Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, The (1962)

Rebellious youth Colin Smith (Tom Courtenay in his screen debut) is sentenced to Ruxton Towers, a boy’s reformatory, for robbing a bakery. There, he rises through the ranks of the institution through his prowess as a long-distance runner.

During his solitary runs, reveries of his life and times before his incarceration lead him to re-evaluate his privileged status as the Governor’s prize runner.

As he runs across the countryside, he achieves a peak of exhilaration until all the happiest moments of his predominantly sad life are racing through his mind.

He recalls his mother (Avis Bunnage) spending the £500 that his father’s employers gave her when he died; his weekend trip to Skegness with his girlfriend Audrey (Topsy Jane), his friend Mike (James Bolam) and Mike’s girl Gladys (Julia Foster); the fun of breaking into a bakery with Mike . . .

But all of Colin’s best times began or ended badly. The £500 was, after all, a miserable reward for his father’s lifetime of sweated labour and death of cancer in their shabby pre-fab. The golden weekend by the sea was over, and they had never managed to repeat it. The bakery job had landed him in Borstal.

Colin is an embittered delinquent who nihilistically rejects everything around him, much like Arthur Seaton in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1961). The story of his refusal to fit into the pattern of ‘model prisoner’ or ‘consumer’ is well conveyed by director Tony Richardson and the scenes which follow Colin’s runs through the woods are beautifully shot.

While the film represents class through the use of stereotypes – such as the ‘progressive’ prison governor (Michael Redgrave) and the patronising employer – it remains as powerful and relevant today as it ever was.

Colin Smith
Tom Courtenay
Mrs Smith 
Avis Bunnage
Gordon 
Raymond Dyer
Governor 
Michael Redgrave
Housemaster (Brown) 
Alec McCowen
Mike 
James Bolam
Roach 
Joe Robinson
Audrey 
Topsy Jane
Gladys 
Julia Foster
Green 
John Brooking
Ronalds 
John Bull
Mr Jones 
James Cairncross
Detective 
Dervis Ward
Doctor 
Peter Duguid
Gunthorpe 
James Fox
Johnny Smith 
William Ash Hammond
Scott 
Peter Kriss
Mr Smith 
Peter Madden
Stacy 
Philip Martin
Craig 
Arthur Mullard
Bill Smith 
Christopher Parker
Fenton 
Anthony Sagar
Bosworth 
John Thaw
Tory Politician 
Robert Percival

Director 
Tony Richardson