Plot: A rebellious, hard-living factory worker juggles relationships with two women, one of whom is married to another man but pregnant with his child.
Starring Albert Finney (Arthur Seaton); Shirley Anne Field (Doreen); Rachel Roberts (Brenda); Norman Rossington (Bert).
Directed by Katel Reisz. Written by Alan Sillitoe. Cinematography by Freddie Francis. Music by Johnny Dankworth. Filmed in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire; Greenford, Middlesex; Culvert Road, Battersea, London.
“I'm me and nobody else. Whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not because they don't know a bloody thing about me! God knows what I am.”
Arthur Seaton (brilliantly played by Albert Finney) works as a lathe operator in a bicycle manufacturing plant (earning £14 a day for every thousand bicycle parts he makes), and he is completely unsympathetic. He puts down everyone and everything with his caustic one liners. Arthur drinks himself to oblivion and exhibits boorish behavior to nearly everyone, especially the gobshite neighbor woman in what are the film’s most humorous scenes.
He’s also shagging Brenda (Rachel Roberts), the wife of a workmate while at the same time pursuing the dishy factory girl Doreen (Shirley Anne Field).
"Don't let the bastards grind you down!"
Despite this, Arthur Seaton is arrogant and probably sociopathic, yet he’s also incredibly charismatic and a definitive anti-hero. He’s not a trapped, unhappy, and ultimately helpless angry young man like Look Back in Anger’s Jimmy Porter. Seaton knows what he wants out of life: to have a good time, because “all the rest is propaganda.” Arthur doesn’t feel the need to better his lot in life because he’s already self actualized. He harbors no illusions about his existence. He is self aware and also aware of others. His insults are actually spot-on observations about the people who inhabit his world.
“They have a television set and a packet of fags, but they're both dead from the neck up.”
Finney plays the role brilliantly because even though his Arthur Seaton is an immoral louse, the viewer still roots for him!
Arthur’s not all bad, though. In a brief but telling scene, Arthur attempts to bond with his father by relaying a story about a ghastly accident at work. Seaton senior isn't interested though, as he keeps his eyes completely fixed on the telly.
Shirley Anne Field is a luminous vision of beauty, and her performance has a crackle and spark about it in her scenes with Finney that made me wish she had gotten more screen time as well as more roles like this.
Look fast for Colin Blakely, Peter Sallis, and Kitchen Sink stalwart Avis Bunnage in an amusing pub scene.
Johnny Dankworth provides a jaunty, incredibly catchy and hummable theme which should be considered a classic.
The film has generous helpings of scenes featuring crumbling Victorian-era row houses and heaving smokestacks.
When Arthur receives a well-deserved beating from two soldiers who catch him with Brenda, the camera stays still and well back of the action in a strikingly lit scene by the great Freddie Francis (Room at the Top).
Spoilers: Despite the physical thrashing, his trying (and failing) to get Brenda an abortion, Arthur Seaton still gets a happy ending, as he and Doreen walk off together at the end of the film!
So far, this has been the best film of the lot! A character study of an angry young man who has no regrets, no guilt, and no conscience! Albert Finney’s Arthur Seaton must have resonated with Northern working-class men, as there is film footage of moviegoers lined up around the block to see Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Either that, or the film’s explicit subject matter: extramarital affairs, abortion, and earthy language were all huge draws in 1960, as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was Great Britain’s third-most profitable film of 1960.
This Kitchen Sink Drama craze has led to a brief sidebar of their writers, the so-called Angry Young Men, a term which, like most bad things, was a media fabrication. Most of these fellows had never met and had precious little in common, and when they read one another's work, they savaged it.
The late 1950s media were fixated on manufacturing literary collectives (Angry Young Men, Beat Generation), just so they could subsequently ridicule and tear them down.
