Saturday Night And Sunday Morning
Analyse in detail a short clip (of no more than 10 minutes) from one of the films on the second half of the module. How do the style, technique and thematic concerns of the chosen sequence reflect the movement or national cinema it comes from?
It is evident during the British New Wave that films were becoming less focussed on entertaining stereotypes of the nation and more on representing the gritty realist issues within it. This resulted in films which featured the lives of Britain’s working class as opposed to the romanticised version of Britain often shown in post-war films. Set in Nottingham, Karel Reisz’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning focuses on Arthur Seaton (Albert Finney) who would rather spend his time drinking and womanising than being “ground down” in a domestic lifestyle. It has been argued that British New Wave films are very focussed on this nature of the male identity. The film is regarded as a “kitchen sink drama” due to its blunt realist portrayal of England’s working class. Screenplay writer Arthur Sillitoe was regarded as an “angry young man” and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning clearly reflects his distaste for class distinctions and admiration for young male rebellion. This sense of rebellion is established from the very beginning of the film.
In the opening scene, we are immediately introduced to a typical day of working-class men in a British factory. It was common for British New Wave films to adopt stylistic aspects often used in documentaries, such as location filming.1 The film opens with an establishing shot of a busy factory full of men working machinery. This setting of a factory environment immediately sets the tone for the film, showing a gritty sense of realism. There is also no non-diegetic sound as the scene opens, merely the cluttering and whistling of factory noises, giving a stronger sense of the banality of the workplace. This opening scene represents the working-class and demonstrates the mundanity of the days that
It is evident during the British New Wave that films were becoming less focussed on entertaining stereotypes of the nation and more on representing the gritty realist issues within it. This resulted in films which featured the lives of Britain’s working class as opposed to the romanticised version of Britain often shown in post-war films. Set in Nottingham, Karel Reisz’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning focuses on Arthur Seaton (Albert Finney) who would rather spend his time drinking and womanising than being “ground down” in a domestic lifestyle. It has been argued that British New Wave films are very focussed on this nature of the male identity. The film is regarded as a “kitchen sink drama” due to its blunt realist portrayal of England’s working class. Screenplay writer Arthur Sillitoe was regarded as an “angry young man” and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning clearly reflects his distaste for class distinctions and admiration for young male rebellion. This sense of rebellion is established from the very beginning of the film.
In the opening scene, we are immediately introduced to a typical day of working-class men in a British factory. It was common for British New Wave films to adopt stylistic aspects often used in documentaries, such as location filming.1 The film opens with an establishing shot of a busy factory full of men working machinery. This setting of a factory environment immediately sets the tone for the film, showing a gritty sense of realism. There is also no non-diegetic sound as the scene opens, merely the cluttering and whistling of factory noises, giving a stronger sense of the banality of the workplace. This opening scene represents the working-class and demonstrates the mundanity of the days that
References: Bibliography Barsam, Richard Meran, and Dave Monahan, Looking At Movies (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013). Lay, Samantha, British Social Realism (London: Wallflower, 2002). Spicer, Andrew, Typical Men (London: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 2001). Filmography Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, dir. by Karel Reisz (Braynston Films, 1960)