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Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)

Director: John Schlesinger

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1 review

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

In effect, if not intention, a reworking of Brief Encounter given a gloss of modernism. In its plot (Murray Head is the detached lover of both Peter Finch and Glenda Jackson), acting (threshing limbs and facial twitching), and direction (stridency alternating with 'cool' observation), Sunday, Bloody Sunday is a classic example of a film running out of control at every moment, while its creators, director Schlesinger and screenwriter Penelope Gilliatt, strive for 'meaning' with little regard for the simple matters of shot-by-shot consistency, let alone formal unity. Finch tries hard as the Jewish homosexual doctor, but Jackson (like Julie Christie in Darling) is given little opportunity to be anything other than a cypher by Schlesinger's exploitative camera.

Author: PH

Time Out Film Guide

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User reviews of this film

Sydney said...

Posted on Nov 11 2009 14:22 Spurious review. This is one of the most important British films post the second world war. The reviewers simplistic distinction between 'running out of control' and 'formal unity' is not borne out with any intelligence or insight. If this reviewer knew anything about filmmaking or the process of telling a story perhaps he would have come to the conclusion that the film's lack of formal unity is very much a stylistic choice where in the world of Sunday Bloody Sunday there is little overarching meaning in every moment or exchange and instead the principal characters inhabit a wilderness of melancholy and obsession.

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