Too much of everything

I'll tell you why so serious

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

On paper, Arthur Seaton (Finney) seems to be the trans-Atlantic cousin of James Dean's Jim Stark in Nocholas Ray's REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, he is a disgruntled Nottingham youth slogs away in the lathe unit on week-days, and finds solace in petticoat company in after-work hours (especially the slot which the movie's title indicates), but essentially his life is stuck in a rut, aimless, monotonous and painfully prosaic, but he has to abide by. British New Wave pioneer Karel Reisz's debut feature, a working-class kitchen-sink melodrama headlined by an exuberant 23-year-old Albert Finney in his very first star-making leading role. Arthur partakes in a love affair with Brenda (Roberts), the wife of his co-worker Jack (Pringle), there is no compunction in their way since Brenda believes what they have is love, but, for Arthur, one might think it is the thrill of their trysts keeps him hooked, because apparently this is the only exciting happening amongst the quotidian drabness.Then, he meets Doreen (Field), a comely beauty, seems a shade prim and proper, but she is available, maybe, even a marriage material for him. Arthur ambidextrously seesaws between adultery and romantic courtship, and rests assured that there would be no moral agony and ulterior motive behind, not like George Stevens' A PLACE IN THE SUN (1951), there is no social climbing or great fortune at stake. Plus, Arthur is a self-acclaimed, superb liar, he is cocksure that nothing can take him down, even when Brenda tells him she is pregnant with his child. Alan Sillitoe's script supplies the narrative with very realistic spins and trenchant attitudes, not at all consciously righteous, but they are an encapsulation of its times, the pervading ennui which in retrospect devours an entire youth generation in UK's industrialized era. Arthur would be sucker-punched for sleeping with another man's wife, but is he rueful afterwards? He can take a beat once in a while, a burly lad like that, but he will never change who he is, a good- looking reprobate has nothing to lose and nothing to hold dear, not even Doreen, she is too simple- minded to see through his macho charisma or maybe she is just a sucker for the sort. They will get married, as the film implies in the end, but felicity will plausibly keep eluding them. That's what a first-viewing of this picture feels smarting, as impressively effervescent as Finney's first-grade performance is, eventually the film comes off as a rather unfulfilled downer, our sympathy towards Arthur dissipates easily and emotional distance looms large. On the subject of the supporting cast, Shirley Anne Field is well-chosen in magnifying Doreen's glacial front against her pedestrian persona; Bryan Pringle contrives an understated but greatly ambivalent facade as the cuckolded husband. And Rachel Roberts is outstanding in a role diametrically dissimilar from another British New Wave hallmark she stars, Lindsay Anderson's THIS SPORTING LIFE (1963), it is not that often audience would give a free pass to an adulteress, but here, she imprints both body and soul of an entrapped woman who neither minces words about what she wants nor overstays her welcome when she feels that a closure is inevitable. While on the technical level, Karel Reisz's debut rams home the intimacy between his characters and their environs, a well-presented correlation between its sharp Black-and-White cinematography and its visual spectacle, it doesn't transpire to be a killing character study which can offer us something stimulating to chew on, other than its astute discernment of the acclimated torpor, which is so un-cinematically dispiriting.

"Don't let the b******s grind you down!" The words which Arthur, the protagonist of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, lives by. It is a powerful voice-over narration by Albert Finney which begins the film and introduces who his character is. The only problem is, he does not explain that this life motto - at least for him - means constant lying and a lack of consideration for women.We know from the get-go that Arthur is all about rebellion, specifically against his elders and their sense of tradition and manners; this is why he lacks any. He is also not the brightest star in the sky, letting his alcoholism (which he denies) get the best of him early on in the story.Arthur dreams big though. There is a great scene when he is fishing with his cousin talking about a new girl in his life Doreen, when he states "never bite unless the bait's good." If this is another part of his philosophy on life, it is curious as to why he goes for the older, married woman Brenda early on in the film. Perhaps he is learning since his relationship with Brenda comes back to bite him later in the story.With scenes of Arthur working at the factory, this becomes a commentary on the working class in England, but the commentary is slightly confusing. A young working man is susceptible to fall into a lifestyle including womanizing and living life to one's own terms, yet other characters who are nothing like him work with Arthur at the factory as well. In fact, Brenda's husband works at the same factory and from what we see of him he is a loving father and generally caring person. Perhaps, then, this film is a commentary on the young adult in England rather than the entire working class.This is clearly a "rebellion" movie which gets its point across with some strong voice-over work by Albert Finney, and while the acting is great and Arthur is a well-developed, detestable person, at some points the audience can't help but ask "so what?"3.0/4.0

