls they pick up." "Gladys is played by Julia Foster and seems like a young version of Dora Bryan." "She would go on to become a distinguished actress of stage and screen." "Audrey is played by Topsy Jane, who after a couple of bit parts, gets her big break here." "She was supposed to star in A Kind of Loving but became pregnant and lost the part, leaving us this one performance, which seems all the more real for being such a one-off." "Richardson reveled in the opportunities provided by location shooting." "He told an interviewer in 1960, "I hate studios." ""I no longer want to shoot even interiors in a studio." ""I would rather work in the limited conditions" ""which a location imposes upon you." ""For the sort of realistic films I want to make," ""by improvising one's way out of the impossibilities of real conditions," ""you get something on the screen that is more true, somehow," ""than something contrived on a set." ""Once inside a studio, you start taking walls out," ""you start thinking, 'Wouldn't it be fun if we tracked from here to there," ""'pan round there and, you know, do a lot of fancy stuff?" "'" ""One is getting, in fact, less of the human reality."" "The cinematographer, Walter Lassally, had worked on the Free Cinema documentaries of Tony Richardson, Karel Reisz and Lindsay Anderson, but was not considered by the industry to be a safe-enough pair of hands to be in charge of the photography of a feature film like Look Back in Anger" "or Saturday Night and Sunday Morning." "But after the success of Saturday Night," "Richardson was in a strong enough position to work with whom he liked and he'd insisted on filming A Taste of Honey entirely on location and with Lassally as cinematographer." "Things had turned out very well and the film had proved to be popular at the box office, so they were able to work together again on The Long Distance Runner." "Just when the film seems to be getting light and jolly, we have this return to grim reality." "Although we don't see that Colin's father is dead - in fact, we'll see him later, when he haunts Colin in a flashback - it's pretty clear what has happened and it provides useful personal motivation for Colin losing himself in running." "There's an anguish about Courtenay's performance that stems from his personal worries about his mother." "(Courtenay) My mother was very ill in hospital and they wouldn't let me go to Hull to see her because I only had one day off and so, I don't know, the trains and..." "So I didn't see my mother for several weeks and that was quite tough." "I suppose it was part of the spirit of the film." "When the film was shown in Hull, my relations came to a screening and Mother had just died and I think everybody thought... made that connection." "Except it was the father in the film and my mother in life." "Everybody thought I was a runner." "In fact I'm not a very good runner." "But of course, you only do bits of running." "It's not as if I'd run five or six miles straight off." "Just a few hundred yards past the camera, thankfully." "And it said in Time magazine I'd studied Zatopek." "But I didn't." "I... (Laughs)" "I saw some shots of him running and he looked all in and I thought, "That's all right, then." "He was a great runner."" "He always looked as though he was about to expire." "They did tests of me running but we didn't rehearse anything." "In fact, you can see, all of a sudden, I get out of bed to go and do my running and I've got socks on, and then a bit of the running - no socks and rather longer shorts." "That's when they used the tests." "But of course, since they insisted that they were tests, even though they used them in the film, they didn't have to pay me, which I thought was very mean. (Laughs)" "(Murphy) This use of a hand-held camera was something very new in British cinema and regarded with suspicion by critics, who were happy enough to see it in French films but regarded it as something suspiciously flashy when it was used in a British film." "But it is something which is absolutely integral to Richardson's idea of a poetic realist cinema and grows out of the Free Cinema documentaries such as Momma Don't Allow, the film he made in 1955 with Karel Reisz and Walter Lassally about a North London jazz club." "Peter Harcourt, in a rather negative Sight and Sound review, complained, "Instead of subtly evoking a minutely personal" ""yet symptomatic state of mind," ""the film's vision has been narrowed to an examination of a social situation" ""and to the offering of an analysis which rings disquietingly false."" "I haven't been to borstal and I'd be very surprised if Peter Harcourt had, either." "but if you look at good criminal autobiographies, like Mark Benney's Low Company or Frank Norman's Bang to Rights, they seem to have the same sort of aura of resentment, boredom and petty rivalry that Richardson and Sillitoe capture here." "Sillitoe worked hard on his scripts, but tended not to involve himself with the filming." "(Sillitoe) When I finished