Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Arthur Seaton, played by Albert Finney, works a lathe in a bicycle factory in Nottingham. The week is spent at the machine, the weekend in the pub and in another man's wife's bed. He does not fully know where his anger comes from; he only cannot bear anyone telling him what to do. Alan Sillitoe adapted his own novel, and Karel Reisz, drawing on his documentary background, filmed the factory, the streets and the pub as the England of that moment actually looked. It is among the first British films in which the working class is subject rather than backdrop, and one of the founding works of what came to be called kitchen sink realism. Before release it went through serious negotiation with the censors; adultery and abortion were not subjects the screen could carry at the time. The impasse Arthur and Brenda face in a country where abortion is illegal is the film's hardest section. Finney's performance here is regarded as a break in British acting. Who it is for: viewers who like the British New Wave and working-class realism. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a sympathetic hero, since Arthur is frequently coarse and selfish and the film does not correct him.