Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser
Finney and Co. caused more of a tsunami than a new wave
Of all the angry young men in the free cinema culture there was one particularly outstanding performer who believed that actors become more interesting when they do not act.
Albert Finney starred as Arthur Seaton in Saturday
Night and Sunday Morning (1960), which was brilliantly directed by Karl Reisz and adapted from the novel by Alan Sillitoe, who also wrote the screenplay.
Sillitoe had actually worked in the Raleigh bicycle factory featured in the film, and Finney had also spent months in a factory in Salford to fill in the time before drama school.
From the film’s opening frames the looks, attitude and, above all, the tone struck by Finney drew an instantaneous response from audiences.
The identification was immediate. One highly recognisable kind of temperament was split open for inspection in a work bench soliloquy that localised a whole stratum of English social class.
“Nine hundred and fifty bloody five. Another few more, that’s the last for a Friday...
£14 three and tuppence for a thousand of these a day. No wonder I always got a bad back, though I will soon be done I will have a fag in a bit. No sense in working every minute God sends. I could get through it in half the time.... but they would only slash me wages, so they can get stuffed. Don’t let the b******* grind you down. That’s one thing you learn. What I am out for is a good time. All the rest is propaganda.”
Arthur Seaton is a multidimensional personality, his character is constructed at several levels.
He is a factory worker and a rebel, the good lad who brings his pay packet home and pays mum his board and lodging.
To Brenda (Rachel Roberts) next door he is a source of pleasure with whom he is having an affair and just so happens to be his neighbour and work mate’s wife.
The relationship turns sour when she falls pregnant to Arthur and seeks an abortion.
Doreen (Shirley Ann Field), the innocent young girl he meets in a pub, becomes the object of his affection; he seduces her after promising to buy her a ring.
He terrifies a female worker by placing a dead rat on her work bench, but denies having anything to do with it when the factory manager confronts him, while a nosy neighbour is shot in the backside with his air gun.
Arthur takes a risk when he confronts Brenda in the fairground, witnessed by her husband, his brother and army mate and consequently they beat him up in a backyard wearing their army uniforms.
Director Karl Reisz said: “In a metaphorical way Arthur Seaton embodied what was happening in England: he was a sad person limited in his sensibilities, narrow in his ambitions and a bloody fool into the bargain.
“The stone throwing at the new housing estate sign at the end of the film tells the viewer that this is just round one by an aggressor who is a victim of this world.”
The film was produced by Woodfall Films, an independent company formed by Tony Richardson, Harry Saltzman and John Osborne, all flag flyers for the New Wave movement, in the late 50s.
For his breakthrough role of Seaton, Finney was paid £1000. The movie made a profit of £145,000.
The landscape and architecture of 60s Nottingham and Battersea is vividly captured through the skill of cinematographer Freddie Francis, who in an interview with Sight And Sound in 1965 recalled: “Released from the confines of the studio artifice the cameras of ‘realist’ film directors in the early 1960s made the industrial landscape their habitat.
“The new generation of actors were now framed by the camera solidly in the context of factory work benches, back streets and soot-streaked brick.
“When we see shirt-sleeved Albert Finney, he almost seems to have grown out of the environment. And at the end of the film he has rarely escaped from it.”
It was word of mouth that made this film such a success; the identification and empathy with Finney and his character, especially with young people, was total.
When the movie was completed and shown to the bookers, not one would agree to show it in the cinemas – they hated it.
When executive producer Saltzman showed the film to an executive from Columbia Pictures, he opined that the Finney character was offensive, the women were most unappetising, and the locations were the ugliest to have ever been in any feature film for entertainment.
However, when the Warner Brothers movie failed in a
West End showcase cinema in London, a friend of Saltzman’s agreed to show the film, which went on to break box office records all over the country.
Shortly afterwards, Saltzman received a call from the same executive at Columbia Pictures who had loathed the film.
He went on to offer Finney the lead role in the forthcoming David Lean epic Lawrence of Arabia. Finney declined.
The winner of four BAFTA awards, including most promising newcomer for Finney, best actress for Rachel Roberts, best director for Reisz, and best screenplay for Sillitoe, the British Film Institute listed the classic film as the 14th greatest British movie on their top 100 list.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, was a triumph and caused an instantaneous turn around in the independent film makers’ popularity.
The New Wave free cinema sensation had arrived, which was a breakthrough in British film history.