Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960): “It’s A Hard Life If You Don’t Weaken"

The Role of Realism in Film in Depicting the Defiant Acquiescence of 1950s Working-Class Britain

A groundbreaking British film for working-class representation and authenticity, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) follows the story of protagonist and narrator, Arthur Seaton, a 21-year-old lathe operator at the Raleigh Bicycle Factory in industrial 1950s Nottingham. Outside of his tedious and gruelling factory work, the boisterous Arthur occupies his time with more important pursuits, such as fishing with his cousin Bert; having affairs with married women whilst courting single ones; and drinking to excess, either aimlessly or to win bets. Whilst still having an affair with a co-worker’s wife, Brenda, Arthur begins courting younger, single Doreen. When his affair with Brenda lands her pregnant, Arthur faces the consequences of his actions, coughing up for an abortion when Brenda decides against keeping it, and then later offering to support Brenda and their child when she changes her mind. Throughout the film, Arthur expresses his disappointment and exasperation towards his coal miner cousin Bert, his co-worker Jack, and to Brenda, and he is met with dismissal, a brick wall, and a joke, respectively. Arthur proposes to Doreen, and in the final scene of the film, he throws a stone from the hill where they sit together towards a new local housing estate to which Doreen wants them to move, and Arthur acquiesces. The final shot shows them as they walk hand-in-hand towards their lives below.

This film adaptation of Alan Sillitoe’s famous 1958 novel of the same title, and the first feature film directed by Czech director Karel Reisz, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is one of the pioneers of the British New Wave of film and British realism movement, often referred to as Kitchen sink realism.

Kitchen sink realism depicts the complicated and gritty reality of working class life, mainly centring on the Midlands and North of England, and using the accents and slang of the region. Kitchen sink realism often addresses taboo topics, such as premarital sex, abortion (illegal in the UK until 1967), crime, and adultery. Media from the movement pushed the boundaries of television and film, with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning initially receiving an X-rating from the BBC, meaning the audience had to be over 18 years of age. Sillitoe’s novel was initially rejected by publishers for its authenticity and brazen honesty about working class life, and Nottingham Council wanted the novel banned so as to avoid harm to the city’s reputation. But these were defining features of kitchen sink realism: it aimed to convey uncomfortable truths of life and create complicated and picaresque characters. Chiefly, kitchen sink realism sought to create something that the working class could identify with by focusing on creating verisimilitude in film. In its realistic depiction of working class life, kitchen sink realism of the British New Wave spun cinema on its head. Where film would previously provide the audience escapism, kitchen sink realism invited the audience to watch someone else escape, and in doing so made characters out of every audience member.

Prior to kitchen sink realism, as described by critics, “too often, films were about the working class, rather than of the working class.” A notable example is David MacDonald’s Good Time Girl (1948), which depicts the rebellious and unruly life of a young working class girl swept up in a London gang. It is told through flashbacks while being described by a Juvenile Court Magistrate to a troubled working class teenage girl. However, taboo topics were explored at the expense of character development and working class voice, thus converting very real issues and people into mere entertainment encased in the “middle-class morality story.”

The predominance of middle- and upper-class directors making these films can explain the fact that representations of the working class in film did not allow working class people to identify with them due to their superficial, simplified and romanticised notion of working class life. For example, Macdonald grew up in an affluent coastal town in Northern Scotland, the son of a rich landowner. The mismatch of cultures and classes between director and characters, coupled with an inability, or unwillingness, to empathise, strips the film of any core realism.

In contrast, Sillitoe, who wrote both the original novel and screenplay for Saturday Night and Sunday Morninggrew up on the street where protagonist Arthur Seaton lives and dropped out of school at age 14 to work in the Raleigh Bicycle Factory, where Arthur works in the film. This not only creates a strong foundation of truth for the film, but also shows a prioritisation of a working class story in a way that previous films never had.

Although not the originator of the kitchen sink realism genre, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning could be argued to be one of the most virtuous in its pursuit of verisimilitude. Widely regarded to be the first of the genre, John Osbourne’s Look Back in Anger (1959) is set in a nondescript heavily industrial town in the Midlands. However, the film is shot mostly in Deptford and Dalston Junction in London. Despite efforts to retain the regional accent and dialect of the Midlands town, shooting the film outside of its setting did somewhat undermine its realism and authenticity. Another pioneer of the genre, Room at the Top (1959), was filmed on-location in Halifax, Yorkshire, but was set in the fictional towns Dufton and Warnley, which presents working class life and issues as somewhat of a fiction, softening the harsh realism that defines the kitchen sink realism genre and its message: these are real people living real lives in real places.

