Motion pictures

What have Alan Sillitoe, novelist and gritty chronicler of working-class life, who died at the weekend, and Michael Mann, big-screen film-maker and gritty chronicler of Americana on the edge, got in common? Each have been responsible for a great movie about running. Sillitoe’s short story ‘The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner’ (1959) was made into a pioneering piece of British new-wave cinema three years later by Tony Richardson, and Michael Mann’s made-for-TV Jericho Mile is still a fantastic piece of sporting drama. What is it about running that captures artists, especially film-makers, and why — since Loneliness and This Sporting Life in 1963 — have we made only one other decent movie about sport in this country (the mighty Chariots of Fire)?

Loneliness packed a mighty punch at the time, though it might feel like being hit over the head with a copy of Socialist Worker now. But you can’t forget that superb ending as Tom Courtenay’s borstal boy Colin stops just yards from the finishing tape in the race against the local public school, Ranley.