'Saturday Night Sunday Morning' Karel Reisz (1960) BFI 100 #14"Don't let the bastards grind you down. That's one thing you learn. What I'm out for is a good time. All the rest is propaganda."This film begins with a blank screen and the clatter of busy, car crash drum solos that morph into a cacophony of machinery, as Reisz reveals that we're listening to a busy factory. Johnny Dankworth's importance to the cultural pantheon becomes clearer via the BFI 100 list. His distinctive jazz sensibility appears to have fashioned the soundtrack that directors like Joseph Losey, John Schlesinger and Karel Reisz needed, to bring a hip yet edgy finish to their bold new cinema. There is something hip and edgy about Albert Finney's Arthur Seaton: a favourite moment in this film is his unlikely grace as he sprints down a Nottingham hill to jump onto a departing bus, quiff immaculate, suit spruced; when he leaps aboard and swings around the pole, it is pure cool, sheer class, but there is nothing classy about Arthur Seaton. The trouble with angry young men seems to be their misdirected rebellion. If one feels that one is a 'cut above,' does falling downstairs in a state of abject 'leglessness' properly demonstrate this? Is the best way to 'Show them!' to scowl suited and booted in a pub, where a naff band plays brush-daft ditties, while you're canoodling with a married woman, and watching an old soak attempting to force himself to drink more ale than he can handle? Arthur Seaton is introduced to us via a stroppy pout, a contemptible regard for his fellows and a bumptious voice-over that betrays barely any respect for anyone. The only thing that this particular young man can anticipate is a good hiding; family and busybody neighbours warn him and they're right. Slowly, the ratcheted tension builds around the inevitability of this thrashing; not at the hands of a gormless cuckold, but the fists of a highly trained fighting machine. Albert Finney's characterization is a fully dimensioned blend of angry, cocksure, rejected, malevolent, charming, puerile, and pathetic. Norman Rossington brings a very likable performance to the picture as Arthur's cousin Bert and Shirley Anne Field's Doreen elicits concern as the insipid Rose naïve enough to fall for Seaton's charms. Entertaining but pessimistic.

Viewed in 2010 this is a difficult call. It's status as being a slice of cinematic social history is undoubted, as is the fine performance of Albert Finney. However as a stand-alone piece, the impact and power that it had at the time has dissipated with age.The mechanics are very simple. A bleak drab setting, Finney as angry young man, Arthur, conventional love interest in Shirley-Ann Field as Doreen, and illicit love interest in married Rachel Roberts as Brenda who falls pregnant by Arthur.The social commentary is finely observed by Director Karel Reisz and writer Alan Sillitoe. Reisz's subsequent stage work with Pinter plays and his realisation of "The French Lieutenant's Woman" both showcase his ability to deal successfully with character which is much in evidence here. Several supporting roles are vital to the story's success with the bruising matriarchs of the time joyously in evidence.At the time a story which told of marital infidelity, abortion and changing attitudes to sex, anticipating the teenage rebellion that was to surface as the decade wore on, broke the shackles of cinema which was still wedded to the conventional morality of the "War Spirit". Now it seems staple dramatic fare. At 90 minutes it does it's job well. Yet it lacks the raw spirit of "Kess", the pain of "Brassed Off" or the dramatic sweep of the earlier "How Green Was My Valley" in its depiction of British Working Class life.So ultimately an important slice of cinematic history, but by no means a timeless classic.