Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Cast & Crew

Albert Finney

Arthur Seaton

Rachel Roberts

Brenda

Shirley Anne Field

Doreen

Hylda Baker

Aunt Ada

Norman Rossington

Bert

Bryan Pringle

Jack

Robert Cawdron

Robboe

Edna Morris

Mrs. Bull

Elsie Wagstaff

Mrs. Seaton

Frank Pettitt

Mr. Seaton

Karel Reisz

Director

Alan Sillitoe

Writer

Tony Richardson

Producer

Harry Saltzman

Executive Producer

John Dankworth

Original Music

Fred Francis

Cinematographer

Seth Holt

Film Editing

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Critic Reviews for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Audience Reviews for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

• Nov 02, 2012

  Definitely a film of it's time, rather than something that's good for today's audience.

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  Super Reviewer
• Apr 24, 2011

  The gritty cinematography and coarse characterizations of "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" are an exciting jolt, but the film's central plot -- a hotheaded factory worker (Albert Finney, in a star-making role) impregnating married Brenda (Rachel Roberts) while also wooing the more glamorous Doreen (Shirley Anne Field) -- seemed a little thin and ordinary. Given the harsh setting, I expected more issues of money, employment and housing, and not a story based so squarely on mere dating conflicts. Finney blisters in what's inevitably labeled an "angry young man" part and signals an actor with a long career ahead. Field seems miscast, however, and is so elegantly beautiful that she belongs in a whole different film. At the very least, the stylist could have given her a more flawed hairdo.

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  eric b Super Reviewer
• Mar 29, 2011

  In the immediate post-war period, British cinema lost a lot of the sparkle and sense of adventure which it had previously embodied. With Alfred Hitchcock now permanently based in America and Powell and Pressburger past their prime, cinema became increasingly populated by American melodramas, jingoistic war films and ropey comedies. It would take something truly momentous to shake cinema out of this stupor: that something was the British New Wave. Beginning with John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, the New Wave sought to reinvigorate film and theatre, tackling controversial subjects head on and presenting a view of the working classes which was the very opposite of patronising or parochial. In time the genre, with its left-wing undercurrents and subtle emphasis on counter-culture, would come to be epitomised by Lindsay Anderson, the director of If.... and This Sporting Life. But well before the latter entered production, Anderson's colleague Karel Reisz was blazing the cinematic trail with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Based upon the novel by Alan Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is a rich and respectful work which depicts the life of the working man in Nottingham in a completely uncompromising way. Reisz' background in documentary filmmaking makes him a naturally understated director. His camera is always an observer, sitting passively in the corner; it never flinches or mitigates, and it makes no apologies for what occurs on screen. Not only does this approach make the action more realistic, but it helps to convey the message of the film. It allows the characters to speak for themselves, to create and form their own voices and identities, rather than having to conform either to the conventions of Hollywood or to social attitudes of what is considered 'proper'. The central line of the film comes towards the end from Albert Finney: "whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not", from which we get the title of The Arctic Monkeys' debut album. The visuals in Saturday Night reflect this desire for the characters rather than the director to do the talking. The film is shot by Freddie Francis, who also shot The Elephant Man and would work with Reisz again on The French Lieutenant's Woman. His choice of angles is simple but effective and he never attempts to play up the emotion of a scene by resorting to thriller tropes in the manner of Hitchcock or surreal, dreamlike shifts in the manner of Michael Powell. There are moments of visual exuberance - for instance, the blurring of the footage at the fairground to convey Arthur's disorientation - but these are only used as occasional devices. Shooting in black-and-white, whether for artistic or budgetary reasons, always seems to give a film a sense of gravitas and ruggedness, something which was comparatively lacking in Technicolor efforts from the same time. Francis' cinematography and Reisz' direction show up unashamedly all the rough edges of working life, from the thundering monotony of the factories to the grimy back streets and beer-drenched pubs. There is an underlying respect for what they document, but they do not glamorise working life to the point of parody, in the manner of Sergei Eisenstein. This might help to explain why the film was awarded an 'X' certificate when first released (it has since been downgraded to a PG). This ruggedness and gravitas is never more noticeable than in the performance of Albert Finney. In only his second film role, he inhabits Arthur Seaton, creating a complex and contradictory character that we spend the entire film trying to figure out. He is anti-heroic, and largely amoral save when it comes to his own skin. In certain scenes he is borderline sociopathic, like when he takes pot shots at a nosey neighbour with an air rifle. But he remains compelling in his capability to love, to think beyond what we expect of him, and - on occasion - to do the right thing. The most interesting moments of the film, which lift it out of the clichés of what would become kitchen-sink, see Arthur and his colleagues passing the time at weekends fishing or drinking, and discussing what the point of their lives might be. Arthur makes passing comments about a life beyond this, saying that he doesn't want to get married until he feels ready. His angry voiceovers about the factory and wayward relationships with women reflect a restless attitude towards the limits of the world put before him. He knows what he doesn't want, but can't quite communicate anything beyond that. This desire to communicate creates an emotional involvement with Arthur which makes the story gripping and engrossing. Like most kitchen-sink dramas the actual plot is quite slim, and has a number of similarities to A Place in the Sun - the central one being a male protagonist who is torn between two women, and who is threatened with ruin when one of them falls pregnant. But Saturday Night rejects the melodramatic tone of that film, just as Arthur remarks upon living the cinema that he always knew where the film was going. In A Place in the Sun, like so many melodramas, the characters are so clearly drawn that you knew where things were going after about fifteen minutes: Montgomery Clift is bound to fail and make the wrong choices, because that is the archetype into which he fits. In Saturday Night, there are no such guarantees and no stock ending to dampen the mood. Not only do the twists and turns feel more realistic, they carry a greater weight because the various parties do not have to respond in a manner predetermined by genre. Because Arthur is so conflicted, we don't know what choice he will make and therefore there is no assurance that he will emerge intact. The film deserves further plaudits for sticking to its guns in depicting the darker elements of urban life. It's one thing to go for realism when things are rosy for the protagonists; it's quite another to follow through with this and risk the censors' wrath in the process. The film is quite happy to linger on the scenes between Arthur and Doreen, but it is equally candid in the fight between Arthur and the squaddies which leaves the former near-dead. The ending itself is quite ambiguous, as Arthur surveys the housing developments and wonders whether he can change even as the landscape changes around him. If there is a flaw with Saturday Night, it is purely a question of scope. Apart from little details that have dated and any resounding prejudiced surrounding the now-ripe genre of kitchen-sink, the big problem with the film is that it is a little too self-contained. While it captures this particular part of Nottingham exceedingly well, it doesn't have quite the same general reach as Anderson's work - it doesn't reach out beyond its tight-knit community in the manner of This Sporting Life. In spite of this problem, which has prevented it from ageing quite so well, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning remains an important work in British cinema. In the long-term its realistic treatment of ordinary life and uncompromising storylines can be seen in everything from Ken Loach and Mike Leigh to the more recent work of Lynn Ramsey and Andrea Arnold. Reisz directs beautifully, bringing Sillitoe's novel and screenplay to life through a series of refreshing performances, resulting in a very fine piece of work.

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  Daniel M Super Reviewer
• Feb 10, 2011

  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.

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  Super Reviewer