#2 - SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING (1960)
Directed by - Karel Reisz (UK)
It's hard to imagine that anyone's childhood dream could ever truly be spending the vast majority of your adult life on a factory floor. Yet, this for many ends up being an unavoidable reality. Depending on your point of view - there is nothing wrong with working on a factory, indeed for many it can be fullfilling enough - this can be a source of constant frustration.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning fit in well with the British kitchen-sink dramas and the angry young man films of its times. The story, based on an Alan Stilltoe novel of the same name, revolves around a young machinist at a Nottingham factory named Arthur Seaton (played by Albert Finney, in a strong local accent that is another feature of realist blue collar representation.)
As far as many representation of youth's awakening to the drag of factory life is concerned, in many ways Karel Reisz's film was unprecedented, and still remains as relevant as ever to this day. As the title implies, the only thing that brings Arthur joy is looking forward to the weekend. But when the weekend comes, the build up of expectation of his hard-earned days of leisure only serves to erupt in reckless behaviour, far too much drinking and a dangerous affair with a married woman. All the while, he's thinking thoughts that look with scorn upon his father, and the earlier generation, and he passionately fuels with rage thinking that he'll end up just like them (as he says, "dead from the neck up"). Nevertheless, the pattern has been set, and he is slowly becoming a part of the system.
The title of the film, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, is almost as significant as the narrative itself. Traditionally, this covers the time of drunkenness that follows up with an inevitable hangover. Life, and concequences in life, can be a build up to nothing but a hangover.