Country: UK
Year: 1960
Duration: 89'


Arthur Seaton, a young factory worker in Nottingham, works hard all week and in compensation expects nothing more than to drink and fight with his mates at the local pub on Saturday evening. He is having an affair with Brenda, the wife of his friend Jack, and at the same time seeing Doreen, who is holding out for marriage. After Brenda becomes pregnant (followed by an unsuccessful visit to Arthur's Aunt Ada, a backstreet abortionist), Jack learns of the affair and he and his soldier brother beat up Arthur. Arthur accepts the beating, with which comes a sense of responsibility; he agrees to marry Doreen and settle down.

"Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was adapted by Alan Sillitoe from his bestselling first novel, a study of a factory worker named Arthur Seaton, living in the Midlands city of Nottingham. Unlike the romanticized image of the city that most Americans have, thanks to Robin Hood, Nottingham is a mean, depressing industrial town, dominated by a grimy, Victorianera 'castle'. Life here is dull and unsophisticated, with thousands of Arthur Seatons working five or six days a week for the pleasure of boozing on Saturday night and relaxing on Sunday morning. Not an exciting existence; Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is a depressing film.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning cost little more than 200,000 pounds to produce, then earned more than half of that sum back during only the first three weeks of its British release. It was rated X (no one under sixteen admitted) by the British Board of Film Censors, and some local authorities in Britain banned it altogether from their areas. In America, the Catholic National Legion of Decency condemned the film as 'immoral'." (Anthony Slide, Fifty Classic British Films, New York, Dover Publications, 1985, p. 100)

Biography

film director

Karel Reisz

FILMOGRAFIA

Momma Don’t Allow (cm, doc., 1955), We Are the Lambeth Boys (Siamo i ragazzi di Lambeth, doc., 1958), March to Aldermaston (cm, doc., 1959), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Sabato sera, domenica mattina, 1960), Night Must Fall (La doppia vita di Dan Craig, 1964), Morgan! (Morgan matto da legare, 1966), Isadora (id., 1968), The Gambler (40.000 dollari per non morire, 1974), Who’ll Stop the Rain (Guerrieri dell’inferno, 1978), The French Lieutenant’s Woman (La donna del tenente francese, 1981), Sweet Dreams (id., 1985), Everybody Wins (Alla ricerca dell’assassino, 1990), Performance (ep., tv, 1994), Act Without Words I (cm, tv, 2000).

Cast

& Credits

Director: Karel Reisz.
Screenplay: Alan Sillitoe, dal suo romanzo.
Director of photography: Freddie Francis.
Editor: Seth Holt.
Art director: Ted Marshall.
Music: John Dankworth.
Cast: Abert Finney (Arthur Seaton), Shirley Ann Field (Doreen), Rachel Roberts (Brenda), Hylda Baker (zia Ada), Norman Rossington (Bert), Bryan Pringle (Jack), Robert Cawdron (Robboe), Edna Morris (Mrs. Bull), Elsie Wagstaffe (Mrs. Seaton), Frank Pettitt (Mr Seaton), lrene Richmond (la madre di Doreen).
Production company: Harry Saltzman, Tony Richardson per la Woodfall Films.
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