‎Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) directed by Karel Reisz • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

1960 Directed by Karel Reisz

Saturday night you have your fling at life...and Sunday morning you face up to it!

Arthur, one of Britain's angry young men of the 1960s, is a hardworking factory worker who slaves all week at his mindless job for his modest wages. Come Saturday night, he's off to the pub for a loud and rowdy beer session. With him is Brenda, his girlfriend of the moment. Married to a fellow worker, she is nonetheless captivated by his rugged good looks and his devil-may-care attitude. Soon a new love interest Doreen enters and a week later, Brenda announces she's pregnant. She tells Arthur she needs money for an abortion, and Arthur promises to pay for it. By this time, his relationship with Doreen has ripened and Brenda, hearing of it, confronts him. He denies everything, but it's obvious that their affair is all but over.

Albert Finney Shirley Anne Field Rachel Roberts Hylda Baker Norman Rossington Bryan Pringle Robert Cawdron

Country

Language

English

drama

89 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Steve G ★★★★ 16

While I was watching Saturday Night And Sunday Morning on Mubi, I came to realise that there would probably be rather a lot of people from nations other than the UK watching this film and attempting to understand what the hell people were talking about here. Which amuses me greatly, especially as they didn't provide subtitles.

So, for those of you from outside this country struggling with some of the terminology in this film or about to watch it for the first time, here's a short glossary of some of the terms you will hear more than once in this film:-

* bleeder: A person of ill-repute - "Some bleeder in Wal-Mart stood on my foot!"

* summat: Another way…
Review by Alice Stoehr ★★★★

A few weeks in the life of Arthur Seaton, a Nottingham factory worker played by Albert Finney who fancies a pint, a fag, and a tumble; who's even more pathetic than the townsfolk he loathes; who's a terminally selfish and self-destructive asshole. Here are three incidents from late in the film:

1) Arthur foolishly climbs onto a carnival ride alongside the married woman (Rachel Roberts) with whom he's been sleeping. Two soldiers in league with her mild-mannered husband are standing on the outer perimeter of the ride as it goes 'round and around, waiting for Arthur to hop off. The camera catches Arthur and Brenda in a series of tight two shots on the ride itself, with light and shadow…
Review by Sarah Jane ★★★★ 2

Albert Finney is on fire in this 1960 entry of the "Kitchen Sink/British New Wave. Based on Alan Sillitoe's excellent novel of the same name, Finney plays Arthur Seaton, a young lad working as a machinist who loves nothing better than drinking, smoking, and fucking. He's having an affair with a co-worker's wife (Rachel Roberts) when he meets Doreen (Shirley Anne Field). He juggles both of them for a while but it isn't long before one of them in pregnant and he finds himself having to make some grown-up decisions.

Finney is extraordinary in this. Honestly, I feel like he's severely unappreciated as an actor. He's had a fantastic career with memorable roles spanning 50 years. I'll plug one of…
Review by Simon Collison ★★★★½

A film I've watched hundreds of times. Finney is Arthur Seaton, a rogue working at the Raleigh bicycle factory in Nottingham. He made his career off the back of this film, and quite right too. The direction is superb, the soundtrack wonderful, the cast (mostly) excellent. This is Nottingham in the sixties as my Dad describes it: hard work to earn weekends at play, but with occasional consequences. One of the best British kitchen sink movies ever made. I absolutely love it.
Review by Chad Hartigan ★★★★★

One of the all-time great star-making performances from Albert Finney. Just absolutely explodes off the screen in every frame. Loved it even more the second time.
Review by Will ★★★★★

It's like the Naked of 1960. Absolutely phenomenal, Finney owns the screen from start to finish. Can you imagine how intimidating it must've been as an aspiring actor and seeing him do this?

The landscape's almost unrecognisable now but the people really aren't so different. I really 'get' this whole thing, though. I think coming from a family where my grandparents were working class northerners means this whole nearly sixty-year past feels very very pertinent still. Not that relevance is even an important thing to judge; why wouldn't you want to pick up a 57 year old time capsule and have the chance to dissect people for who they were?

Recent reviews

Review by Doğukan Büyükkorkmaz ★★★½

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die Marathon (UK) #

7/10
Review by Noah LePage ★★★½

Week 16 in my Film School Drop Outs Weekly Challenge. This week was all about British Kitchen Sink Realism, a movement all about rolled-up shirt sleeves and pints as black as treacle.

This is your meat-and-potatoes youth-run-amok picture, except it has Albert Finney, who seems to have slaughtered all the bullet points for an iconic role:

• CHARISMA
• WARDROBE
• CATCHPHRASES (he refers to everyone as a "duck" and it's great)
• CIGS
• THE FACT THAT HE COULD GIVE LESS OF A SHIT

But it's a tepid script that ends up dragging his great performance into the dirt. Sure he's a scoundrel, and he does awful things, but he's never given a proper moment of atonement beyond a…
Review by annamckenzie ★★★½

Watched one of Dad's favourite films with him for Father's Day ☺️
Review by Andrew Megow ★★★½

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) is a brutally honest film. I think we all know someone like Arthur, the main character whose one goal in life is to have good time and could care less about who he hurts in the process. During the course of a few weekends, he starts an affair with a married woman and on the side, courts a young naive woman who lives with her mother and wants Arthur to settle down and start a family. Soon, his actions get the best of him as he impregnates the married woman and must decide whether he will help support the child, help get rid of the child, or avoid the situation completely. While an extremely…
Review by Chad Hartigan ★★★★★

One of the all-time great star-making performances from Albert Finney. Just absolutely explodes off the screen in every frame. Loved it even more the second time.
Review by Sylv ★★★★

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

She had to carry a baby to term and still stuck with her pathetic husband while her baby daddy went off to marry a younger girl? Aw shit.
Review by noaho ★★★★

Albert Finney plays a rebellious heartthrob. Albert Finney could once play rebellious and be a hearthrob? One may ask. Here is the answer. A angry young man film. Finney gets drunk, fucked, bloated and beaten. And gets the girl. But which girl does he want?
Review by Sarah Jane ★★★★ 2

Albert Finney is on fire in this 1960 entry of the "Kitchen Sink/British New Wave. Based on Alan Sillitoe's excellent novel of the same name, Finney plays Arthur Seaton, a young lad working as a machinist who loves nothing better than drinking, smoking, and fucking. He's having an affair with a co-worker's wife (Rachel Roberts) when he meets Doreen (Shirley Anne Field). He juggles both of them for a while but it isn't long before one of them in pregnant and he finds himself having to make some grown-up decisions.

Finney is extraordinary in this. Honestly, I feel like he's severely unappreciated as an actor. He's had a fantastic career with memorable roles spanning 50 years. I'll plug one of…
Review by Phillip Vernon ★★★★

Feels more contemporary and relevant than most films at the cinema these days - if updated for the marginal and imperfect strides we've made in diversity.

Writing and performances such as these are proof that you don't need supernatural content or visual pyrotechnics to explore the abstract or existential, but the pristine photography doesn't hurt.