Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

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.

Albert Finney is Arthur, a working-class Brit who lives for "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" in this 1960 film also starring Rachel Roberts, Hylda Baker and Shirley Anne Field. It's impossible to believe that Albert Finney was ever that young, but he was - 24 in this film - robust and handsome. He plays a factory worker who hates his job and lives with his family. His life revolves around his weekends, when he drinks himself into oblivion and sees his married girlfriend Brenda (Roberts). Roberts is married to one of his co-workers. One day, he meets the beautiful Doreen (Shirly Anne Field) and starts to court her. Then Brenda becomes pregnant with his child.

This film was considered quite shocking at the time of its release because of its frank sexual situations and the freely-discussed topic of abortion. These themes aren't shocking anymore, but one reason for that is the introduction of them in films like this. Shot in black and white, it gives the viewer a picture of life in a bleak factory town, portrayed very realistically by director Karl Reisz. The actors are these people, they're not merely playing them. This is especially true of Finney, who sports a low-class accent and epitomizes the "angry young man" so prevalent in the late '50s. Finney's performance as a young man who takes out his work-week aggression on women, booze and mischief, is as revolutionary as Dean's or Brando's was in American cinema.

Finney is ably backed up by the supporting actors. Roberts is very effective as Brenda, a housewife married to a dull man, and Shirley Anne Field even dressed down is gorgeous as the ingénue who wins Arthur's heart and makes him look at the future. One wonders if he'll ever grow up sufficiently. She's going to have her hands full.

The dialect is very authentic and difficult to understand at times - I actually used my closed captioning. The dialect adds to the whole atmosphere of "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning," another of the rebel movies but in a class all by itself.

In 1960, in a small Black Country town, I went to see this movie, with a male friend, at our local fleapit - it was a revelation. I found myself in a cinema that was a real setting for what appeared on the screen, for there Albert Finney was, not represented, was the working class bloke that sat in the picture house near to me.

Equally I knew that, on leaving, I would see his aunt (Hilda Baker) in the local chippy, and that Norman Rossington would be cycling to some nearby canal to fish. Indeed when Ben (my friend) and I left we went to our local for a quick pint and, I swear,we both had the uncanny feeling of being part of the film.

Time has passed and the working class East and West Midlands have change completely so it may not have such resonance for a new generation but if you want to know what a good slice of England looked and sounded like in the 1950s you should see it: it's better than any documentary. Indeed it is a great film.