Directed by Karel Reisz • 1960 • United Kingdom
Starring Albert Finney, Shirley Anne Field, Rachel Roberts
Adapted by Alan Sillitoe from his own influential debut novel, this quintessential kitchen-sink drama was one of the first films to give voice to the discontent of Britain’s working class. Arthur Seaton (Albert Finney in his breakthrough performance) is a twenty-two-year-old factory worker in Nottingham, a sprawling industrial city in the British Midlands. All week long he works hard at his lathe, asking and expecting nothing more than his weekly pay; but on Saturday evenings he asserts his independence by losing himself in drinking, brawling, and womanizing. When Brenda (Rachel Roberts), the wife of a coworker, becomes pregnant by Arthur, he begins to face the consequence of his reckless, devil-may-care ways.
Up Next in British New Wave
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The Entertainer
Directed by Tony Richardson • 1960 • United Kingdom
Starring Laurence Olivier, Brenda de Banzie, Roger Livesey“Life is a beastly mess,” states the great Laurence Olivier in this superb drama of the seedy music-hall life. He plays Archie Rice, a third-rate vaudevillian whose song-and-dance ro...
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A Taste of Honey
Directed by Tony Richardson • 1961 • United Kingdom
Starring Rita Tushingham, Murray Melvin, Paul DanquahThe revolutionary British New Wave films of the early 1960s were celebrated for their uncompromising depictions of working-class lives and relations between the sexes. Directed by Tony Richa...
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This Sporting Life
Directed by Lindsay Anderson • 1963 • United Kingdom
Starring Richard Harris, Rachel Roberts, Alan BadelOne of the finest British films ever made, this benchmark of kitchen-sink realism follows the self-defeating professional and romantic pursuits of a miner turned rugby player eking out an exi...
