Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

1960

Director Karel Reisz

Eee, this film were grand, duck. Albert Finney doesn’t quite master the Nottingham accent, keeping his own Salfordian one for Karel Reisz’s adaptation of Alan Sillitoe’s novel. It sounds strange to a Salfordian, as Finney’s Arthur is presented as a local. But just how much of a hindrance is it?

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is part of a revolutionary stable of films, such as the earlier A Taste of Honey and later Alfie. They give a voice to the neglected working classes and their trials and tribulations. But Reisz’s film does this literally, from the opening moments inside the soul-crushing factory, where Arthur proudly and stubbornly narrates his innermost thoughts and feelings.

Arthur is a real man. He isn’t the pampered, stiff upper lip prudes we are used to seeing in middle-class English cinema. He likes his drink and he likes his women (usually in that order) and doesn’t care who knows it or who gets hurt. Married women? They are fair game as far as Arthur is concerned, as his relationship with Rachel Roberts’ Brenda proves. Despite this relationship, Arthur is also courting Shirley Anne Field’s absolutely stunning Doreen, growing increasingly frustrated by her ‘proper’ conduct.

Finney plays Arthur with sensational likeability for such a brutish rogue. It is so easy to empathise with him when you see his situation. He spends his week being ground down, nothing but a tool amongst tools in the nightmarish factory. His nefarious conduct is symptomatic of his situation. He is young and gets barely two days a week of enjoyment, so he understandably lashes out.

Finney’s portrayal is visceral and real. It doesn’t ask or want your sympathy. But this is a tragic figure, the product of oppression and neglect; a man, sadly, beyond redemption.

**** ¼ / *****