Powerfully, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is filmed almost entirely on location in the real place of Radford, Nottingham where it is set. The scenes set in the Raleigh Bicycle Factory are filmed in the factory itself, and Arthur’s house in the film is the one that Sillitoe grew up in and lived in when he and his whole family worked at Raleigh. At the Raleigh factory, Sillitoe even worked at the exact same workstation as Arthur does in the film.

Shooting on-location and according to setting is extremely powerful in kitchen sink realism, as the characters are a product of their industrial location and built environment. It is important for an audience to be confronted with the real places that working class characters inhabit, as this not only facilitates working class identification with a character, but also enables an understanding of the character’s reality. In short, the industrial landscape “both shaped and oppressed working class characters, fuelling their frustration” (Gillett, 2000). In Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, we as an audience can more readily understand Arthur’s anger and entrapment within his hometown and working class life when we are confronted head-on with his reality of limited opportunity, scant financial prospects, laborious work and his somewhat claustrophobic proximity to it.

A key element of establishing realism in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is Karel Reisz’s direction, namely his contrast in style of shooting between Arthur’s workplace and his leisure time. Reisz’s combination of complete competence and beginner’s excitement as a director, as well as his open-mindedness to engage with stories of those from different backgrounds and observe life as an outsider, marries beautifully with the message of the film and contributes to its groundbreaking impact. Having fled to England to escape the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia at the age of 12, Reisz admitted he was accustomed to both exploring different backgrounds and observing England’s social context as an outsider. The documentary style that Reisz adopts for the scenes shot in the Raleigh factory highlight the dreariness and monotony of the environment. This style also putt Reisz in his comfort zone as a director. Due to his previous documentary work on Momma Don’t Allow (1956), and We Are the Lambeth Boys (1959), Reisz’s familiarity with the style serves to exacerbate and facilitate the audience’s understanding of the banality of factory work in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, whilst the novelty of this feature film work injects his character work with a liveliness and excitement. This is exemplified by the contrast in the way Reisz frames his shots throughout the film in different settings.

Each scene introducing the factory begins with almost identical opening frames, depicting the same scene and the same men working the same machines with the same expressions and clothes, exemplifying not only the monotonous working environment and lifestyle of the factory workers, but also adding some verisimilitude to the film as this is how life would have been. In contrast, the scenes depicting Arthur in his leisure time - in the pub or with Brenda, Doreen, or Bert - even when set in the same locations, are never filmed framed in the same way as one another. They are never shot from the same angles, suggesting a sense of spontaneity, excitement and feeling alive. Additionally, the scenes depicting the Raleigh factory never include Arthur in the first shot, but during his leisure time, almost every scene begins with Arthur and is centred around him. This emphasises that Arthur’s time in the factory is not his own; it does not belong to him and it is not about what he wants to do with his life. The contrast in scene prioritisation really emphasises his entrapment within his class and his work as opposed to his freeing weekend lifestyle where his character is prioritised.

Kitchen sink realism is also famous for its presentations of “Angry Young Men”. This label refers to both the writers and protagonists of kitchen sink realism in late 1950s and early 1960s Britain, describing men who are disenchanted with the systems to which they fall victim. Although Arthur embodies the stereotype, the label has been criticised for its condescension, simplification, and deaf reception to working class struggle.

The “Angry Young Men” stereotype is damning and dismissive, both invalidating the anger that these men feel, and insinuating that this anger is all that they feel, which denies audiences the opportunity to delve deeper into the psyches of these working class men. Whilst one could simply ascribe Arthur the label of “Angry Young Man” and call it a day, this would be a reductionist reading of a deeply complicated and conflicted man. Arthur is spirited and defiant, wishing for more freedom but never striving for it; enacting change on such a scale that only he is affected; he is woven into the fabric of Nottingham yet separate from the community attitude, determined never to acquiesce yet seeing no alternative.

