Sad news about the death of Albert Finney who I regarded as a fine British actor and maybe best known for his roles in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and other films of the same period. The film of the era like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning were known as kitchen sink drama for its realism whose protagonists usually could be described as "angry young men" who were disillusioned with modern society of the day.
The announcement of his death gave me the opportunity to re-visit Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and soak up his performance in this sixties classic. You haven’t seen it, shame on you if you regard yourself as a connoisseur of films.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning Finney plays the anti-hero Arthur Seaton, an angry-ish, frustrated young machinist at a Nottingham bike factory. He works hard and earns more than the other machinists with the attitude of he doesn’t care. Like young men of the time, he lives with his mother and father until he marries. He loves nothing more than a pint or two as he parties hard at the weekend.
Also, he’s carrying on an affair with Brenda (Rachel Roberts), the bored and rather dowdy wife of an older workmate and friend. The husband as no idea what’s happening but when she falls pregnant there secret world begins to collapse as she needs to have an abortion due to the fact she hasn’t had sex with her husband in months is a problem. Later in the film, she reveals that she has decided to have the child.
Being the happy-go-lucky guy he is Seaton spied a girl at work he kind of likes and a chance meeting in the pub they begin a relationship. Doreen (Shirley Anne Field), a sweet single woman closer to his age and looking for a wedding ring.
Finney’s electrifying performance in the film is a joy to watch and among a series of fine supporting performances, Pringle is outstanding as the workmate who finds out about his wife’s affair. It all comes to a head at the fair ground when Seaton and Brenda are spotted together by her husband and his brother and his friend on leave from the army who later get revenge on Seton by giving him a good kicking.
Roberts’s tragic portrait of a middle-aged unhappy married woman gives a fine performance Shirley Anne Field glows seductively as the sweet and yearning Doreen dreaming of a ring, marriage, and a new house on the new housing estate. I can't recommend this film highly enough and I hope if the BBC are planning a film tribute they will show this film of the Dresser a much later film but still a favourite of mine.
My Rating
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