SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING Movie Review

One of a flood of movies from that period about the bleak lives of the British working class, director Karel Reisz's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is possibly the simplest most affecting of the bunch. The story—about a young machine operator (Albert Finney) who's so stifled by his family, his job, and his small town that he lives for the night life, booze, and affairs he can work in between punches of the time clock—may well be the inspiration for another disaffected youth movie that was to come along 17 years later, the similarly themed—and titled—Saturday Night Fever. And though it doesn't have the Bee Gees, it does have the mesmerizing, raw rhythm of the 23-year-old Albert Finney's performance, a major debut that seems all the more satisfying now, because we know the astonishingly rich career that followed. Finney's performance here made him, according to legend, David Lean's first choice to play the lead in his upcoming Lawrence of Arabia. The desert didn't agree with Finney, however, and Peter O'Toole took over, while Finney bit heartily into Tony Richardson's Tom Jones. They all lived—and worked—happily ever after.

NEXT STOP … The Entertainer, Two for the Road, Gumshoe

1960 98m/B GB Albert Finney, Rachel Roberts, Shirley Anne Field, Bryan Pringle, Norman Rossington, Hylda Baker, Robert Cowdra, Elsie Wagstaff, Frank Pettitt; D: Karel Reisz; W: Alan Sillitoe; C: Freddie Francis; M: John Dankworth. British Academy Awards ‘60: Best Actress (Roberts), Best Film; National Board of Review Awards ‘61: Best Actor (Finney). VHS HMK