Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Good news for cineastes--the Criterion Channel, which is replacing Filmstruck, is just about up and running. It begins officially on April 8th, but they are teasing with a film of the week until then. This week they honor the late Albert Finney with a double feature, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Tom Jones. I've seen the latter, but was keen to see the former.

This was Finney's first lead role, released in 1960. It was very much of the time, the English "angry young man" that dominated theater and film from the U.K. These films tended to portray working-class men of dubious moral rectitude who were not content to simply live out their lives as their parents did.

The angry young man in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is Arthur Seaton, portrayed by Finney.  He is a machinist at a bicycle factory, who really only comes alive after quitting time (it reminds me of a couple of songs: "Night," by Bruce Springsteen, and "Five O'Clock World" by The Vogues). He hits the pubs and carouses.

Finney is seeing a married woman (Rachel Roberts), the wife of a co-worker who works the night shift. He is also courting a young beautiful woman (Shirley Ann Field) who is a good girl. The main plot element is when Roberts gets pregnant, which creates a huge problem since she and her husband are not having relations.

For an unwanted pregnancy and abortion to be a major part of a film in 1960 is pretty radical (the film received an X rating in England). Finney takes Roberts to see her aunt, who has her sit in a hot bath drinking gin, but that doesn't work.

The film is full of the sights and sounds of Nottingham, and features odd characters such as a nosy old woman whom Finney torments (he shoots her in the ass with an air gun). Finney pals around with his cousin, Norman Rossington (he would later be seen as The Beatles' manager in A Hard Day's Night) and an officious floor manager, who knows it was Finney who put a dead rat on a woman's bench, but can't prove it.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is similar in tone, and in some ways of plot, to Room at the Top, as both films feature a man who has a young girlfriend and is carrying on with an older woman. They have a similar ending as well, as both men give in to living a life of domesticity, but with much reluctance. The last scene of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning has Finney and Field looking over a new housing development, a place where he went blackberrying as kid. Field says that they may own one of these houses someday, and Finney doesn't look too keen on the idea.