the script for Karel Reisz," "I said, "Take it, I've finished, I don't want to do any more," ""I don't want to see it again."" "I said the same to Tony but of course that might have been a mistake because I think Tony did a bit of ad-libbing now and again." "Finally, I didn't mind because I was already so deep into another novel" "I couldn't bear to be disturbed." "I went to the set of The Long Distance Runner, they were at Ruxley Towers on the way to Guildford." "And I remember I went down in my ratty little Austin A40 and they were doing the funeral scene with the Rolls-Royce." "And at the end of the afternoon, I decided I'd had enough and I was going, so I had to back my car in order to get out and I backed it straight into the Rolls-Royce and tore a big hole in the side." "And Tony was extremely easy-going about that." "He said, "Don't worry," he said, "we'll get it off the insurance."" "And so I only went on the set once for that." "(Murphy) Colin's mother hardly figures in Sillitoe's original story." "And this sort of tough working-class woman, disrespectful, promiscuous and undeferential to middle-class representatives of authority is something new to British cinema, though I suppose Pat Phoenix's Elsie Tanner was already making a mark in Coronation Street by 1962." "This is Gordon, Colin's mum's fancy man, a flashy salesman type akin to lan Hendry's character in Live Now" " Pay Later and Robert Stephens's in A Taste of Honey." "I think he's rather good, but as far as I can discover, this is his only film role." "Stacy doesn't exist in Sillitoe's story." "There's no rivalry among the borstal boys." "In fact, we don't meet any of them." "Colin is just a natural runner who no one can beat." "Sillitoe's original story is a sort of allegory." "(Sillitoe) Now, I think the theme of the story is one really, you might say, which is about a writer but you can't write about a writer." "So I put my hero into a borstal and all around him, the borstal attitudes were the attitudes of society and what they expected of him and what they expected and hoped that he would believe." "But he fought against it." "He knew, he realized, that the only value is to keep your own integrity." "It was really an extended essay on the integrity of a person in prison, in borstal, or, if you like, the integrity of a writer." "I still regard that story as a kind of signpost for my writing life, for my behavior, for my perceptions." "And I stand by it." "And I simply do not know where it came from but I think the idea must have been that for the first 20 years of my life, I was living in that kind of atmosphere of people going to prison for piddling little reasons." "But anyway, they were going to prison - some of them deserved it." "But I got to know something of their attitudes and it all suddenly boiled up and came out into the Long Distance Runner story." "(Murphy) It was impossible to get this into the film." "Colin has to be a flesh and blood character and is much more fallible and human than the runner in the story." "Not only have you got this subplot with Stacy but there's much more of a relationship between Colin and the governor, who tells us he was a runner himself and thus has something in common with Colin, though class and the law make the gap between them unbridgeable." "Stacy's escape and the canteen riot are attempts to fill out the story." "Sillitoe admits that when he wrote the story he didn't know a great deal about borstals." "(Sillitoe) I'd never been to borstal, I didn't know anything about it." "I'd only heard reports of it and accounts of it from kids who'd been there in my teens." "So in a way I had a bit of chutzpah in setting the thing in a borstal at all but that's the way it came out." "And also, of course, I'd read these reports in this box of books which the British Library sent from Barcelona." "So I had a certain amount of background, you could call it research if you like, but no actual experience." "(Murphy) Of course, this sequence is caricature but it's appropriate caricature and it's based on the reality of the period." "Britain in 1962, just before the Beatles and the Profumo affair, was on the brink of a cultural revolution." "The borstal is still run on the lines of that paternalistic authoritarianism, the more benevolent side of which gave us the welfare state." "So it means the singing of Jerusalem, which is something John Addison, the composer, and Richardson introduced, is very apposite." "(Sillitoe) This singing of Jerusalem, I think is one of the highlights of the film." "It is a bitter irony on the part of the director." "The boys are obviously enjoying it but there's irony within irony." "But at the end of it all, one has to remember that the words are Blake's and this is what gives it that splendidly uplifting..." "One can feel uplifted by it even though the boys are singing it, you think they're deceived, but for some reason in their subconscious, maybe they're not." "It's a very, very profound and problematic