Describing his parents as “dead from the neck up”, even though they have a “TV set” and “a packet of fags”, Arthur insinuates that he wants more from his life than his parents had. Even though these would be considered luxurious items at the time, Arthur does not see them as a breakthrough for his class, as he feels that his parents have given in by accepting these small luxuries as the full extent of their capabilities. A headstrong anti-authority working-class man set on a better life would often be a recipe for a social activist or protestor, but Saturday Night and Sunday Morning tells a more nuanced story. Arthur holds a deep seated hatred for the social class system but, worked to exhaustion and subdued by just enough small luxury to make his life liveable, coupled with a lack of alternative solutions, Arthur finds himself comparatively powerless. We see him clutch to his autonomy and freedom by making his own rules, most notably through his determination to establish his own moral compass; his distaste for authority; and his small, spontaneous efforts to embellish life.

Even within his working-class community, Arthur’s anger and frustration are never understood, emphasising his lack of social influence and inability to enact real change, as well as illustrating his isolation, even from his closest friends. Arthur adopts the mentality that he and his fellow working-class community should not give in to those above - “don’t let the bastards grind you down”. However, on multiple occasions, the film demonstrates that this view is not widely held by those around him. Sitting in her kitchen eating the breakfast she has cooked for him, Arthur mops up the grease on his plate with his toast and expresses despondence at the slog of the working week, stating defiantly, and rather profoundly, “it’s a hard life if you don’t weaken”. Despite the seriousness of his remark, Brenda replies jokingly, “no rest for the wicked”, and pours Arthur another cup of tea. Similarly, in a conversation with Jack on a short break at the factory, Arthur remarks “that’s what all these loony laws are for: to be broken by blokes like us”, but Jack only replies solemnly and disappointedly, “you might cop it one of these days. Perhaps you won’t be so cocky once you settle down.” Jack refuses to entertain Arthur’s suggestion to disrupt the traditional order and patronises him, reducing his defiance to cockiness, and dismissing Arthur’s collective “us”, to an isolating “you”. Even when talking to his close friend, and cousin, Bert, Arthur get no further in seeking understanding. In a last-straw rant on a fishing trip, Arthur criticises the financial weight of marriage, saying “I work for the factory, the income tax and the insurance already, that’s enough for a bit. They rob you right, left and centre. After they’ve skinned you dry, you get called up to the army and get shot to death.” After this very intense and emotive speech, Bert replies, matter-of-fact and deadpan, “That’s how things are, Arthur, no good going crackers over it. All you can do is go on working and hope that some day something good will turn up”. After being dismissed by these characters when making his feelings known to them, Arthur never re-visits the topic with them, as he gradually realises that he is much more alone than he had thought. This further emphasises the lack of social power and influence that Arthur has, as not even those closest to him, who are effectively in the same boat as him, see life the same way as he does.

With this, we can see why he detests people that make assertions about who they think he is: “whatever people say I am, that’s what I’m not”. Whilst he says this triumphantly, the latter part of the line - “God knows what I am” - frequently omitted when quoted, suggests that Arthur is lost and very much alone in trying to make sense of himself.

Despite differences in his approach to working-class life, Arthur groups himself together with the greater working-class community where authority figures are concerned. Throughout the film, Arthur’s distinct and deep-seated distaste for authority is evident although his rebellions against said authority figures are small and disproportionate to his true hatred for them. Arthur’s most notable rebellion against authority is in reaction to a drunken man smashing the window of a funeral home, in order to steal flowers for his deceased mother’s grave. Noticing this act Arthur urges the man to evade the police. However, the robber is seized by passers-by, who restrain him and call the police. Arthur approaches the conflict and immediately takes the drunken man’s side, urging the man to break the law and run away before the police arrive, whilst other civilians contest Arthur, condemning the drunken man’s actions while putting their faith in stately justice. Despite avidly insisting that the man should run, Arthur is silent when the police arrive, and the robber is arrested, much to Arthur’s gossiping neighbour’s satisfaction. Here, Arthur initially argues fervently in favour of breaking the law, but when the police appear, he shows no such fighting spirit or will to action. Although the police force is the constant subject of his criticisms, Arthur remains fearful of enacting any significant action against the police, his emotional dissonance conveying his lived entrapment.

The aforementioned scene further illustrates Arthur’s personal code of conduct and moral principles, displaying a set of values decidedly independent of others’ opinions. Arthur is not a traditionally moral man– he is an adulterer, outspoken in nature, and often incredibly rude– yet he remains loveable, principally because of the appealing and seemingly fair rules hecreates for himself. Although not a traditionally “moral” option, the insistence that the drunken man should flee the scene of the crime arises from Arthur’s moral code. Unsatisfied with systems of classical justice, Arthur resolves to take matters into his own hands, shooting his neighbour with an air gun out of annoyance with her perpetual gossip. When the police eventually visit Arthur, he easily evades arrest, much to his aforementioned neighbour’s dismay. In this way, Arthur feels that justice is served, and we as an audience cannot help but agree. Arthur’s moral code feels more emotionally fair as a nasty person gets their comeuppance after trifling with a grieving man.

