Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)

Saw Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), a character study about Arthur, an overgrown lad who works in a factory of some kind in the miserable brick tenement houses of post-war England.  His surroundings are grim and cramped, full of spying neighbors and drunken brawls.  Arthur drinks heavily and carries on with women, trying to wring as much short-term happiness out of his life as he can.  He's not a bad guy, but he is irresponsible and will cause a lot of unhappiness.

Arthur opens the film with an internal monologue sneering at the factory workers and at his boss.  "Don't let the bastards grind you down." he thinks "I'd like to see someone try to grind me down." We know that it doesn't work like that of course.  It's not someone who grinds you down, it's everyone; it's just life that wears you out and shrinks your dreams until they are as tawdry as merely wanting a new television set.  Arthur is rebellious, pugnacious, lashing out at whoever looks like authority, even if that person is also a put-upon victim, even when he is defending senseless vandalism.  He's deeply selfish in a proto-70s way, but young enough that I felt bad for him.  He hasn't yet accepted that he's doomed.

This film contains seeds of the staunch individualism championed in films of the 70s: the loner who resists society, who defends their freedom even as it costs them their friends and family.  Those films always frustrate me because it seems so unnecessary and cruel: the protagonists are always lost and somewhat joyless in their quest to discover themselves, the society they're rejecting seems so harmless and normal, what's their problem?  In this film however Arthur seems full of devilish glee as he skates from one disaster to another, and the society he's in looks realistically hopeless.

Another thing this film gets right is that they added another character to serve as contrast: a workmate who is easy-going and agreeable, sheep-like accepting of his fate.  This character is given dignity and even respect in the end.  He's not shown as the victor (he's clearly taken advantage of many times in the film) but he's left as an alternative: much easier, much more boring, but available to those who don't want to struggle.  It's an interesting film.