- Home
- Seasons
- O Dreamland! Lindsay Anderson’s Dark British Cinema
- This Sporting Life
This Sporting Life
Richard Harris gives a ferociously powerful performance as a coal mining rugby player battling demons in Lindsay Anderson’s complex and gritty debut feature.
![](/ArticleMedia/Images/WhatsOn%20images/20240405/this-sporting-life-01.jpeg)
-
Director
Lindsay Anderson
-
With
Richard Harris, Rachel Roberts, Alan Badel, William Hartnell
-
UK 1963. 134min
-
35mm (1 and 15 May) + Digital (23 May)
-
Certificate
12A
Impacting with a visceral power right from its opening scene, Anderson’s debut feature marked the first film in his long collaboration with David Storey, who adapted his own novel about a rugby player whose macho brutishness masks a vulnerability and repressed yearning for his landlady. Fed by his own complicated feelings towards his star, Anderson guided Richard Harris to a performance that saw him hailed as ‘Britain’s Brando’. It’s an ’Angry Young Man’ classic.
![](https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/ArticleMedia/Images/lff21/misc/bacurau-01.jpg)
BFI Membership
Become a BFI Member from £39 to enjoy priority booking as well as other great benefits all year round.
Join today![](/content/Images/WhatsOn%20images/202402/25-and-under-560x315-2024-02.jpg)
![](/content/Images/features/bfi-imax-bond-wrap-september-2021.jpeg)
![](/ArticleMedia/Images/WhatsOn%20images/20231011/scrapper-01.jpg)