My favorite British novel from this period is Colin Wilson's Ritual in the Dark (1960). Set in seedy London, Soho coffeehouses, and Whitechapel, this is about a young lower-class loner who befriends a wealthy but mysterious gay man who captivates him intellectually. But the loner also suspects that he might be the man who has been killing prostitutes in Whitechapel. While trying to unravel the mystery, the loner becomes involved with the suspect's aunt and her niece. He also speaks with the suspect's old priest and an eccentric and poor artist.
The novel is crammed with atmospheric touches and philosophical conversations. This was Wilson's first and best novel.
While I've been doing some cursory trawling among the Angry Young Men (AYM) authors, I doubt I'll delve into their works, though I wouldn't mind a book in which those authors discuss their works and the "movement" which brought them attention.
There is a book called Britain's Angry Young Men: Kingsley Amis, John Braine, Bill Hopkins, John Wain and Colin Wilson, but it seems to be difficult to locate.
"Ray Gosling looks at what it means to him to be a midlander - by comparing and contrasting the cities of Leicester and Nottingham. Gosling has lived in and loved both places, and is fascinated by the differences between two cities that are less than thirty miles apart.
"This clip focuses on his time in Nottingham - Queen of the midlands - with its metropolitan outlook, and architecture evoking sheer northern rawness."
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There's probably a 1960s-era clip for every northern city that could serve as a backdrop to a kitchen sink drama.
I'm "romanticizing it all out of proportion" because I didn't have to live in those places, but I love me some monochrome Great Britain, circa 1940s-1960s.
"This film showcases Birmingham's slum clearance and council house building programme, and was originally transmitted on 24 February 1959. Presented by Douglas Jones."
Plot: A rebellious, hard-living factory worker juggles relationships with two women, one of whom is married to another man but pregnant with his child.
Starring Albert Finney (Arthur Seaton); Shirley Anne Field (Doreen); Rachel Roberts (Brenda); Norman Rossington (Bert).
Directed by Katel Reisz. Written by Alan Sillitoe. Cinematography by Freddie Francis. Music by Johnny Dankworth. Filmed in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire; Greenford, Middlesex; Culvert Road, Battersea, London.
Spoilers: Despite the physical thrashing, his trying (and failing) to get Brenda an abortion, Arthur Seaton still gets a happy ending, as he and Doreen walk off together at the end of the film!
64 YEAR OLD SPOILER ALERT $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Well, I was petrified at the "happy ending", as they walk down that little hill towards the new housing scheme, ready to settle down into a life that would inevitably be just like one of those terribly depressing Kitchen Sink Dramas.
Well, I was petrified at the "happy ending", as they walk down that little hill towards the new housing scheme, ready to settle down into a life that would inevitably be just like one of those terribly depressing Kitchen Sink Dramas.
Ol' Arthur wasn't bothered by anything, so perhaps your fear was unfounded.
Not strictly in your parameters, but investigate a rather bleak 1975 made-for-tv film called It's a Lovely Day Tomorrow - drama about the wartime disaster at Bethnal green tube station where 173 londoners died at the entrance due to panic during an air raid in 1943.
Liz Smith is about the only known face, playing a dotty wizened granny who would rather stay in her home when the sirens go off and risk being bombed than go down the shelter.
The title It's a Lovely Day Tomorrow has a Myth of Sisyphus feel to it. Very Existential and very English.
I recall reading about the incident on which the film is based.
Gracias for the recommendation, Bill. I appreciate them because I thought I might have hit the proverbial "Kitchen Sink Wall" in terms of the classic films. However, I find that many a Wednesday Play, Play for Today, and Armchair Theatre are as much a part of the Kitchen Sink aka Life in England genre.
MusicMad expressing concern for my well being after I'd watched so many of these films is one of my all-time favorite FSM posts.
Work has been a time-wasting bitch recently, so the Labor Day weekend here will be an opportunity to watch another film after nearly a month.
Cock up on the image-hosting front. Will add pics when shite host allows.
The Golden Vision (1968)
Plot: Story of a group of tyre factory workers who live and breathe watching Everton FC.
