Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Another top quality, British "kitchen-sink" drama from the 1960s, Reisz's film launched Finney to prominence after a promising debut in Tony Richardson's "The Entertainer." Drowning five days of stagnation in one night's revelry--or is it oblivion?--Arthur is the quintessential "angry young man," as he is going nowhere and won't let himself care, either about short-term inconveniences or long-term consequences. Finney is magnetic in the lead, and both Roberts and Shirley Ann Field make compelling love interests. Finney would go on to cement his stardom in the incomparable "Tom Jones".

Braggodocio...and the thumbing of the nose
This is the film that put Finney on the map, as the saying goes, and for good reason. He's a great actor, but his performance is more than individual; it's also symbolic of some anger afoot in the UK at the time--i.e., the "angry young men". More specifically, the combination of Finney's sex appeal and braggodocio thumbs its nose at the stereotypical image of Great Britain as the stuffy, staid upholder of propriety and good manners and lords and ladies, et cetera.

His character, Arthur, is working class through and through, and it shows in every scene. He drinks and womanizes and plays tricks--mostly on older women he considers representative of stuffiness and stupidity. But he's callous himself--not stupid, but callous. This is really a slice of life movie that, more than anything else, portrays the British working class in the 1960s pretty much as they were. It's a great companion piece to another excellent British film, "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner", also from the 1960s, and also featuring a young British actor making his debut, Tom Courtenay.

Finney is electric in his role. What's especially good about this film is that it doesn't so much copy or emulate American movies--in departing from the image of British culture as proper, etc.--as it presents an entirely new type of film, that reveals the day-to-day lives of British workers and societal hangers-on, those who can never take anything for granted.

Thumbing one's nose symbolically and cinematically here is producer Tony Richardson, who went on to direct Finney in "Tom Jones" (a masterpiece, I would say) and director Karel Reisz, a Polish-born Brit who went on to direct a number of other interesting films.

But the biggest nose-thumber of all here is Albert Finney. The ending is deeply ironic because we can see that in short order he'll give up his nose-thumbing ways and settle down with a cute girl who has no higher ambitions, basically, than he does. Will that last? Given Arther's character, it doesn't seem likely.

It's nice to see that Finney is still active in cinema. This debut is stunning and for sure well worth seeing.

Braggodocio...and the thumbing of the nose
This is the film that put Finney on the map, as the saying goes, and for good reason. He's a great actor, but his performance is more than individual; it's also symbolic of some anger afoot in the UK at the time--i.e., the "angry young men". More specifically, the combination of Finney's sex appeal and braggodocio thumbs its nose at the stereotypical image of Great Britain as the stuffy, staid upholder of propriety and good manners and lords and ladies, et cetera.

His character, Arthur, is working class through and through, and it shows in every scene. He drinks and womanizes and plays tricks--mostly on older women he considers representative of stuffiness and stupidity. But he's callous himself--not stupid, but callous. This is really a slice of life movie that, more than anything else, portrays the British working class in the 1960s pretty much as they were. It's a great companion piece to another excellent British film, "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner", also from the 1960s, and also featuring a young British actor making his debut, Tom Courtenay.

Finney is electric in his role. What's especially good about this film is that it doesn't so much copy or emulate American movies--in departing from the image of British culture as proper, etc.--as it presents an entirely new type of film, that reveals the day-to-day lives of British workers and societal hangers-on, those who can never take anything for granted.

Thumbing one's nose symbolically and cinematically here is producer Tony Richardson, who went on to direct Finney in "Tom Jones" (a masterpiece, I would say) and director Karel Reisz, a Polish-born Brit who went on to direct a number of other interesting films.

But the biggest nose-thumber of all here is Albert Finney. The ending is deeply ironic because we can see that in short order he'll give up his nose-thumbing ways and settle down with a cute girl who has no higher ambitions, basically, than he does. Will that last? Given Arther's character, it doesn't seem likely.

It's nice to see that Finney is still active in cinema. This debut is stunning and for sure well worth seeing.