Film Forum

(1960, Karel Reisz) “Don’t let the bastards grind ya down!” Rebellious, hard-drinking factory worker Albert Finney just wants a good wage and a good time with no strings attached, but an affair with married-with-kids Rachel Roberts leads to complications. Screenplay by Alan Sillitoe, from his own novel. 35mm. Approx. 90 mins.

Reviews

“Impressively sharp, explicit, and often intimate. A strong strain of melancholy, of regret that the freedom of man as a creature capable of having simple pleasures should be confined by ugly cities and machines, runs through the whole vivid picture. A smoldering of social rebellion, as well as sheer lustfulness, is expressed in the sharp, sordid scenes with Mr. Finney and Miss Roberts as they conspire to make love or try bitterly to make some arrangement to get rid of an expected child. Mr. Finney, with a grotesque Lancashire accent you have to keep your ears open to understand, is excitingly mobile and expressive, the outstanding person in the film. But all the others are richly authentic. They walk right out to you.”
– Bosley Crowther, The New York Times

“Here is a chance for our own New Wave.”
– Evening Standard