Directed by Kenneth (Ken) Loach. Written by Neville Smith, Gordon Honeycombe. Cinematography by Tony Imi. Music: Everton football songs performed by cast and Everton FC supporters. Starring: Ken Jones (Joe Horrigan); Bill Dean (John Coyne); Neville Smith (Vince Coyne); Joey Kaye (Brian Croft); Johnny Gee (Syd Paisley). Various Everton FC players and staff: themselves. Filmed in Liverpool, Goodison Park.
An episode of The Wednesday Play.
Put aside your tribal football allegiance for the duration of this film’s runtime and watch this absolute masterpiece. It is an outstanding social and cultural history of 1960s Britain as well as a touching family chronicle with lovely moments of humor.
This has to be the most warmhearted film Ken Loach ever directed. The family scenes are shot in close-up, documentary style, and are wonderfully naturalistic. There are plenty of “Kitchen Sink” moments, such as the shots of smokey row house neighborhoods, tight closeups of their domicile interiors. There is even a mention of how these homes are to be pulled down in order to “build slums” (tower blocks) in their place! The viewer learns of the connection between football clubs’ importance to their supporters, but also the lives of those supporters.
While The Golden Vision (also the nickname of Everton Centre-Forward Alex Young) chronicles the allegiance of tyre factory workers to their beloved club, the film could easily have been about supporters of Leeds United, Liverpool, or West Ham. In fact, the latter two are spoken of respectfully by Everton players Ray Wilson and Gordon West. Ray Wilson even goes on the record to state that he wished all football clubs would play in an open style like West Ham.
The semi-documentary style of the film includes training and match footage (Everton vs. Manchester City and Everton vs. Arsenal circa the 1967-68 season) interspersed with cast reactions to those matches.
Best scenes: The elderly family friend and his Everton-related interactions with the young son, who can recite the entire Everton FC squads from various banner seasons. The best man (Johnny Gee) at the wedding, who rushes along the photographer so he can ride along with the bride and groom in their car in order to catch the match (“Goodison Park. And step on it.”) The prickly and hilarious Catholic priest (who resembles Patrick Macnee) who stops by the house to ask of their whereabouts, as the family spend their Sundays attending matches and chugs from a bottle of pale ale before departing.
The scenes at the tyre-manufacturing plant and all the white noise and stressful interactions between manager and worker make it clear why these people live for their football: their working life is shite.
The women in the cast are credited as “The Women They Left Behind” because the men spend every Sunday at Everton matches. The women in this film are a little worse for wear, but still have a natural, realistic beauty and strength about them. The women discuss “women” subjects and the men discuss “men” subjects, yet it’s football that really keeps them apart.
The men also attend a strip club, so the viewer is treated to a couple of nude scenes. There are numerous pub singalongs with several Everton songs being performed. Those with long footie memories will no doubt know the words.
The finale is a hilarious yet at the same time touching fantasy sequence of Joe Horrigan (Ken Jones) getting to be #9 for Everton and scoring the winning goal; he is then mobbed by his teammates. Brilliant ending and one that had me laughing out loud.
Britain in monochrome with its northern (and London) working class aesthetic is for me the greatest filmed visual ever. Whether it’s the work of those cinematographers, that landscape, or even that particular film stock, everything about it is just mesmerizing to this viewer.
The Golden Vision comes with my highest recommendation.
"In this mid-sixties documentary, two teenagers confront some of the existential crises facing those coming of age in this era. They mull over how they want to live, how society is ordered and whether you can truly be free.
No presenter, no voice-over, no words but their own.
Whatever your approach to existentialism, BBC Archive does not recommend hitchhiking as a means of travel along this (or any) road.
Clip taken from The Long Journey, originally broadcast on BBC One, Tuesday 7 April, 1964." ____________
The wags in the comments section accurately point out that it was conceivable Morrissey of The Smiths fame could have been obsessed with the documentary.
The film features some impressive shots of a sooty, run-down city landscape.
Had to laugh at The Beeb warning us not to hitchhike, yet they support so many other questionable things.
