Truly Dreadful Film

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The movie was good, the characters were spot on especially Murray Head playing as the bisexual "hottie" who has an affair with Glenda Jackson and Peter Finch's characters. However, I just think the story dragged on a bit like, I would recommend that this film would be one hour and 30 minutes rather than 1hr 50 mins. It does get you boring easily like I had to skip a few scenes in which were so boring, I nearly fell asleep and that was the truth! Also I found that the ending should've been redone a bit better since like, we want to know where Head's character leaves England for New York. It seems like hes gonna not do anything there but like, you would think the writers would've given the character at least some excuse to go to America. I just don't understand the ending to be honest, it just seem rather unfinished really.I give this movie 6/10..

After surprisingly scooping Oscar's top honour with the X-rated MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969), a feat hasn't been emulated ever since, John Schlesinger had earned more cachet and creative leeway to his next project, Sunday BLOODY Sunday, a seminal character examination about a bi-sexual young artist Bob Elkin (Head) in London and his simultaneous and mutually consented relationships with a middle-aged Jewish doctor Daniel Hirsh (Peter Finch) and a female recruitment consultant Alex Greville (Jackson), which allegedly is inspired by Schlesinger's personal affair with actor John Steiner.The description above might mislead you believe that Bob is the main focus point here, but, in fact, Penelope Gilliatt's awards-winning script installs the spotlight alternately on Daniel and Alex, one is cerebral, another is spontaneous. Not only they share the same man, unwitting to them, they also share the same telephone answering service (a diverting cameo from Bessie Love as the overworking answering lady), a source of gossip at then. Aptly, Gilliatt's script, Schlesinger's discreet directorial guideline and the cast's collective effort conspire to bring to light of the unconventional two-faceted relationships, in uttermost honesty, both under a personal emotion scale and a bigger social context, where the back-stories of Daniel and Alex are laid out in between sharp commentaries about a forbidding and shifting London at the turn of 70s, through the lens of tawdry installation art, news snippets from the car radio, pot-smoking kids under a liberal parenting guidance, midnight-awaiting addicts in the drugstore, the booming hippie culture, youth delinquents etc.Homosexuality, the elephant-in-the-room taboo, gets a more realistic and positive spin in this film, Daniel is still in the closet, but he is no longer being crucified, neither inwardly nor outwardly, in the regal bar mitzvah ceremony, he can swiftly mingle with his big Jewish family without being self- conscious or circumspect, Finch imbues Daniel with an air of unusual composure, which is so freshening to the clichéd preconception about queer drama, superbly outlined in his ending monologue, looking directly into audience's eyes, no shame, no trepidation, no big deal, Bob's departure is something doomed to happen sooner or later, he will still go to Italy, as planned, "I am happy, apart from missing him". It is just a cough, it will dissipate, eventually.In the other end of the line, Alex has experienced something more radical in her life, getting rid of a job she doesn't like, sleeping with an older man to offset her frustration in the status quo with Bob, or try to make him jealous (a corny and silly way to test the temperature of a relationship), which ends in vain, she is a woman still trying to figure out what she wants, the initially newfangled open- relationship starts to run out of steam, so, it is more natural for her to take a step back and Bob's departure couldn't be a more pertinent to offer her that chance. Jackson, disarms her steely angle and stays true to the image of a woman less characteristic and engrossing than the more progressive ones in her repertoire.Murray Head's Bob, an amorphous soul, a happy-go-lucky type doesn't restrain himself into any commitment or responsibility, he symbolises the zeitgeist of "free love"and "carpe diem", only Head's characterisation (maybe intentionally since his chief function is to mirror the differences between Daniel and Alex, while his own story is buried underneath without further scrutiny) leaves a drab presence (compared with Finch and Jackson), or shall we blame it on that horrible pageboy hairdo?. "You will not like his haircut, though", Alex banters with her mother, an excellent cameo from Peggy Ashcroft, yes, she is not joking at all.

Alex Greville (Glenda Jackson) is a London divorced working mom who is having an affair with modern sculptor Bob Elkin (Murray Head). Daniel Hirsh (Peter Finch) is a traditional Jewish doctor who is suffering from mysterious pains and is also having an affair with Elkin. Both know about the other relationship as well as having mutual friends. Both are willing to live with the situation but it can't really last.For all the affairs going on, this movie is very cold. All three people are a little emotionally dead inside. It's not a fun movie. It does not make this a compelling watch. Their relationships are like slow sleepwalking in sadness. The constant emotional self-destruction grounded me down.

Even with The Code now a thing of the past it took the United Kingdom and a respected director from there to craft a film showing two men in a passionate kiss. When Peter Finch and Murray Head kissed like they meant it, it was untold generations of gay men felt like society was finally recognizing them. That Sunday Bloody Sunday came out two years after the Stonewall Riots was no accident. Probably before Stonewall, John Schlesinger might have had problems getting his film released on this side of the pond. And that's even after Midnight Cowboy.Murray Head plays a shallow bisexual young artist who has a simultaneous relationship going with both Peter Finch and Glenda Jackson. Jackson is a thirty something career woman who can't find any great satisfaction in relationships beyond sex. That Murray Head supplies well and in abundance apparently, so much so that he can also service Peter Finch as well.Jackson should have listened to mom's advice. Peggy Ashcroft who plays Jackson's mother says quite right that you never get 100%, so you get the best you can and make it work. Apparently this is something that Glenda can't or won't grasp.For Peter Finch as the very closeted gay male the pressures are far worse. He's Jewish and he's a doctor and apparently it's true in both British and American Jewish scenes that if you're a doctor you'll have Jewish women throwing themselves at you and Jewish mothers ready to sacrifice all for a doctor as a son-in-law. And the idea of a forty something unmarried doctor who might be gay is just beyond all realm of possibility. Such a thing would be a SHANDA.Peter Finch strikes a universal note in all gay males in any culture. Before the closet doors were open, Dr. Daniel Hirsch's story was played out a gazillion times all over the world. Thank the Deity we have reached a point where Daniel Hirsch's life path is not the only one open to us.Sunday Bloody Sunday has no real plot, it's a character study of two people and their intertwining relationships because of a third party. There's no real plot here, but the characterizations are as deep as they can get. Sunday Bloody Sunday earned Oscar nominations for Peter Finch and Glenda Jackson as Best Actor and Actress, John Schlesinger for Best Director and Penelope Gilliatt as well for Best Original Screenplay. All that and no nomination for Best Picture?I do kind of wonder where Murray Head's character is right now. Since this came out in 1971 Head was playing someone 25 which was his age at the time. He partied through the seventies, did he settle down with someone of either gender, did indiscriminate sex bring him in contact with AIDS in the eighties and nineties? Is he looking now for some young Murray Heads in his sixties? Was he really transgender and if so has he had the reassignment surgery or not? You can read all of that into his portrayal of a vacuous party boy. In a way Sunday Bloody Sunday is about the tragedy of bisexuals in this society. They can't settle down to a monogamous relationship because they have sexual needs on both sides of the fence. Maybe that will change one day too.Sunday Bloody Sunday is a landmark classic, especially recommended for a young gay audience who wants to see what life in the uptight days of the universal closet was like.