Related links:

Cinemas | Movie Sets | Folk Customs | Theatres

Join in

Send page to a friend

4114 views since 7th Feb 2010

Sunday, Bloody Sunday
- favourite film

John Schlesinger directed some of the most significant British films of the 1960s and ’70s, including Billy Liar and Darling . Perhaps his boldest UK-made movie was Sunday Bloody Sunday, in its day (1971) daring for its treatment of homosexuality , a subject that caused various actors to turn down roles in the film.
The plot involves a tug-of-love between Peter Finch’s very reserved gay doctor, and Glenda Jackson ’s poor-rich-girl. They are both enamoured of bisexual Murray Head, who resolves the dilemma by his decision to quit the country at the film’s climax, the only time the other two central characters meet although they move in similar circles.
Schlesinger himself was gay, and he drew from Finch a performance that avoids the clichéd gay stereotypes too often lazily used by actors, gaining a best actor Oscar nomination as a result. It is a powerful and claustrophobic piece, generally underplayed by a cast of quality character actors like Tony Britton, Peggy Ashcroft , Frank Windsor and Maurice Denham. Looking back it is hard not to regret Jackson’s later choice of politics over drama: she had deservedly won the Oscar for best actress two years previously in Women in Love, and perhaps surprisingly would win again two years later in A Touch of Class; her performance in Sunday Bloody Sunday is arguably better than either of those winning roles.

vote now

Current top 10
1: Oliver!
2: Zulu
3: The Railway Children
4: The Italian Job
5: Life of Brian
6: Trainspotting
7: The Third Man
8: The 39 Steps
9: The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover
10: Local Hero

Brit Quote:
The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down. - George Eliot
More Quotes

On this day:
Battle of Berwick - 1296, Fire Claims 19 Glasgow Firefighters - 1960
More dates from British history

click here to view all the British counties

County Pages