Additionally, Arthur’s ethical code highlights the irony present in traditional morality. His co-worker and Brenda’s husband, Jack, is presented as a traditionally virtuous and honest man as he works to the best of his physical ability and offers to take up night shifts. However, this dedication to work serves to divide Jack from his wife and children while also denying him a social life. In contrast, Arthur admits to the audience via narration that while he is physically capable of working a lot harder than he currently does, to exert any more effort would be futile as he would not get paid any better for working harder. Arthur is paid relatively well for a factory worker and does not lose out on his Saturday Night and Sunday Morning life because of work. Here, and in regards to the drunken man, Arthur’s perceptive questioning of the applicability of traditional rules in his own life undermines typical systems and presents Jack as rather foolish for abiding by them.

However, Arthur does not just stick to his moral code when it benefits him. Hiding from her brother-in-laws as they search for her at a fairground, Brenda tells Arthur that she wants to keep their baby, In response, Arthur insists that he will help her with the child, a statement which puts Brenda in utter disbelief. As she tries to walk away from Arthur and back to the main fairground, Arthur runs after her, knowing that their secret will be discovered, but not wanting Brenda to bear the brunt of it. As Brenda’s brother-in-laws watch the pair on a fairground ride together, Arthur now has full knowledge that Jack’s brothers will pursue him, and jumps off the ride to take the beating that Brenda’s husband, Jack, promised him. In this instance, Arthur could have avoided implicating himself in their affair, but he knows that it is right for him to own up to his errors, and will not stand by and let Brenda face them alone. Through this action, Arthur earns the respect of the audience, displaying a character beyond the simple labels of “rebel” and “opportunist”. Arthur’s integrity is exemplified, his moral code creating his truly honorable persona. As described by Nottingham native and film producer Henry Normal, Arthur’s insistence that he’d rather “lose on (his) terms than win on yours”, illustrates–besides resolute defiance–a strength of character and honesty that warrants incredible respect. Arthur’s values, though not consistent with those of traditional society, are commendable and consistent in their own right, exercised by Arthur even when they disadvantage him. This scene at the fairground is important in establishing the relationship between Arthur and the audience. Jack is a character that a typical audience is instantly comfortable watching and respecting, while the philandering Arthur is not. Especially powerfully in this scene, Arthur teaches the audience that judging and labelling a character on first impression is futile, not only because one is often factually wrong, but also because a character can teach the audience that they misjudged themselves. Precisely because Arthur is an initially uncomfortable character to watch and to respect, when an audience finishes the film respecting and understanding him, one cannot help but hold him in even higher esteem than those whom we almost automatically respect just because they fit the classic definition of a “respectable” man. Arthur overcomes negative perceptions of him, evading every label, and forces the audience to confront the fact that, while Jack has our respect from a traditional standpoint, Arthur truly earns it. Arthur teaches an audience that their traditional rules and values are much more flexible than they might have imagined and that Arthur’s working-class life can inspire an understanding of the rejection of these typical rules. It is a genius way of challenging the previous representations of working-class individuals in film, as the audience is made to question both the logic of societal structure and the very definition of a “good man”.

Another very intriguing feature of Arthur’s character is his propensity for trouble and tempting fate, highlighting both his desire for excitement and his need to prove to himself that he retains autonomy. Throughout the film, Arthur enjoys making a scene to entertain himself amid the banality of daily life. Most notably, Arthur falls down the stairs in the pub after winning a drinking contest. Although arguably an inebriated accident, the shot just before his fall shows Arthur pause and contemplatively stare downwards at the stairs before lowering his head to a nod, almost indicative of his having decided to fall down. This is supported by his light-hearted reaction to the incident, as he lies at the bottom of the stairs and laughs to himself jollily. This scene is particularly interesting as Arthur is alone in the room where he falls, suggesting that this stunt is purely for his own amusement, serving to not only embellish his life but also reinforce his freedom in how he chooses to live.

