Why are the best Tennis movies about murder? A simple enough question; because Tennis is boring to watch. Except that’s just not true, or at least not in my eyes. Most people however find Tennis to be a dull sport. If you the reader similarly hold this opinion than I will direct you immediately to any of the Federer finals at Wimbledon, or any of the other numerous extremely watchable Tennis matches from across the years. This led me to start thinking about Tennis in film and why there isn’t a laundry list of great Tennis movies, such as there is with baseball or other such sports like Boxing. Pick a sport and you can pull out about five or so arguably great movies based around the world of it, and even the outside choices like ice hockey still get their Slapshot’s. So what about Tennis?
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Just take a look at the terrible crop of films we get for Tennis. Wimbledon, a bland and unfunny romantic comedy, with no romance and no comedy. Borg Vs McEnroe, a disappointing docu-drama, with no drama and not enough documentary efficiency. Battle of the sexes, a similarly disappointingly dull film, with some good moments, but an overall wet lettuce nature about it. So I return to my first point; the best Tennis movies are about murder, not Tennis. We’ll start with the film where Tennis is fundamentally important and actually needed for the plot, and not something that could be lifted and replaced with any other pass-time.
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Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 thriller classic, Strangers on a Train is pure Hitchcock. This black and white startlingly thriller, starring the underrated Farley Granger and the marvellous and devilish Robert Walker as Bruno Antony, fulfilling (if not a faithful adaptation of Patricia High smith’s original novel) certainly all of the conniving and mystery of the text. Hitchcock elevates the terror and suspense of the novel into the cinematic plain with effortless flare and even makes a game of tennis as tensely unbearable as a climatic chase. The carousel scene remains for me Hitchcock’s tour de force in the medium and his greatest set piece of all time. The film is witty, darkly humorous and unnerving to no end. A true classic of the medium. But more importantly for our article today Tennis is intrinsic. There is an extended sequence featuring one of Guy Haines’s (Farley Granger) Tennis matches, where Haines needs to complete the game as soon as possible as so to avert the planting of criminal evidence to... Just watch the film, it’s great. But the Tennis is key! But it’s still not a Tennis movie. Baseball is all throughout Field of Dreams, Baseball is all throughout The Natural. Tennis is not all throughout Strangers , in fact it’s merely circumstantial. I want long scenes in changing rooms talking about the game, I want drama on the court (for more than a scene). Strangers teases me, but doesn’t leave my filmic Tennis need fulfilled. We move to our other choice, which has even LESS to do with Tennis, but is arguably a better film.
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Woody Allen’s 2005 Drama-psychological-thriller Match Point serves us some of what we need for this article, but leaves it behind after almost the first shot. There is a flirtatious scene of teaching, but it’s TABLE-tennis being taught, which is better than Badminton, but not at all what we want here! Allen leaves the Tennis behind to make instead a marvellous film with its basis in obsession, jealousy and murder, rather than tramlines, serving and ball-boys. The twisting tale follows Jonathon Rhys Meyers at his most devilish and evil (perhaps an embodiment of a bit of Guy Haines and a bit of Bruno Anthony), as his own jealous needs lead to a string of murders and an ever-entangling web of deceit. We ruminate on love, lust and our place in the world and what fate has to do with it all. Allen posits through Chris Wilton (Meyers) that Tennis and life is all based on luck and fate as he beautifully illuminates with two matching slo-mo shots focussing on two very different objects. Similarly to my above comment... Just watch the film, it’s great. Here Allen employs another sturdy supporting cast featuring stand-outs from Emily Mortimer, Brian Cox and Mathew Goode. With more great work from Penelope Wilton, James Nesbitt, Ewen Bremner and Steve Pemberton. But Johansson steals the show as the seductress Nola Rice, so sultry and attractive that we consider all of Wilton’s (Chris, not Penelope) actions for far longer than we ever should. This is another film in the lineage of Allen’s based in the world of Dostoyefksy’s Crime and Punishment, for it seems that Allen is more interested into larger philosophical ideas about fate and the justifiability of murder and killing, rather than the on the court politics of some posh British ponces. Sure, maybe it is more interesting and maybe the film is certainly better for it. But who knows; maybe an all Tennis Allen movie would be better, it certainly wouldn’t be terrible – the man really has always struggled to make pure sh*t.
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The only other great Tennis movie is a 50 min HBO mockumentary, entitled 7 Days in Hell following an epic tennis match between Andy Samberg as a Tennis bad boy hooligan and Kit Harrington as a pseudo Andy Murray overly posh mummy’s boy. A very funny farce, but not feature length enough for me to rank along with the other choices, but all the same I thought it deserved a mention.
I long for an alternate universe where in the mid 70’s William Goldman wrote a Tennis drama-comedy for Paul Newman mentoring Robert Redford to a win at an open. Maybe directed by Mike Nichols, with an Elaine May or Nora Ephron touch-up on the script (not that a Goldman script would need it). Then have Jessica Lange or Susan Sarandon for the love interest, or even bring Katherine Ross onboard for a true Butch Cassidy reunion. Call it On the Line and you have a possible masterpiece. But alas, such things cannot be. How unfortunate, cause that film does genuinely sound absolutely brilliant.
-Thomas Carruthers
P.S. But also, not to be cute about my choices, but Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale may very well be the best movie about Tennis of all time, with its references, it's scenes of actual tennis and it's glorious, glorious dialogue.
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