PERSONAL FAVES: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Alan Sillitoe burst onto the literary scene in the late 50s with the dynamic one-two of ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’ and ‘The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner’, both of which earned him lifelong membership-by-default of the “angry young man” school of writing. That both were made into landmark British films also bracketed in the “angry young man” movement kind of sealed the deal.

Sillitoe always denied that he was part of any movement, and that’s true. His breadth of work proved diverse enough that trying to pigeonhole him is redundant. Novels, short stories, plays, poetry, non-fiction, autobiography, travel writing. His subjects ranged from tense adventure stories (‘The Lost Flying Boat’, ‘The German Numbers Woman’) to political satire (‘Travels in Nihilon’) by way of broad, laddish comedy (‘A Start in Life’, ‘Life Goes On’) and the kind of punchy working class dramas that made his name in the first place. His stylistic approaches include what I can only describe as pre-meta-fiction (‘The Storyteller’ – an horrifically compelling investigation into the mentality and dangers of the writer’s profession) and feminist sensibility (‘Her Victory’).

Truly, he was a man of many facets, many voices and – with over fifty publications to his name – almost inextinguishable literary capacity. Inextinguishable, that is, until two days ago when Alan Sillitoe – one of my home town’s triumvirate of literary heroes (the other two being Lord Byron and D.H. Lawrence) – passed away at the age of 82.

He may not have been a fully paid up member of the angry young men, but Sillitoe was definitely a rebel with a cause. And his cause was the common man. In Richard Bradford’s obituary in The Guardian, there’s a wonderful anecdote about the teenage Sillitoe that made me smile through the sadness and lift a glass to the man’s indomitable spirit as well as his artistic legacy:

As a 14-year-old factory worker during the war, he was informed by the shop steward that union membership was compulsory, that it was for his own good and that fees would be deducted from his wages. Sillitoe returned to his bench after urging the official to "fuck off and get dive-bombed".

This is the Alan Sillitoe of ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’, and you can imagine Arthur Seaton, the belligerent protagonist of that novel, coming out with something equally defiant and attitudinous while marking time on the job, waiting for his shift to end and the pubs to open. Played with bullish immediacy and roguish charm by Albert Finney in Karel Reisz’s film, Seaton is one of British cinema’s most enduring (and, perversely, endearing) anti-heroes. Imagine Mick Travis in ‘If…’ removed from the boarding school environment, a failed 11-plus behind him and nothing in front of him but forty years of drudgery at a lathe. Imagine Alex the Droog in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ with a penchant for a pint of bitter instead of the old moloko, greasy overalls instead of the boilersuit and no fuckin’ intention whatsoever of wearing anything as poncy as false eyelashes.

Reisz nails the daily grind of working class life (the opening scene has Seaton repetition turning metal parts on his lathe: “nine hundred and fifty four,” he grunts as he chucks another component on the pile; “nine hundred and fifty bloody five” as yet another one follows it), the no-bullshit camaraderie and hard-drinking catharsis of the working man (“I’m out for a good time – all the rest is propaganda”), and the smoke-wreathed pubs Seaton does his boozing, proselytizing and womanizing in.

(One of my favourite bits of dialogue has Seaton’s Aunt Ada and her consort Bert reminiscing about a night of free boozing down their local:

Ada: Our Ethel clipped with a bloke and he brought us drinks all round, whole gang of us.
Bert: Must have got through a good five quid, the soft bastard. Still, he had a car so a I suppose he could afford it.

If that doesn’t scream 1950s, I don’t know what does.)

‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’ is authentic to the nines. Your average bit of Mike Leigh or Ken Loach kitch-sinkery comes off as wishy-washy by comparison. Alan Sillitoe’s novel is one of the great works of post-war realism, Karel Reisz’s adaptation translates its source material brilliantly, and Finney’s characterisation justifiably made him an icon.

The literary world is poorer this month for Sillitoe’s death. If you’ve never read it, go buy a copy of ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’; if you’ve never seen it, or if you’ve just not seen it for a while, add the film to your rental list. They complement each other perfectly. ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’ is British literature and British cinema the way it should be.



i.m. Alan Sillitoe, 4 March 1928 – 25 April 2010

PERSONAL FAVES: Miller's Crossing

Verna: What are you chewing over?
Tom: Dream I had once. I was walking in the woods, dunno why. Wind came up, blew my hat off.
Verna: And you chased it, right? You ran and ran. Finally caught up to it and you picked it up. But it wasn't a hat anymore. It changed into something else. Something wonderful.
Tom: No, it stayed a hat. And no, I didn't chase it. Nothing more foolish than a man chasing his hat.