The final scene of the film depicts Arthur’s acquiescence, and realisation that the freedom he experienced as a working-class man was an illusion. As Arthur and his fiancée Doreen sit on a hill overlooking a new housing estate in Nottingham, Doreen suggests that they live together there. To this, Arthur replies that he would not be opposed to staying in an older house: the first of his curious reminiscences. Despite previously despising those who look back fondly on the past, Arthur all of a sudden takes to nostalgia; he remarks that he used to play with Bert on the hill and pick blackberries when they were kids, adding, rather solemnly, that “there won’t be blackberries or a blade of grass here much longer.” As Arthur begins to see his life stretch before him– the same life everyone that he has ever known has lived– he begins to look back fondly on his past days of freedom. He now realises that he has already acquiesced, and is no different from anyone else he has ever known. As soon as he catches himself reminiscing, he knows that he has gone past the point of no return and has acquiesced already. In the absence of a more productive outlet by which to express his intense frustration with his lack of choice, Arthur vehemently throws a stone at the city and its houses, aware that they entrap him, but feeling it is the only place that will welcome him and thus that he must belong to it; they keep him trapped. His past belief that he could live freely and differently to those before him was merely an illusion, and his surrender was not to be evaded, only delayed.

However, just as the audience may begin to feel defeated, Arthur, ever resistant to predictability, assures us of his persistent strength of spirit and will. When Doreen asks why he threw the rock, Arthur replies that he does not know, but insists that “it won’t be the last one” he throws. Arthur takes Doreen’s hand and walks towards the houses below, simultaneously damning his future and resigning himself to it. For a second we, as an audience, could see the throwing of the rock as Arthur’s last act of spontaneous and spirited defiance before resolute acceptance, but he still has a fight in him. I like to see this as a little nod and dismissal, to the “Angry Young Men” label, slightly comical but defiant, like Arthur himself who so detests a label; he is not just an angry young man, he intends to be an angry old man too.

The kitchen sink realism movement speaks to the experiences of the working class who, at that point, were either stereotyped or resolutely ignored by film. Aside from its international commendations, being the third highest-grossing film of 1960 and 1961 winner of the Grand Award for Best Feature Film at the Mar Del Plata International Film Festival, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning has made a lasting impact on British film, pop culture, and the British working class, especially in Nottingham. Even though some claim that the 1960s watered down kitchen sink realism to soap operas such as “Coronation Street” and “Eastenders”, the genre made way for Ken Loach’s “Kes” (1969) and Alan Clarke’s “Scum” (1979), as well as more recent British realism such as Red Road (2006) and Fish Tank (2009), which continued to speak to the experiences of the working class. The on-location and largely true-to-setting shooting of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning set the precedent for other films of the genre. Films such as “A Taste of Honey” (1961), filmed entirely on-location and according to setting, and “Cathy Come Home” (1966), with filming on-location in the latter even pressing the Birmingham council into action in addressing the city’s serious homelessness issues highlighted by the film. Additionally, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning has garnered attention in British pop culture, notably by the Smiths in their 1986 hit “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”, which borrows heavily from the film, and the Arctic Monkey’s seminal 2009 album, using one of Arthur’s quotes “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not”, as its title. Revamps and continuations of kitchen sink realism, particularly the re-imagining of Karel Reisz’s 1959 documentary series “We Are the Lambeth Boys” amid the mid-1980s miners’ strikes, illustrates the power held by the genre in its ability to project a lesser-heard, thicker-accented voice of the working class. Most importantly of all, above need to be heard by others, was the need for the working-class audience to feel understood, and in this way Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was revolutionary, as it created a space in film for the British working class, created by the British working class. Exemplified by Midlands-born director and producer Stephen Frears, “(Saturday Night and Sunday Morning) had a huge impact on me. The cinema was where you learned to live. It was a wonderful time in Britain, and particularly if you were from the Midlands or the North. You’d never been treated in this way before, in films that truthfully showed what life was like.” Past attempts to depict the working class in film had disregarded working-class lives and issues in favour of a quaint and pitiable presentation of an inferior class more palatable for middle- and upper-classes that served to reinforce the superiority of the audience. Sillitoe and Reisz’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning offers Arthur, real through and through; his home is Sillitoe’s mother’s house; his industrial job is in the same factory Sillitoe and his whole family worked in; his street is the one Sillitoe grew up on; his accent is that of every Nottingham native; his hair; his clothes; his attitude, all the product of a postwar Britain offering him the chance to work incessantly through the long tunnel that terminates only at an ever-uncertain, but certainly reduced, pension. And yet he has still more stones to throw.