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Sunday Bloody Sunday



John Schlesinger followed his Academy Award–winning Midnight Cowboy with this sophisticated and highly personal take on love and sex. Sunday Bloody Sunday depicts the romantic lives of two Londoners, a middle-aged doctor and a prickly thirtysomething divorcée—played by Oscar winners Peter Finch and Glenda Jackson—who are sleeping with the same handsome young artist. A revelation in its day, this may be the 1970s’ most intelligent, multitextured film about the complexities of romantic relationships; it is keenly acted and sensitively directed, from a penetrating screenplay by novelist and critic Penelope Gilliatt.


Disc Features

- New high-definition digital restoration, supervised by director of photography Billy Williams, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- New video interviews with actor Murray Head, Williams, and production designer Luciana Arrighi
- Illustrated 1975 audio interview with director John Schlesinger
- New interview with writer William J. Mann (Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger) about the making of Sunday Bloody Sunday
- New interview with photographer Michael Childers, Schlesinger’s longtime partner
- Trailer
- PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay and screenwriter Penelope Gilliatt’s 1971 introduction to the film’s screenplay

Has to be better than the woeful Region 2 release. Just for the extras alone. Fingers crossed. And what a great cover!

"Can you look after the Toucan for a bit? He likes shortbread + cheese"

This is an interesting film. I would perhaps place Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowledge slightly above it in the films from the era about the 'complexities of romantic relationships', but it holds its own in that company. Although I think the man-to-man sequences would perhaps not raise as many eyebrows these days compared to that sequence of the (utterly horrendous) brood of young children that Glenda Jackson is babysitting lighting up joints, revealing that they had found out which record jacket their parents hide their stash in!

Spoiler

Finch's Alfie-style monologue to camera about love and companionship at the end of the film could perhaps bear comparison with Nicholson cycling bitterly through all of his old conquests at the end of Carnal Knowledge

One of the things that might date the film now is the use of the message exchange/switchboard operator to collect and pass on the messages and make over-familiar comments which causes the characters to become aware of the others in the relationship for the first time. But there are a few really nice sequences - my favourite is Jackson's hallucination/flashback to her father in the war forgetting his gas mask/moment of self-knowledge that occurs after a traffic accident but I also quite liked the paralleling of the Bar Mitzvah Torah recitation scene with trying to learn Italian by tape for a fabled relationship-saving trip through that country.

If we were still doing the Criterion quote game this would be a goldmine for them, including the ultimate bitchy queen response to an uncouth couple crashing a dinner party and proceeding to have a screaming row in the middle of the guests: "here come those tired old tits again".

Anyone else missing pages from their booklet? (Got my Blu-ray from Amazon)

skelly wrote:Anyone else missing pages from their booklet? (Got my Blu-ray from Amazon)

The copy I got at BN had all 28 pages. Probably just a one-off mistake. Either return the whole thing to Amazon or email Mulvaney at Criterion to get it replaced.

This new edition makes watching the film as if it were the first time all over again. The underplayed nature of the film goes from great to one of the best ever in just the bright way all this beige and white shines through. At times I think I shirk Jackson's character because Finch's (the best role I've ever seen him in) is so close to my own life particularly the awkward scene of the Bar Mitzvah, but the huge complexity of her character managed to overwhelm me on this viewing. There's so many wonderful little things she does to show her frustration and psychology. I also have to express appreciation of the extras which don't seem like much on paper, but manage to go through the making of the film and each and every element, especially those which are deliberately left to be unnoticed.

Surprised there are so few comments on this title. I think it's my favorite release of 2012. I had always enjoyed since I first saw in the 80s, but had renewed enthusiasm after getting the blu ray.

Glenda Jackson puts in a new stellar performance during all the Thatcher tributes in the House of Commons here.

Goddamn. I cannot believe it's taken me this long to see this masterpiece. Absolutely brilliant writing, stunning filmmaking all the way through. I'm sometimes baffled at the extent of praise Midnight Cowboy receives (a film I do need to revisit as an adult, I think it went over my head as a teenager) but here is a film that merits all that praise and more.
The performances are so pitch perfect, the storytelling so clear and adroit, the flawless sense of tone and pitch throughout make everything in this picture just come off at such an exceptional level. absolutely stunning. And aside from the central story, it's amazing when scenes like the pharmacy feel like they tell an entire film's worth of story with a mostly silent two minute scene. Just an unbelievable experience.

I really loved the way the film handled sex. It eschews the 'omg scandalus!' attitude or smirkiness you find in modern films, instead it plays sex very real and everyday. Sex is a deep part of these three characters lives and their relationships, but it's not a campy, angsty exploitation, it's an intimate exploration of love and the tenuous balance of need and lack that often accompanies sex and relationships.

The interviews on this disc are really superb.

I was going to praise the second essay in the book, it is very well written and compelling, and especially praise Schlesinger for involving the screenwriter in every step, having her on the set working with actors, phoning her for a needed variant line, allowing her in the editing room (and her even coming up with a significant edit). And she even wrote the lead parts explicitly for Peter Finch and Glenda Jackson.

And then I watched the interviews and almost all of her claims are debunked by the record, physical evidence and the fact she wasn't even in the same country as the film production when she claimed she was. And the female part was written for Redgrave and the male part for Scofield and Finch was a third choice!

Fascinating little squabble, and I love how slyly it was presented by criterion, and so funny that she was busy bashing the Hollywood system in her article while assiduously pulling little Hollywood stunts like claiming she was the sole one responsible for various aspects of the picture she had absolutely nothing to do with.