Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1963

The Contenders:

Patricia Neal: Hud (winner)
Shirley MacLaine: Irma la Douce
Natalie Wood: Love with a Proper Stranger
Leslie Caron: the L-Shaped Room
Rachel Roberts: This Sporting Life

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1963

The Contenders:

Rex Harrison: Cleopatra
Paul Newman: Hud
Sidney Poitier: Lilies of the Field (winner)
Richard Harris: This Sporting Life
Albert Finney: Tom Jones

The World is Full of Angry Young Men

Films: This Sporting Life
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

Sometimes, you can see a progression of a particular type of movie across the years. In the case of This Sporting Life, there is a line that starts in a movie like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, goes directly through this, and ends at Raging Bull. It’s almost impossible to watch This Sporting Life and not see the influence both on Scorsese and on De Niro’s portrayal of Jake La Motta. Sure, the sport in this case is rugby rather than boxing, but the personalities are similar in a lot of ways.

Frank Machin (Richard Harris) is a coal miner in Yorkshire who picks a fight with some local rugby players one night at a bar. This aggressiveness is a prized commodity on the rugby pitch, and he’s recruited by the local team. Frank soon becomes a rising star on the rugby team, changing his lifestyle at least in terms of available money if not in his actual surroundings.