Tudo Começou num Sábado

This is the film which made Albert Finney a star. Filmed on location at Nottingham, Albert Finney plays Arthur Seaton a bored factory worker who is having an affair with his workmate's wife (Rachel Roberts). Controversial at the time because of its references to abortion, this film gives an idea of what life was like amongst the working classes during the 1950s. Shirley Anne Field also made her name in this film, but she never really fulfilled her potential as an actress. A well acted and produced gritty drama which is still watchable today.

I first saw this film during its original u.s. run in 1961, loved it, and jumped at the chance to see it again at a local revival movie house. The movie is justly famous for Finney's brilliant performance (I think it was his first.), but has other virtues as well. Karel Reisz and Freddie Francis succeed in making the film visually interesting, and it is well paced, with essentially no dead time.

The thing that deserves the most praise, however, is Sillitoe's script, which puts virtually all modern dramatic screenplays to shame. In a general way, the working class british films of the late 50s and 60s launched the tradition that leads to Loach, Leigh, Tim Roth, etc. This film's subtlety and ambivalence towards its leading character reminds me specifically of Mike Leigh at his very best.

There's a rather angry lad by name of Arthur, spends the week in factory, and he's a grafter, but at the weekend he goes out, drinking beer, he likes to shout, casts his eye over the women that he's after. One such lass, is married to, the workshop Forman, Brenda entertains Arthur like he's her old man, then she brings up in discussion, that she has a bun in t'oven, both their futures not what either of them planned. But Arthur's got another girl in tow, Doreen's taken quite a shine, and lets him know, then he suffers a tough beating, for all the lying and the cheating, and life goes on, because there's nowt else you can do (duck).

It's hard work growing up, it always was, and it always will be.

Meeting an attractive young woman in a bar, Arthur Seaton wastes no time making his play. He asks her name, and is told with some embarrassment it's Doreen. She doesn't like her name. He doesn't like his, either.

"Neither of 'em's up to much, but it ain't our fault," he tells her. Like everything else in his unhappy life, it's all a matter of inheritance.

Arthur may share a name with a heroic English king, but he's not one to wear his lower-middle-class crown agreeably. He drinks away his wages, lashes out at defenseless women, and lies with discomfiting ease. But Albert Finney and the filmmakers make sure you care about him anyway.

As Seaton, Finney glowers a lot in the way you expect from a protagonist in a kitchen-sink drama, a celebrated product of British New Wave cinema. But the film plays with your expectations just as life does his. He doesn't want to settle for life as he finds it, and while "Saturday Night And Sunday Morning," Alan Sillitoe's adaptation of his own novel directed by Karel Reisz, spits a lot in the direction of conformity, it belies its angry-young-man pedigree with a sense of cosmic acceptance at taking what life has to offer.

Seaton's a "madhead," make no mistake. But he's not an especially honest one. He lies impulsively, often to no purpose, and is even proud of it. "I always was a liar, a good one and all," he tells the married woman he sleeps with, Brenda (Rachel Roberts). Ironically, it's his one honest moment on her behalf that lands him in real trouble.

The film gives us other hints Seaton is not an admirable figure, like shooting an annoying neighbor with an air rifle in a manner that comes off more creepy than defiant. A "working-class anti-hero," as other reviewers put it, and the real craft in both the direction and in Finney's performance is how it accomplishes the balancing act of establishing Seaton as both miserable company and a rooting interest.

It's a well-structured film, too, a quick 90 minutes that breaks neatly into thirty minutes of establishing the situation, thirty minutes of developing a crisis (Seaton stringing along two women, one pregnant), and thirty minutes of tense resolution. At the same time, Reisz gives his film a grimy authenticity that feels real, never stagy, with scenes that have a real lived-in quality while serving the larger story.

"Saturday Night And Sunday Morning" is a bleak film in many ways, not pleasant to watch. Laughs and insights are minimal, and Finney downplays his considerable screen charm. There are hardly any toothy grins like he'd bestow on his later breakout role, as the title character in "Tom Jones." The handling of his relationship with Doreen is a trifle pat, and too-simply resolved. So is the issue of his relationship with Brenda, although Finney shares a good final scene with her character's husband, played effectively by Stephen Fry lookalike Bryan Pringle.

There are a lot of good performances in this film, which blend together to create an effective if routine story. If it's not what you expect from angry-young-man cinema, it's nice to have your expectations batted down now and then.

Albert Finney is a rebel without a cause in this Kitchen Sink entry from 1960 that depicts the mind numbing existence of the British factory worker. Seaton is a hard worker but also a smart ass that rubs his work supervisor ( who calls him a Red ) and neighbors the wrong way. He is also sleeping with a co-workers wife.

Albert Finney as the surly Seaton is uncomfortably excellent. His bitter tone and attitude cuts like a power saw. Sooner or later his arrogance will be rewarded and you can't wait. He does display a tender side occasionally with Brenda the married woman but the softness is soon washed away as he rails against the system and his predicament. He is also a world class beer drinker which makes him even more unpleasant as he insults pub patrons and takes a nasty fall down a flight of stairs, only to lie there smiling. Pain is a major source of his existence and rowdy nights out like this serve in a perverse way to blunt it.

Director Karel Reisz moves the storyline along at a rapid pace capturing the grim existence of row house living and deafening factory work. It is a world of gray skies and defeated characters trying to make the best of what they have. They are not the "Happy Breed" of generations past.

Made in the first year of the tumultuous decade that changed the world forever Night is pretty tame by today's standards. But in it's day it was condemned by the Catholic Church for its blatant immorality. One might venture that it had an influence on John Lennon who wrote "Working Class Hero" and on many occasions was witnessed to act like the unctuous Seaton in his life. It might also be argued that Seaton was a prototype for the futuristic angry young man Alex the Droog in Clockwork Orange.

Betty Ann Field, Hylda Baker and Norman Rossington make up a convincing supporting cast in ably assisting Reisz in the world he depicts. Rachel Roberts is outstanding as the tragic Brenda. Smitten with Arthur and doomed by her predicament she perfectly conveys her situation with a tawdry lack of glamor.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning may be an unpleasant film but it is a powerful and important one.