statement, that, and I think it was certainly a stroke of genius." "That is entirely Tony's doing." "(Murphy) Stacy's recapture and beating-up not surprisingly upset the censors." "According to Sillitoe... (Sillitoe) Another thing is that I have documents at home concerning the trouble we had with the censor for that film also." "A classic letter which said, among other things, that you couldn't show the screws or the warders kicking Stacy because, well, it wouldn't be very good for the young men who were subsequently to be sent to borstal." "And it certainly wouldn't be good for their parents to think that this went on." "And so on." "A lot of clapped-out, autocratic, Neanderthal ideas, which were still around at that time." "And Tony really very cleverly got around a lot of this stuff." "I notice that often when this film is shown on television, that scene is cut by a few seconds." "But the original film was really very rough indeed and Tony got around it and he did a very good job." "But then, as I say, the doors were opening into the '60s then and we could get away with it." "(Murphy) Indeed, as one of the censors put it," ""I'm sure that screws do kick prisoners from time to time" ""but this kind of thing does suggest to young people" ""who may find themselves in borstal that this is normal treatment" ""and it may cause some concern to their parents."" "This was not a film that was kindly treated by contemporary critics." "There were complaints that it wasn't true to Sillitoe's story and that it was cheaply derivative of the French New Wave films, that it was gimmicky and irresponsible, that it showed that this sort of working-class, realist film" "had run out of steam." "This is blatantly unfair and seriously underestimates the film's achievements." "It certainly has flaws, but visually and structurally the film is inventive and original." "Thanks to the brilliant camerawork of cinematographer Walter Lassally and a fruitful collaboration between Sillitoe and Richardson on the script, it gives the film a proper emotional heart." "(Sillitoe) At the time we were living in a rather large cottagey house in Hertfordshire and I remember cutting up all the scenes and covering the whole floor with these scenes and numbering each scene and going around shifting them one into the other." "It was a very complicated thing but I was hoping to get it right every time I did a reshuffle." "In a sense, one treats a work of that complexity like a symphony." "You have point and counterpoint and reverberations from early on and so on." "But there's something symphonic in the construction and I think, possibly, I ought to give some of the credit to Tony Richardson because we did discuss this alignment quite a lot." "I forget the exact detail of it but I know I had to talk to him about it because again, I don't know how much money we had but it wasn't that much and we had to economize on certain scenes." "(Murphy) Courtenay's sour face here is again grounded in a real situation." "(Courtenay) I remember this shopping day when I didn't have anything to do but go along with the rest of the family and not say anything, just sit there looking fed up." "Of course Tony said, "What are you doing here?"" "They got me out of bed and it was when I was playing Billy Liar in the evening and I could've been having a rest for a day." "I wasn't meant to be called but they called me anyway." "I was just in the background." "I thought, "Gosh, I wish I were in bed,"" "which is what I'm acting when you see me." "(Laughs) Very convincing." "(Murphy) Walter Lassally contributes enormously here." "The lighting gives a real pathos and dignity to this scene." "Lassally was almost unique among British cinematographers of the time in having worked on European films." "He photographed three films for the Greek director Michael Cacoyannis " "A Girl in Black, A Matter of Dignity and Electra and he would go to do Zorba the Greek." "This shot, with Colin running across the horizon, from the dying moon in one corner of the frame to the rising sun in the other, is particularly impressive." "As one contemporary reviewer put it..." ""One marvels at the patience of Mr. Richardson" ""and his wonderful cameraman, Walter Lassally." ""What consultation there must have been" ""of lunar and solar calendars," ""what chapped fingers must have been blown on" ""before they captured that lovely moment."" "Lassally modestly claims it was a bit of luck but it was his flexible, experimental approach which allowed such fortunate accidents to happen." "Far from slavishly copying the French New Wave," "Lassally's adventurous use of fast film stocks, which required very little extra light and could thus be used to film in public places without attracting too much attention, aroused considerable interest among French cinematographers like Raoul Coutard." "Another nice little cameo " "Frank Finlay taking his first step towards a long career as a distinguished character actor." "We're not quite in the Swinging