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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971/MGM DVD)

Sunday Bloody Sunday

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C     Extras: D     Film: B-

 

 

After the classic Midnight Cowboy (1969) was a huge commercial and critical success, the late, great director John Schlesinger gave us Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971).  It has fallen into a semi-obscurity, with some asking if it is about the famous Irish massacre of nearly the same name, but it is from Penelope Gilliatt’s screenplay about a bi-sexual artist (Murray Head, later known for the hit records “Jesus Christ, Superstar” and “One Night in Bangkok”) who is having affairs with a couple in love.  Dr. Daniel Hirsh (Peter Finch) and Alex Grenville (Glenda Jackson) are seriously involved, but that does not stop Bob (Head) from floating between the two.

 

On one level, the triangle is only the tip of the portrait of lives during a freer-thinking and open time that resulted from the Summer of Love, The Beatles, Vietnam, and the Sexual Revolution and Carnaby Street.  That triangle is countered by the odd family Alex is good friends with, enough so that she baby-sits while the parents go away for the weekend.  The kids are unusually precocious, have a strange pet monkey, a dog, and mother has actually left a glass of milk for the baby that comes from her!  She tells this to her daughter, but does not warn Alex.

 

Alex and Daniel have their own unresolved issues, which make subtle manipulation possible on Bob’s part.  These older people are not very happy with their lives and feel more alive when with free-style Bob.  This is a smart, mature film, but falls short in several ways.  It has not aged well, putting it in the time capsule category to some extent.  Jackson and Finch have more to do and give than Head, who is just convincing enough as a free-love kind of guy, but aren’t the others paying some kind of price, begin distracted by him instead of resolving their personal issues?  Yes.  Perhaps Schlesinger was trying to express the emptiness or limits of this way of living, as well as dealing further with homosexuality in a way Midnight Cowboy started.  Daniel and Bob are certainly not the happy airheads with little-to-no-to-limited education or political awareness we have seen since the “let’s ignore the AIDS crisis” Gay New Wave films and Schlesinger’s work mows down most of that cycles (and post-cycles) output.  However, the film drags, not because it is careful and thorough in how it develops its characters, but because the film cannot decide between the relationship and the lifestyles of the day.  Splitting the two hurts the film in the long run.

 

The 1.66 X 1 image is an old analog transfer likely used previously on the Criterion Collection LaserDisc, which also applies to the Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono from the PCM CD tracks of that release.  This is the first time the film has been issued on DVD and only the second time ever widescreen.  At least the aspect ratio is correct, unlike the 30th Anniversary DVD of Midnight Cowboy, which was inexplicably and unnecessarily cut the image down to 1.85 X 1.  That film was also a Criterion LaserDisc, which has better color and the proper 1.66 X 1 ratio.  The only extra is the original theatrical trailer, which does not seem to have been on the Criterion release.

 

Perhaps the film was trying to show the emptiness of relationships, no matter what the era, but Schlesinger succeeded doing this kind of thing better in Midnight Cowboy.  Being more explicit is not a bad thing, though, and Sunday Bloody Sunday is at least worth a look for its fine performances and moments in time we will never see again.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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