The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962)

Bearing all the hallmarks of the British New Wave (and owing a sizable debt to the French New Wave), The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner captured the bitterness and resentment that characterized the "angry young man" in the British post-war landscape. Relentlessly grim and uncompromising in its condemnation of the ruling class, the film and its hero are at times hard to take. But if the film is threatened by self-righteous tendencies, it is ultimately redeemed by genuine rage and defiance. When Colin throws the Borstal's race against the public school boys, he aims a well-placed slap to the face of the establishment, and it resounds with stinging accuracy. Making his striking screen debut as Colin, Tom Courtenay became another of the rising number of film actors whose unconventional features did not conform to the glamorous standards of pre-war cinema; rough and surly, his face was perfect for communicating the barren hopelessness intrinsic to New Wave portrayals of the oppressed working class. Rather than simmer with pre-meditated rage, he just doesn't care, and his rebellion, when it comes, seems wrought more out of a sneer than a shout. The silent, unforced anger of Colin's actions is disquieting, capturing the all-encompassing disgust that marked a new generation of young men who, after looking back in anger, faced the future with nihilistic abandon. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide