By Matthew Field
On March 30th 2011 Cinema Retro was invited to a special screening of Karel Reisz's classic British New Wave drama Saturday Night Sunday Morning at the BFI Southbank in London. Featuring an unforgettable performance by Albert Finney as rebellious, hard-living factory worker Arthur Seaton, this gritty, vital piece of cinema, is widely agreed to be one of the best British films of all time. Originally released in 1960, Saturday Night Sunday Morning was produced by Woodfall a production company that led the wave of kitchen sink dramas which explored post-war working class issues in a serious manner for the first time.
The screening was preceded with a Q & A with actress Shirley Anne Field. In conversation with the BFI’s artistic director Eddie Berg, Field credited the whole production for successfully creating credible working class characters who she felt had previously been portrayed on screen in a very patronising way. She touched on the problems the picture faced with the British censor due to the sensitive issues it explored such as abortion. Field also fondly reminisced about working with Finney and other British legends such as Hilda Baker.
A clip from the interview is available to view on the BFI Live website:
http://www.bfi.org.uk/live/video/610
(Photo courtesy of BFI)
(See Mark Mawston's interviews with Shirley Anne Field for Cinema Retro issues #15 and 16)