Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is one of a group of so called 'kitchen sink dramas' which dominated British cinema in the early sixties. What these films brought to the screen for the first time were realistic portrails of British and in particular English working class life. This to my mind was the golden age of British film making with pictures like, This Sporting Life, Billy Liar, A Kind of Loving, Alfie, Up the Junction and Kess showing ordinary people struggling to make the best of their lot. This mood was also reflected on British TV with shows like Z Cars, Play for Today and even the early Coronation Street.
The best of this genre is Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. One thing most of these films have in common is that the hero trys to escape the limitation of his working class background. In A Kind of Loving the hero escapes into music and the middle class, In Kes, Billy Kasper escapes his hopeless situation by training and flying his hawk. In this film however Arthur Seaton (Albert Finney) sees no point in getting out. All he wants from life is to earn enough money to spend his weekends drinking and chasing women. Not that Arthur is unintelligent he just sees everything in life, politics, ambition and married life as phoney. Arthur wants to remain free of society's demand to comform either to marriage or to moving on and 'bettering himself'
Rachel Roberts and Shirley Ann Fields give great performances as Arthur's love or rather sex interest and Albert Finney is perfect as the cynical Arthur Seaton. The film ends with Arthur accepting marriage to Doreen (Fields) but telling her not to expect him to confirm all the time ( It will not be the last stone I will throw.)
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning captures a certain time and place and for any American viewers who want to know, is it an accurate a portrail of working class sixties England? I can assure them that it is.
Apart from those films about Britain's Asian communities, no British film today shows the British working class with making out that all it contains are thieves, druggies and gangsters.
The only exception being Mike Leigh's work.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is a gem. A product of it's time and a piece of social history on a par with Dickens.
Great acting, uninspired story
Finney is one of the great actors of his era, and the overall quality of acting in this film is excellent. But I find the story uninspired. A much better Brit film from this period, with some of same cast as Sat Night, is This Sporting Life.
Ultimate example of British Free Cinema
Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson joined forces and created the most representative film about life in Englandâs industrial north of the 60âs. Albert Finney will always be remembered for his powerful performance as a young factory worker who rebels against his humdrum life and the social establishments. This characteristic British Free Cinema film is a must for any serious film collection. Poor DVD packaging though. Noextras whatsoever, unfortunately.
Simone Signoret won the best actress Oscar for her portrayal of an unhappily married woman who, clutching at a last chance at happiness, falls head over heals in love with a fiery, social climbing schemer from the North Country. It really is an astounding performance - sensitive, sensual, and eloquent and also heartbreaking in its emotional ferocity.
Indeed, Room At The Top is a ferocious film, full of angry, dissolute people who are still shell-shocked, benumbed, and staggering from world War 11. Post war British society was in tatters, poverty was rife, and the upper classes were desperately trying to hang into life of pre-war privilege. Out of this bitter realization, emerged a generation of broken, angry young men who stepped out into a world that no longer had unlimited... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Simone Signoret - Laurence Harvey Director(s): Jack Clayton DVD Release Date: Released the 07 December 1999 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This film is an abomination. I don't fault Burton, Malcolm MacDowell couldn't carry the remake either. The problem is the tireseome cliches of the social realist author, using the characters as mouthpieces for DEEP (and predictably painful) TRUTHS. If there are people who talk and behave as these characters do, one would do everything in one's power to avoid them. Pitiful, angry, self-indulgent, foolish people. The film unintentionally presaged (and was itself an example of) the age of utter self-indulgence and perpetual self-analysis that has eventually swamped us. It belongs with the swill in the self-help section. One can easily imagine Burton's character as the macho leader of a social movement to right all wrongs, while he can barely manage to feed himself. More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Richard Burton - Claire Bloom Director(s): Tony Richardson DVD Release Date: Released the 11 December 2001 Usually ships within 24 hours
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That line occurs in the play, I believe, but not in the film. Or did I miss it? In any case, it doesn't really matter, since this is a production where the brilliance of the writing is only matched by the brilliance of the performance. I defy anyone to watch this merciless analysis of national character, at a particular moment in British history, and remain unscathed. It is painfully true, and painfully ugly. The war had been won, but everything else was lost. At the time the play was written, it seemed that nothing remained, bar grimy exhaustion. By 1960, however, spirits were recovering. The work remains a historic document, recording the bleakest and most bitter hour. This is certainly one of the purest records ever committed to posterity, and anyone interested in knowing what things... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Laurence Olivier - Brenda De Banzie Director(s): Tony Richardson DVD Release Date: Released the 19 June 2001 Usually ships within 24 hours
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Julie Christie's miracle year of 1965 (she was also in Doctor Zhivago) was capped by a best-actress Oscar® for this sardonic take on Swinging London. Looking about as gorgeous as women get, Christie ascends the ladder of social success, trampling everybody in her path--an ascent that allows writer Frederic Raphael and director John Schlesinger to slash away at the morally bankrupt world that would enable such a person to triumph. Cynics might suggest that Schlesinger's approach, rife with the experiments of New Wave filmmaking, is nearly as empty and showy as the world it describes... which may be why this movie seems more dated than, say, Richard Lester's films from the '60s. Still, with Christie getting generous and suave support from two of the top British stars of the day,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Dirk Bogarde - Julie Christie Director(s): John Schlesinger DVD Release Date: Released the 02 December 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This silky smooth film noir pits gruff police detective Dana Andrews, stiff and blunt in his street-bred manners, against a cultured columnist and acidic wit (Clifton Webb at his prissiest) in a battle of wits during a murder investigation. The cop is a romantic hiding under a hard-boiled exterior who falls in love with the beautiful victim through the portrait that hangs in her apartment. Gene Tierney, whose heart-shaped face mixes the exotic with the girl next door, brings the poise and calm of a model to her role as the object of every man's gaze and the target of a killer. Laura, handsomely shot in dreamy black and white, is the first and best of Otto Preminger's cool, controlled murder mysteries. In the gritty world of film noir it remains the most refined and elegant example... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Dana Andrews Director(s): Rouben Mamoulian - Otto Preminger DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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