Back on the big screen are two of the most significant British films of the 1960s, both based on highly regarded novels, drawing on local talents behind and in front of the camera, and in their integration of past and present setting new standards in editing.
The Rank Organisation bought David Storey's This Sporting Life (1963) as a subject for Joseph Losey, who would probably have cast Stanley Baker as the tough rugby league star who can't penetrate the emotional defences of a Yorkshire miner's widow. In the event, Lindsay Anderson got the chance to make his feature debut directing Richard Harris and Rachel Roberts in these roles and making the last and best movie of the British New Wave.
Harris won best actor at Cannes, but lost out to Dirk Bogarde in the Bafta awards as the lead in Losey's The Servant, which opened within weeks of This Sporting Life and like Harold Pinter's Accident there is a homoerotic subtext and the film lost money.