'Miller's Crossing' opens in a manner deliberately evocative of 'The Godfather'. There's a man sitting behind a desk in an office dominated by dark wood. He's nonchalant, lugubrious, in control. There's a short, sweaty, agitated guy standing in front of the desk. He's come to beg a favour. But where 'The Godfather' gives us Don Corleone and Bonasera, the latter wanting justice for an assault on his daughter, the former prepared to help so long as Bonsera might one day discharge a duty to him, the set up is very different in 'Miller's Crossing'.


Behind the desk: Irish-American mob boss Leo O'Bannion (Albert Finney) and behind him his trusted lieutenant Tom Regan (Gabriel Byrne). In front of the desk - and, by the end of the scene, leaning over it, every blood vessel in his face threatening to burst, up-and-coming gangster Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito) and his second-in-command Eddie Dane (J.E. Freeman). And the favour? Well, that concerns bent bookie Bennie Bernbaum (John Turturro) and the various reasons Johnny Caspar wants him dead. Leo ixnays the killing, reminding Johnny that "you're only as big as I let you be". Johnny storms out. Tom counsels Leo that a conflagration with Johnny and Eddie Dane would be unwise, particularly over schnook like Bennie Bernbaum. Leo laughs it off. Then the opening credits roll and what follows is just under two hours of the tricksiest, most convoluted plotting the gangster genre has ever seen.


In brief - and this is without factoring in Tom's gambling debts and the importance to the plot of fast-talking secondary character Mink (Steve Buscemi) - the rivalry between Leo and Johnny Caspar that comes to a head over Bennie Bernbaum is complicated by Leo's doting romance with Bennie's sister Verna (Marcia Gay Garden), a vampish good-time girl who's working out more angles than a geometrist, and Tom's clandestine affair with same. The murder of a tail Leo puts on Verna exacerbates an already tense atmosphere.

Johnny Caspar pressures Tom to leave Leo's organisation and work with him instead. His powerplay is demonstrated by an attempt on Leo's life. However, it's unsuccessful. Leo fends off his attackers with a tommy gun (earning an approving "the old man's still an artist with a Thompson" from a minion) while "Danny Boy" plays on a wind-up gramophone.

The relationship deteriorates between Tom and Leo, culminating in the revelation that Tom and Verna have been doing the wild thing. Leo makes Tom redundant (that's the mob version of redundant, where you take a beating first then get bodily thrown off the premises) and Tom approaches Johnny Caspar to see if the job opportunity is still available. Johnny wants an act of good faith from Tom. He wants Tom to give up Bennie Bernbaum. Tom obliges, but isn't prepared for his next test of loyalty: take Bennie into the woods down near Miller's Crossing and put a bullet in his brain. Tom's not cut out for this kind of thing and when Bennie pleads for his life, Tom lets him go. Bad move. Bennie's working out a few angles of his own and it's not long before he reappears on the scene and starts making life difficult for Tom. Meanwhile, Eddie Dane - suspicious of Tom's proximity to Johnny Caspar - figures that Tom would "rather join a ladies' group" than whack a guy and takes him on a little trip back to Miller's Crossing to look for the body ...

'Miller's Crossing' has more twists than a sack of snakes - and just as much venom. More turns than a wrongly-programmed satnav - and takes you on just as confusing a journey. It's dark and cynical. It's brutally amoral and violent. In addition to the shoot-outs and molotov cocktails through windows, Tom seems to take a blow to the face every five minutes - from Leo, from Verna, from Eddie Dane, from Bennie, from any of the guys he owes money to. Everyone wants something from him, and everyone's got an angle. Amazingly, having said all that, 'Miller's Crossing' is also funny as hell. Johnny Caspar's losing-the-point monologues and Mink's mile-a-minute colloquy are hilarious verbal pyrotechnics. Elsewhere, wise-ass dialogue abounds. "If I'd known we were going to cast feelings into words, I'd've memorised the Song of Solomon," Tom muses at one point. Later, as lost for words as he is for Bennie's corpse, Tom walks fearfully through the woods. "You ever notice," Eddie Dane observes, "how the smart dialogue dries up the moment a guy starts soiling his union suit."

But it's Verna - and Marcia Gay Harden has never been better - who has the last word. When Tom, looking for her at Leo's behest, angrily bursts into a powder room and confronts her, she asks, "Shouldn't you be doing your job ?" He replies, "Intimidating helpless women is my job." Her comeback: "Then go find one and intimidate her." Amen, sister!