Sixties yet but we're getting there." "In fact there's a similar scene in a railway carriage in A Hard Day's Night." "This is a strange film because thematically it is very bleak but it has an infectious gaiety which makes it much less grim than you would expect." "Though Colin's done his little ritual of burning the pound note for his father, he's pragmatic enough not to burn all the money his mum's given him because it's obviously funding this trip to Skegness." "There's a nice contrast between the two couples." "James Bolam, who's Courtenay's mate here, would team up three years later with Rodney Bewes, who's Courtenay's mate in his next film, Billy Liar, for The Likely Lads, a television series which sort of grows out of these two films." "I think there is a real sense of fun here which reflects that of the filmmaking experience." "Richardson regarded A Taste of Honey and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner as the two films he most enjoyed working on." "And Tom Courtenay appreciated the relaxed way in which Richardson worked." "(Courtenay) I remember the prop man saying," ""You know, if you do any more films, son, they won't be like this, you know." ""You'll have to hit marks, you'll have to do it over and over."" "And I think some of the technicians didn't like the sort of looser way that Tony wanted the film shot." "Of course, it did make it easier for me." "It was done more like doing a documentary, sometimes." "I felt, "Gosh, if I, say, were in a Technicolor film," ""more lighting, more hitting of marks," ""that I would find it very difficult to be spontaneous."" "I think it was easier for me that it was on location, not in the studio." "There's something about the studio that can be very deadening, somehow." "(Murphy) Actually, this isn't Skegness at all." "The beach sequences were filmed at Camber Sands, where Powell and Pressburger have their miraculously saved airman washed up in A Matter of Life and Death." "Lassally's wonderful at this lyrical landscape photography and really deserves more credit than he's received for it." "I think it's interesting that Lassally thought that what was remarkable about Loneliness and A Taste of Honey was not that they deal with working-class people and working-class problems but that they have a very poetic view of them." "As he put it, "It's not at all a strictly realistic view," ""it's very much a romantic view and that's what attracted me to them."" "By poetic and romantic, he doesn't mean that they're fluffily sentimental or not true to life, more that these people, like Colin, who in terms of power and prestige are unimportant, are treated as significant figures" "whose lives are worthy of our sympathy and interest." "There's an echo of Walter Greenwood's 1930s classic Love on the Dole here, where the heroine's brother wins some money on the horses and for a week is able to escape poverty and have a holiday with his girlfriend in Blackpool." "But of course, this time soon passes and they return penniless to a jobless future, with her pregnant." "So, the end of the idyll." "It's not as bad as it was in the '30s, where there's a tragic return to the grim reality of unemployment and poverty." "But we're not yet in the era of Swinging London where if you don't like your life, you just go off and reinvent another." "I think this places the film very well." "This isn't Prime Minister Harold Macmillan telling us we've never had it so good, but it's pretty close, and there's an obvious irony for the two lads who don't seem able to gain access to this new affluence." "All they can do is make a nuisance of themselves to Colin's mum and her lover, Gordon, who do seem to be benefiting a little from the affluent society." "Though I think it's something we would hardly notice now, the censors were as worried about the language used in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner as they were about its moral tone." "According to John Trevelyan, the chief censor," ""The main thing that worried us is that like Alan Sillitoe's previous script" ""for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning," ""there is an excess of what is sometimes called 'language'." ""Once again, he produces the word 'bogger'." ""This word we still find unacceptable." ""There are two other expletives which we also find unacceptable." ""These are 'Christ' or 'for Christ's sake' and 'sod'." ""There are also two other expressions" ""which we must put into the same category." ""These are 'clapped out' and 'caltfart'." ""Apart from these, the world 'bloody' or 'bleedy' is used extensively " ""actually 32 times according to the reader," ""whom I asked to count them." ""'Bastard' is used eleven times," ""'bleeder' and 'bleeding' are used on a few occasions" ""but we would not worry about these." ""I appreciate that Alan Sillitoe wants the dialogue to be the natural speech" ""of the kind of people shown in this film." ""But I would suggest that there should be some reduction nevertheless."" "Again, I