Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)
Directed by John Schlesinger

Film Review

It was Midnight Cowboy (1969) that brought John Schlesinger international acclaim and set the pattern for much of the director's subsequent work, bleak and often uncompromising portraits of loners trying to make their way in a world from which they are somehow disconnected.  Sunday Bloody Sunday, the director's next film, has a very different feel from Midnight Cowboy but it seems naturally to carry on its central themes of isolation, alienation and yearning for a kind of love which, however imperfect and unconventional, will make life meaningful.  The film broke new ground not only with its startlingly frank portrayal of a bisexual love triangle but also with its sympathetic portrayal of a homosexual relationship.  From his obvious reluctance to deal with homosexuality in Midnight Cowboy, you'd never think that Schlesinger was himself gay, but Sunday Bloody Sunday makes up for that and is by far the director's most humane and insightful work - and probably his best film over all.

Playing a mature man perfectly at home with his homosexuality (although not yet able to reveal the fact to his tradition-bound Jewish family) Peter Finch brings a blistering sense of reality to his portrayal, which is mirrored by an equally sensitive and authentic performance from Glenda Jackson, at her best as a woman struggling to find meaning in her aimless life.  Finch and Jackson both won BAFTAs for their performances here (with three other BAFTAs awarded for the direction, film and its editing), and it's hard to name a single film in which either actor struck so many emotional chords and left such a profound impression.  Murray Head also deserves praise for his portrayal of the self-centred 'piggy-in-the-middle', not the vacuous character you might have expected but again a fully developed and convincingly played individual who draws almost as much sympathy as the more overtly fragile characters in the unusual love triangle.  What Finch, Jackson and Head deliver are the most vivid yet down-to-earth portrayals of three flawed individualists, orphans of the storm who are bound together as much by a need to rebel against conformity as by physical desire.

What makes Sunday Bloody Sunday so eminently laudable is not John Schlesinger's direction (even if this shows a maturity and level of auteur sophistication rarely seen in his previous work), nor is it the performances, exemplary as these are.  Its power stems from Penelope Gilliatt's astonishingly astute screenplay, which isn't just way ahead of its time in its presentation of a normal gay relationship, but also daringly honest and perceptive in its probing of human relationships in general.  This is probably the first film to come out and admit, without so much as a whiff of cynicism or sarcasm, that romantic love is never anything other than a matter of compromise.  The perfect romance, that lovey-dovey nonsense depicted in so many Hollywood movies, simply doesn't exist in our world - human nature just won't allow it.

In Schlesinger's film, three perfectly well-adjusted people go on with a singular romantic arrangement which, whilst unsatisfactory in many respects, somehow manages to satisfy their needs, at least for a time.  Each of the three is intelligent enough to know that the situation cannot endure, and when the time comes for the affair to end, they let it expire without any great show of loss.  Whilst there is a delicate poignancy to the sloughing off of a dwindling romance (beautifully suggested by Finch and Jackson at the end of the film), there is also within the film a sense that this is how it must be.  When love has run its course, it must be allowed to die - a brutal fact of life that Sunday Bloody Sunday gets across with heartbreaking lucidity.

Film Synopsis

Daniel Hirsh is a cultured Jewish doctor in his fifties who would appear to have nothing in common with Alex Greville, a sharp-tongued thirty-something divorcee who has grown tired of her routine office job.  Apart from a few mutual acquaintances, the only thing they share is their bisexual lover Bob Helkin, a man in his twenties who is trying to make his name as a contemporary sculptor.  Both Daniel and Alex know of each other's existence and seem to be happy with their romantic timeshare arrangement with Bob.  Half a loaf is, after all, better than none.  But when Bob makes up his mind to go to America, believing this to be the best move for his career, Daniel and Alex are prompted to re-evaluate their life with him over the course of a week.  Maybe it's time for all three of them to go their separate ways and make a fresh start...