Sunday Bloody Sunday

In effect, if not intention, a reworking of Brief Encounter given a gloss of modernism. In its plot (Murray Head is the detached lover of both Peter Finch and Glenda Jackson), acting (threshing limbs and facial twitching), and direction (stridency alternating with 'cool' observation), Sunday, Bloody Sunday is a classic example of a film running out of control at every moment, while its creators, director Schlesinger and screenwriter Penelope Gilliatt, strive for 'meaning' with little regard for the simple matters of shot-by-shot consistency, let alone formal unity. Finch tries hard as the Jewish homosexual doctor, but Jackson (like Julie Christie in Darling) is given little opportunity to be anything other than a cypher by Schlesinger's exploitative camera.