arthur seaton, the hero of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (novel) is trying to come to terms with an unsatisfactory world. In this he is like the heroes of Lucky Jim, Room at the Top, Look Back in Anger, and other recent plays and novels. Although Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is distinguished from the others by its aggressive social criticism, it shares a common weakness—it romanticises its hero.
Alan Sillitoe makes Arthur more sympathetic than he deserves by playing down his destructive, anarchic side. This is expressed in the book by Arthur’s relationship with Brenda and her sister. Neither of them come alive as characters so that there is no real sense of Arthur’s irresponsibility in his relationships with them. Arthur is a very likeable character because the only side of him that has any force is his rebellion against authority, pomposity and stupidity.
Karel Reisz’s biggest achievement in the film of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is to present Arthur much more objectively. Both sides of Arthur, the likeable and the irresponsible, are in the film. Reisz has done this by giving all the other characters their own life and meaning. Because Brenda is a very real person, Arthur’s actions can be judged clearly by their effects on her. In the same way, all the minor characters, Arthur’s friend, his mother and father, Aunt Ada, Brenda’s husband Jack, Robboe the foreman, have their own existence and make their own comment on Arthur. The way the environment is observed also makes the point. We know a good deal about Arthur once we have seen that ugly factory, those rows of depressing back-to-back houses. For the first time in any recent novel, play or film, the hero is in a situation which is not distorted to put us completely on his side.