think this benefits from being shot on location rather than in a studio." "It's atmospheric and it seems like a real place." "But Lassally's willingness to leave large areas in shadow would have been frowned upon by the old school of cinematographers." "This is quite a serious crime but it's treated like a bit of fun, which the audience is encouraged to condone." "There is a very different ethos here from the social problem films of the period," "Violent Playground, for example, where this sort of behavior would be regarded as juvenile delinquency and a matter of serious concern." "71 pounds five and fourpence ha'penny doesn't sound very much but in 1962 when a good wage for a working man would be 20 pounds a week, it represents a sizeable amount, the equivalent of around 1,000 pounds now," "which is pretty good for an opportunistic bit of petty crime." "Nemesis arrives very quickly." "I think it's important that Colin never gets to enjoy the fruits of his crime." "If he's going to retain our sympathy, if throwing the race is going to seem a legitimate and understandable aim, he has to remain the underdog." "In fact one of the weaknesses of the film is that he has too easy a ride with the other lads at borstal." "We have to feel that he's got a genuine grievance against society." "In the '50s and early '60s, audiences would be used to seeing policemen as sympathetic, avuncular figures, like Jack Warner's Dixon of Dock Green or Jack Hawkins as Gideon of the Yard." "More flawed, troubled characters, such as those played by Stanley Baker in Blind Date and Hell is a City were beginning to appear, and Z Cars sent a sharp wind of realism blowing through the cozy corridors of television police stations." "But we were still seeing crime very much from the policeman's point of view." "It was a very different perspective here." "The police aren't corrupt or brutal or stupid but we're not on their side, we're with Colin, and they are the enemy." "That's something very new." "Although the use of Jerusalem as a sort of comic military march sets a light tone here, the police are ruthlessly thorough in searching the Smiths' flimsy prefab home." "You do get a feeling of hostility and suspicion between the police and what is basically a fairly ordinary working-class family." "(Courtenay) Richard Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy made a huge impression on me because it was the first time I'd seen the class I was born into taken so seriously and described so well." "The New Wave in English film, I think of it more as the last wave." "In fact, the New Wave for me was simply the result of the 1944 Education Act, whereby children of working-class parents could get themselves educated and that's what produced books like The Long Distance Runner, like Billy Liar," "and that for me is what the New Wave was, the product of writers of that generation, and in my case, of actors, who came along because they suited the parts that the writers were writing." "(Murphy) This is a rather odd sequence." "I suppose it's an attempt to give us some insight into Colin's character, though I'm not sure that it really does." "(Courtenay) I remember seeing the play of Look Back in Anger and obviously one was very quickly aware that one was part of something new that was emerging because there were all these working-class boys now at RADA." "But our aspiration was to do the job properly and to learn to speak, you know, without a northern accent." "When I was at school in Hull we listened to Children's Hour and they spoke very well on Children's Hour and one wanted to learn to speak like that because I had this secret ambition to become an actor" "and I felt in order to do that, I'd have to learn to speak properly." "I didn't know the New Wave was around the corner when I had my longing to be an actor when I was at school, I had no idea." "I didn't know that just across the Pennines there was a lad called Albert Finney." "(Murphy) This scene probably works better in the film, where the criminal activity is all very jokey, than it does in the story, where Colin is much more like a professional thief, so you'd expect him to be less careless." "Though you do have to bear in mind that in these one-story prefabs that were put up during the housing crisis after the war and were still being used 40 years later, there aren't many places where you can hide anything" "and the police know them all." "So we're back on the run." "This has all been flashback but flashback handled in such a way that it eases the story forward rather than just plonking us back in the present." "Redgrave's governor is impossibly pompous but there's something almost endearing about him." "He seems to represent a last dying gasp of a middle-class belief that they can sort out the problems of the lower orders, civilize them and turn them away from criminal behavior." "This is all rather contrived and it seems a bit haphazard that Colin is now the daddy, the top guy." "But the sequence is necessary