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Albert Finney is an angry young man out for himself in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning |
Director: Karel Reisz
Cast: Albert Finney (Arthur Seaton), Shirley Anne Field
(Doreen), Rachel Roberts (Brenda), Hylda Baker (Aunt Ada), Norman Rossington
(Bert), Bryan Pringle (Jack), Edna Morris (Mrs Bull), Elsie Wagstaff (Mrs
Seaton), Fran Pettitt (Mr Seaton)
Whatever people say I
am, that’s what I’m not because they don’t know a bloody thing about me! … What
I’m out for is a good time – all the rest is propaganda. – Arthur Seaton
The 1960s saw a cultural shift in British cinema. Prior to
this, most British films were either Ealing-style comedies or dramas focused on
the middle or upper classes. When the working classes did appear, they were
usually scamps or “ever so ‘umble”. This all changed in the 1960s with the emergence
of “kitchen sink” dramas. The New Wave of British Cinema had arrived – films
that looked at the real lives and issues of the working classes, that dared to
present the working man (and it generally was men) as a living, breathing human
being (warts and all) rather than some sort of latter-day Shakespearean comic
turn.
Arthur Seaton (Albert Finney) is a skilled, well-paid worker
in a bicycle factory in Nottingham. He’s also your quintessential “angry young
man”, contemptuous of his fellow workers, adamantly opposed to being told what
to do with his life and only interested in a hedonistic life where he does
whatever he wants. As Arthur begins a relationship with aspirant young woman
Doreen (Shirley Anne Field), his life is complicated by the wife of a fellow
worker, Brenda (Rachel Roberts), whom he’s sleeping with, announcing she’s
pregnant.
Saturday Night and
Sunday Morning caused such a sensation when it was released. But it’s such
a strong capturing of a particular time and moment that it’s hard to look at it
today without seeing it as a little bit dated, or finding it hard to work out
what all the fuss was about. But Arthur Seaton seemed to capture the mood of
generation – and that’s a credit to Alan Sillitoe’s excellent
(semi-autobiographical) script, based on his own novel.
Albert Finney gives the part a forceful, primal aggression
that seems to capture the spirit of the age. He constantly bubbles with
ill-directed resentment, mixed with cynicism and a beery oafishness. He isn’t a
“faux” intellectual, like a Jimmy Porter, or a man striving to move up the
greasy pole. He’s a chippy, arrogant, slightly lazy man with no interest in
self-improvement. He’s also a horrendously selfish character, interested only
in his own pleasure – I think it goes without saying his treatment of women
doesn’t stand up well. Tied of being preached at about the sacrifices of the
war generation (who surround him in the factory), he merely wants to do what he
wants, when he wants. Despite his flaws, he seemed to capture the feelings of a
post-war generation.
The film was also unique for the themes it addressed. It was
pretty much unheard-of for a film to even mention the possibility of abortion.
It tackled issues of adultery and pre-marital sex (it’s one of the first films
to show a man and woman waking up in the morning in bed together). Its lead
character drinks, swears (as much as allowed by the censors) and even takes pot
shots at neighbours he doesn’t like with an air gun. All of this of course
seems rather tame now – but at the time, it was radical to see someone like
this, behaving like this, on screen.
The plot, such as it is, is as aimless in many ways as
Arthur himself. Not a lot happens in the film, apart from Arthur constantly
pushing to not “let the bastards grind you down”. Of course all the pain in the
story actually comes from Arthur’s own actions, not least to Brenda, his
occasional mistress. Rachael Roberts is sensational as Brenda – the finest
performance in the film – a slightly faded former glamour girl, now older,
lonely and whose appeal to Arthur (and his appeal to her) seems as much
maternal as it does sexual. Brenda’s a tragic figure, clinging to a fantasy of
a life free from her dull husband – but slowly (and sadly) learning that she is
looking for something from Arthur he can never give her.
By contrast, Arthur’s other conquest, Doreen, is a far more
assured, determined and ambitious woman, closer to his own age. Shirley Anne
Field is playful and charming, but in her own way as much besotted with Arthur’s
rootless masculinity as Brenda. Unlike Brenda though, she is a determined to
get what she wants. Arthur and she eventually seem set to settle down for
domesticity on a new-build council estate, a decision Arthur seems to resign
himself to (he flings a stone impotently at the new houses, but barely seems to
understand why). Even this relationship reinforces Arthur’s emptiness – his
aimless rebellion lands him eventually in the very conventional lifestyle he
spent the rest of the film pushing back against.
Karel Reisz shoots all this with a documentary realism.
Freddie Francis’ brilliant photography gives a new wave, neo-realist romance to
the Nottingham streets that reinforces the feeling that we are watching a real
slice of life. Of course, today much of this revelatory impact of this is lost
– we’ve seen these sort of dramas too many times. Arthur’s rebellion is so ill
focused – and his attitudes bordering so heavily on the misogynistic – that
it’s a lot harder to sympathise with him today than it would have been back
then. However, it captures a moment of history, and a feeling many young people
at the time had – that the world they were presented with just didn’t match up
with what they wanted from life. A dated classic, but still an important piece
of film making.
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