Awards & Honors

Among the honors received by The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner was BAFTA Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles Award to Tom Courtenay

Mar del Plata Film Festival (Argentina) Best Actor Award for Tom Courtenay

The film was rated #61 in the British Film Institute's Top 100 British films

Critic Reviews:THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER

"It is the very anti-style, the skill at applying all kinds of techniques to all kinds of circumstances, that makes me inclined to think Richardson is the finest director working in Britain today. I have seen no better British film since his last [A Taste of Honey (1961)]. - Films and Filming, November 1962

"Speeded-up movement, jump-cuts, bits of business with a hat and a typewriter, the interview with the psychiatrist, even if such borrowings were justifiable they would still have to work themselves in a way they certainly don't here. And anyway, where is Richardson's own style?" - Monthly Film Bulletin, November 1962

"Mr. Sillitoe and the director, Tony Richardson, have thrown out a few general clues. They have gone into clear and vivid details about the depressing life of their boy, and they have laced these into the sequence of the drama in a most artful way as his free-flowing recollections while he is out on lonely morning training runs. ... In all these strongly pictured details, sympathy is directed to the boy, who is played with extraordinary sharpness and nervous energy by Tom Courtenay. On the other hand, they have managed in a very creditable but clearly angled way to expose the masters of the reform school as sadists, incompetents or snobs. ... While this show of compassion may not sit comfortably with those who distrust social agitation and too easy sympathy, it must be said that a splendid presentation is made by Mr. Richardson. His film has a vivid, compelling air of reality, an attractive compression of details and an exciting cinematic flow. He has the all-seeing camera instinct of the new British "documentary" school, which overlays ugliness of background with foreground beauty of character and poetry." - Bosley Crowther, New York Times, October 9, 1962

"Richardson's fluid, imaginative direction is helped considerably via some superb photography by Lassally.... Borstal atmosphere appears to have been captured accurately and so are most of the drab urban scenes." - Variety, October 3, 1962

"Thin, slight, and wiry, Courtenay gave off an oddly effective blend of shuffling shyness and brooding intensity, with a decidedly plain, high-cheekboned face marked with large, sunken eyes and a small, downcast mouth. ... A major part of Courtenay's success as Colin springs from his freshness of character and his lack of mannerism." - Jerry Vermilye, The Great British Films (Citadel press, 1980)

"Chariots of Bile. Even in this softened-up version, Time found the hero 'prolier-than-thou'. Most of the period hallmarks of the British New Wave are paraded here. The disaffected hero treats us to Hoggartian interior monologues and climbs the nearest hill so that we can see the hopeless urban sprawl--Nottingham, in this case--laid out like his future. He gets the obligatory lyrical day off, a bracing trip to Skegness. Courting couples snog beside the barbed wire, and there's no shortage of editing between lads being flogged and choirs singing 'Jerusalem'. The general thrust is that Britain provides no sustenance for the working class soul, and consumerism spearheaded by telly comes in for some stick. It all seems a long time ago." - Brian Case, Time Out Film Guide, 2000

"The counter-Hollywood bloody-mindedness packs a knockout punch." - Peter Bradshaw, Guardian, October 2002

"The film, with its grim Nottingham setting and working class milieu, must have seemed fresh in its day. Now, though, it looks and sounds like a relic from a bygone era. Still compelling, however, is Tom Courtenay's powerful central performance as the film's defiant hero, Colin Smith--could his name be any prolier? ... Courtenay is superb as the cunning and rebellious Colin, while the talented supporting cast is peppered with familiar faces, including a young John Thaw." - Stephen Applebaum, BBC film site, Oct 4, 2002

by Rob Nixon