Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Scoop's notes in white.

Imagine this movie:

A couple of old British ladies share a young studmuffin painter. The old biddies are aware of each other, and would like to have the young man to themselves, but they are much happier with half a loaf than with none. The painter, for his part, seems to have nothing other than good looks. He exhibits no depth of feeling. He is pleasant to both women, but he doesn't really have any plans to incorporate either of the lonely old coots into his future. The oldsters, therefore, are not only relegated to half a loaf, but face the prospect that soon they will have none.

In the course of the ten days during which the story takes place, we see everyday people doing and talking about everyday things: getting their shots, playing charades, babysitting the neighbors' kids, discussing the weather, getting a haircut. The big excitement for the two lonely old ladies is the sound of the phone - the prospect that the studmuffin may be calling.

Sounds boring, doesn't it? Sounds like a very tedious soap opera. Your basic weepfest with a predictably pseudo-tragic ending.

But that's not exactly a summary of Sunday Bloody Sunday. Not yet.

OK, then, let's add some spice to it.

Without changing the script in any way, let's simply have one of the old ladies be a man. No need to change the script, we'll just call him Daniel instead of Danielle, and hire a famous actor for the part. The studmuffin painter thus becomes a bi-sexual, but we won't really dwell on that specific matter nor on the matter of gender roles in general, and we won't really take any position in favor of or against bisexuality or homosexuality. In fact, we won't even mention the sex roles at all. We'll just film the script exactly the same way we would have done it with two women.

Now we have a summary of Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Now we still have the same incredibly boring soap opera, but we have generated a vast amount of instant controversy. When the young painter visits his doctor/lover, we don't see him smooching with an older woman, but with Peter Finch. Everyone around them simply takes all this for granted.

This caused quite a stir in 1971, as you might imagine. The politically correct set felt that the offhanded treatment of the homosexual relationship was sophisticated and compassionate, signifying the beginning of a mature new world and a mature new cinema. The conservatives felt that the film's amoral, non-judgmental approach, as exemplified by its treatment of the two relationships as precisely equivalent, was morally reprehensible. The controversy got people talking about the movie, and about the issues it raised.

Let's give the movie its due. It was groundbreaking. It featured a tolerant attitude during a time when such tolerance toward gay relationships was quite a daring thing to exhibit. It did that in a quiet and subtle way, without any preaching. It showed men kissing each other tenderly. Let us raise a glass to director John Schlesinger for using his considerable fame and influence to attract some fairly big movie stars to his project, and to bring this quiet little film to the public's attention.

Having thus praised Caesar, let us then bury him. Let's be honest. The film was was otherwise unmemorable, and would have died a quiet death if every shot had been exactly the same, and every word of dialogue had been exactly the same, but the two old ladies had both been ladies. It's one of those movies which defines maturity by the lack of a sense of humor, the absence of dreams, and the constant habit of staring out of the window meaningfully.

It seems unbelievable today that this was considered a great movie in its time. The British Film Institute picked it among their top 100 of all time, but you really need the context to appreciate it, because it is a bland film about taboo topics. In its time, the very lack of sensationalism is what made it so controversial. Viewed through the prism of our own time, there is no culture shock. The casual multi-sexual triangle may have been a big deal in 1971, but it kinda seems like it could be a plot on the Teletubbies these days. Without the shock, viewing it from our time offers us just the leftover bland, unsensational movie.

Critics either praised the film for its artistic merit and groundbreaking attitudes, or lambasted it for its digressions, and its complete lack of energy and entertainment value. I felt that Mark Adnum of Outrate.net was the one critic who kept the film in perfect perspective:

Sunday Bloody Sunday is a meditational character study, and it’s a brilliantly intelligent and melancholy film, but there’s something missing in the momentum department, and the meandering branch-off structure of the second act makes the last half hour a bit of an endurance test.

Sidebars:

1)  this is the one and only theatrical film which was written by the film critic Penelope Gilliatt, who wrote for The New Yorker and the Observer (UK). She may not have had much of a career as a screenwriter, but she got an Oscar nomination in her one try, which puts her one up on fellow critic Roger Ebert, whose screenwriting contribution consisted of co-writing three Russ Meyer films.

2) Murray Head, who played the bisexual, was most famous singing the part of Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar, and his single from that play made the Top 40.

3) This was the great era of Glenda Jackson nudity. It may not seem like much nudity by our standards, but Ms. Jackson was a breakthrough performer in this regard. She was one of the first, if not the first serious actress to do substantial nudity. She even did frontal nudity in this era, which made her virtually unique. There is even a brief shot of her pubes in this movie.  As you undoubtedly know, she retired from performing about a decade ago, although still in her early 50's, and she is now a politician, a member of Parliament representing Hampstead. She was also some kind of minister there for a while. The government kind, not the religious kind. Possibly the Minister of Silly Walks. Actually, she was in charge of that. I believe silly walking is a form of transportation, and that was her ministry.