to remind us that if Colin does go along with the governor's plan to help him break out of the criminal working class and become a professional runner, he is being untrue to his roots and letting down his mates." "Finally, we've got to the race." "This character, Craig, is played by Ray Austin, who'd worked as a stuntman on Hitchcock's North By Northwest and went on to direct films like Virgin Witch and 1,000 Convicts and a Woman before becoming a well-respected television director." "It seems a bit unlikely and contrived now, this competition between a public school and a borstal, but it's true to its time." "There's a similar sequence in We Are the Lambeth Boys, the documentary directed by Richardson's friend Karel Reisz in 1958, where the rough boys from the Lambeth youth club travel up to the leafy suburbs of North London" "for a cricket match with a public school team from Mill Hill." "It's all very gentlemanly but there's obviously a lot of suppressed tension which finds release on the journey home in the back of a truck, when the Lambeth boys are very rowdily high-spirited." "This is James Fox in his first role." "His father was a very well-connected agent, Robin Fox, and he was extremely annoyed with Richardson for encouraging his son, who he thought had no acting talent whatsoever, to neglect his career in banking." "Two years later, he was starring with Dirk Bogarde in The Servant and at the end of the decade, he made his startling transformation into a psychopathic gangster in Performance." "(Sillitoe) I think the fact that The Long Distance Runner was a short story interested Tony quite a lot and enabled him to play around in a kind of symphonic way." "He did the more or less Yiddish tactic of straying from the main plotline and he did it very well." "Whereas Karel had a completely clean line all through the movie, very attractive in its way." "But Tony Richardson maneuvered the scenes quite a lot and interleaved them, placed them here, placed them there." "There was a different approach." "It may have been the approach of perfidious Albion of Tony, who got them all in a very complicated mess and then straightened them out, but not too much, otherwise the point would've been lost." "Whereas Karel was clear and concise." "The fact is that obviously," "The Long Distance Runner wasn't going to have same impact as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning because it followed in its wake, which is proved, perhaps, by the fact that it took ten years before it went into profit." "But on the other hand it is a, still, perhaps, a much more complicated film." "After the film was made, I met many people and they said to me, why did you have him lose the race?" "They were bemused." "But I felt that if I had given more voiceover and more of the poetics, as it were, of Tom Courtenay's narration," "I think they might not have asked that question." "Now, the people who said to me that they were rather puzzled," "I think they lacked a certain perception, they lacked a certain attitude of sympathy, so that they couldn't see it." "(Murphy) One wonders if these flashbacks, where we see more of Colin's dead father, more of Stacy being beaten up, were a deliberate effort by Richardson to sneak things past the censor." "Whether they were or not, they work in the film as an insight into Colin's imagination as he comes to his decision about what he'll do in the race." "Alan Sillitoe thought that if there'd been more voiceover people might've been less perplexed about why Colin throws the race." "In the story, he goes over and over again why he has to do so." "But I think it's there in Courtenay's performance, despite his claim that he doesn't really understand Colin." "The smile, rather than any angry gesture of defiance, is really what defines Courtenay's characterization of Colin but it almost didn't make it into the film." "(Courtenay) For such a famous moment, it happened in rather an unusual way." "It was on the day of the race and Tony was filming something else with Michael Redgrave." "And someone else was just in charge of the camera while I was standing having done the race." "And so I did my little smile and Tony hove into view and saw this little smile, he said, "Don't smile."" "And so I stopped." "Then when he saw the rushes he thought that little smile was rather good but it was a complete accident." "(Murphy) It's a sad end to the film but not a depressing one because, paradoxically, Colin's achieved what he set out to do." "The late Raymond Durgnat, one of the few British critics to sympathetically assess" "Tony Richardson's films, argues that, like Charles Dickens, his aim is combine simple social messages with a wealth of dramatic complexity." "In The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, where Richardson has the benefit of a good script, a brilliant cameraman and a fine cast, that mixture is enriched by sincerity and emotional truth which makes the film as moving to watch now" "as it was 40 years ago."