A Michael Redgrave jag from The Lady Vanishes (1938). Produced and directed by Tony Richardson from a script that Alan Sillitoe derived from his own short story. In black-and-white. In two sittings due to a lack of grip.
Abiding post-war privation in 1960s Nottingham yields an idle, youthful Tom Courtenay up to a borstal (juvie) for unsurprising reasons that are uncovered later on. (Even the TV set comes in for suspicion.) Some G-rated antics with the house leader does not impede the governor (Redgrave) taking a shine to him, given his promise as (wait for it) a cross-country runner. There's not much hope on offer (maybe a whiff of happily-for-a-while with squeeze Topsy Jane, she of few aspirations) and even those are squelched by an ending that denies things as prosaic as class solidarity.
The cinematography is very workmanlike, perhaps due to budget limitations. It generally functions as a time capsule. Not as pointy as other English social-realist projects of the era (e.g. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960). Mostly grim with the odd flash of (gallows) humour. The psychologist came in for a tepid shellacking.
Bosley Crowther. Like The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1972) the title is better than the movie. He struggled with the accents.
