Editing This Sporting Life (section)

==Production==
===Background===
''This Sporting Life'' was Anderson's first feature film as director, though he had made numerous short documentaries in the previous fifteen years, and even [[Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film|won an Oscar]] for 1954's ''[[Thursday's Children]]''. The film had first been discussed by [[The Rank Organisation]] as a possible project for [[Joseph Losey]], and then [[Karel Reisz]], who, reluctant to direct another film with a similar setting and theme to ''[[Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (film)|Saturday Night and Sunday Morning]]'' (1960), suggested that Anderson direct it, with himself serving as producer.

===Casting===
Among the film's supporting cast is [[William Hartnell]], who shortly afterwards began his role as [[First Doctor|the first Doctor Who]]; it was his role in ''This Sporting Life'' that brought Hartnell to the attention of ''[[Doctor Who]]''-producer [[Verity Lambert]]. The film also features [[Arthur Lowe]], who would go on to star in ''[[Dad's Army]]'' and appear in four later films directed by Anderson. In addition, [[Edward Fox (actor)|Edward Fox]], [[Anton Rodgers]], and [[Bryan Mosley]] appear as uncredited extras.

===Filming locations===
Many of the scenes in ''This Sporting Life'' were filmed at [[Belle Vue (Wakefield)|Belle Vue]], the home stadium of [[Wakefield Trinity]], and [[Thrum Hall]], the home stadium of [[Halifax R.L.F.C.|Halifax]]. The scene where Frank ([[Richard Harris]]) leaps from a bus to buy a newspaper, and then leaps back onto the bus, was filmed at the top of [[Westgate (Wakefield)|Westgate]], [[Wakefield]]. The location is still instantly recognisable, and has changed little in the decades since. The houses used for filming the outdoor scenes in ''This Sporting Life'' were in Servia Terrace in [[Leeds]].{{Citation needed|date=May 2008}} The riverside location where Frank takes Margaret and her family for an outing in his new car is [[Bolton Priory]] in the [[Yorkshire Dales]].

===Editing===
[[Anthony Sloman]] wrote about the film's editing:
{{blockquote|By 1963 the British New Wave had beached, and [[Peter Taylor (film editor)|Peter Taylor]] edited the superb ''This Sporting Life'', the début feature of the cine-literate director Lindsay Anderson. It is a remarkable study of [[working class]] angst, with a cutting style like no other British feature before it, an ever-underrated achievement by Taylor.<ref name="Sloman">Sloman, Tony (1998). [http://cinescale.20m.com/obit1.html "Obituary: Peter Taylor"], ''The Independent'', 6 January 1998. Online version retrieved 8 April 2008.</ref>}}

Another description of the editing says:
{{blockquote|From the start, Lindsay Anderson and his editor Peter Taylor show a determination to pursue a flashback-based narrative using bold-cut transitions. ... Cut-transitions link these plangent and understated images together in way that seems to demand that their meanings be understood. It is an important restatement of the way that image-driven filmmaking engages the spectator.<ref name="Fairservice">Fairservice, Don (2001). [https://books.google.com/books?id=s-ng9Ez6KgEC ''Film Editing: History, Theory, and Practice: Looking at the Invisible''] (Manchester University Press), p. 316. {{ISBN|0-7190-5777-9}}. Online version retrieved April 13, 2008.</ref>}}

===Direction===
Anderson wrote in his diary on 23 April 1962, after the first month or so of production: "the most striking feature of it all, I suppose, has been the splendour and misery of my work and relationship with Richard". He felt that Harris was acting better than ever before in his career, but feared his feelings for Harris, whose combination of physicality, affection and cruelty fascinated him, meant that he lacked the detachment he needed as a director, continuing: "I ought to be calm and detached with him. Instead I am impulsive, affectionate, infinitely susceptible."<ref>[http://www.is.stir.ac.uk/libraries/collections/anderson/TransRHTSL.php Diary entry, 23 April 1962, on Richard Harris and the making of This Sporting Life (LA 6/1/33)], Anderson Collection, [[University of Stirling]]; Paul Sutton (ed) ''The Diaries of Lindsay Anderson'', 2004, London: Methuen, p75</ref>