This Sporting Life

This Sporting Life is a 1963 British kitchen sink drama film directed by Lindsay Anderson. Based on the 1960 novel of the same name by David Storey, which won the 1960 Macmillan Fiction Award, it recounts the story of a rugby league footballer, Frank Machin, in Wakefield, a mining city in Yorkshire, whose romantic life is not as successful as his sporting life. Storey, a former professional rugby league footballer, also wrote the screenplay. The film stars Richard Harris, Rachel Roberts, William Hartnell and Alan Badel. The film was Harris's first starring role, and won him the Best Actor Award at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival. He was also nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Roberts won her second BAFTA award and received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Harris was nominated for the BAFTA that year as well. The film opened at the Odeon Leicester Square in London's West End on 7 February 1963. Plot Set in the fictional city of City, the film is about Frank Machin (Harris), a bitter young coal miner from the West Riding of Yorkshire. The first part of the story is told through a series of flashbacks when Frank is unconscious under a full anaesthetic in a dentist’s chair, having had his front teeth broken in a rugby league match. The second part takes place after the dentist has extracted his broken teeth. Following a nightclub altercation, in which Frank takes on the captain of the local rugby league club and punches a couple of the others, he is recruited by the team's manager, who sees profit in his aggressive streak.