"Here Come Those Tired Old Tits Again"

Over half a century on, has the blood finally drained from the "middle class kitchen sink drama" Sunday Bloody Sunday?

I recently watched John Schlesinger's 1971 film 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' for the first time this century. The controversial subject matter, a major part of its impact has, as you might expect and hope, more or less completely lost its bite over the intervening 54 years.

Back then, it was a daring, possibly shocking film about a ‘bisexual love-triangle’. Now it is just another film about a ‘polyamorous relationship’, which of course everyone is having these days, darling. Back then it was also one of the first to show, matter of fact, a male-on-male romantic kiss-clinch in close-up and fully-lit – deliberately in the same ‘natural’ style as the male-on-female variety in the film. A proper snog, in other words.

Something which reportedly appalled some of the film crew on set, and surprised even the scriptwriter, who had suggested a tasteful silhouette.

The ‘intergenerational’ nature of the male-on-male side of the love-triangle no doubt added to its taboo-breaking scandal at the time. But nowadays even the NYT tells us, at length, that ‘daddies’ are ‘hot’.

This was, remember, just four years after male-on-male sexual contact “in private” had been partially decriminalised in England and Wales, and Lord Arran, the sponsor of the law change, famously urged male homosexuals to "show their thanks by comporting themselves quietly and with dignity." Schlesinger, himself unapologetically homosexual, ignored the former exhortation and creatively reinterpreted the latter.

Perhaps the only thing in the film still shocking today is Glenda Jackson in a dishevelled rush to leave her London bedsit making a hurried cup of instant coffee with hot water from the tap. My dear! The heavy metals and brewed bacteria! Haven’t you Googled it??

(OK, so maybe the monstrous young children of her bohemian academic friends openly smoking pot is still quite startling.)

The tide of controversy having (mostly) receded, Sunday Bloody Sunday is left exposed now as ‘merely’ a well-made, sharply-observed, exquisitely performed – and rather prescient – middle class kitchen-sink drama about the conundrums of coupledom, and the perils of confusing it with happiness. In which nothing much happens, apart from a beloved family dog being run over by a truck.

Which is not to say it doesn’t still have impact. In fact, I was struck by several things:

How genuinely and bracingly good Jackson – who could be somewhat grating – is here as the mid-30s divorcee 'Alex' disenchanted with her career and her life: her Oscar nomination was well-deserved. Jackson in her prime had a kind of rugged delicacy - a breezy lass who was almost plain but somehow ended up even prettier.

How impressive and economical Peter Finch is as the lonely grey, gay, middle-aged, opera-loving Jewish doctor 'Daniel', a character based on Hampstead-born, Schlesinger's own experience, including the time-share bisexual male lover.

How beautiful and believable mid-20s Murray Head is as that time-share lover 'Bob', the ineluctably elusive young sculptor chap who won't “commit" to either of them – and how bizarre it seems today, when such roles are almost compulsory for any halfway sexy young male actor, that his compelling, beguiling performance didn't translate into a stellar film career but hobbled it instead.

How Bob, who would have been seen at the time as immature, irresponsible and selfish – not to mention immoral – is entirely contemporary, 54 years later. (Which doesn’t mean, of course, that he isn’t all of those things.) With cat-like self-sufficiency and agility he neatly and gently sidesteps the agonies that all the other "proper" couples in the film are bathed in – along with the self-deceptions of his older suitors, who desire to possess him precisely for his pretty freedom.

How Bob is the love-object of the movie and the camera not just for his pert buttocks and dreamy eyes, but also because he is the only happy adult in it. And the reason Bob is happy because he has taken himself as his own love-object. (He also reminds me somewhat of a posher version of the late, great 1970s TV heart-throb Richard Beckinsale - though it might just be the early 70s hairdo.)

How rare central heating was in the UK as late as 1971, even in middle class homes - no wonder everyone is so keen to have someone to cling to under the sheets, blankets and eiderdowns (no ‘continental quilts’ yet).

And how unabashedly middle-class Sunday Bloody Sunday is, if somewhat bohemian. This is perhaps the part that ages it most, but also situates it. The only working-class characters are unwelcome, sometimes threatening walk-on intrusions: June Brown as Daniel’s distraught East End patient who won't stop crying over her loveless marriage; Jon Finch as Daniel's drunken, violent Scottish, ex-shag/rent boy; the lazy, gossipy ladies of the telephone answering service used by the busy middle class protagonists (before mobile phones turned everyone into a telephone answering service); and the “Trades Union Congress” repeatedly mentioned in the BBC Home Service radio news bulletins - no one seems to own a TV set, they were still “vulgar” in 1971 - about the rumbling "economic crisis", which echoes the personal crises of the central characters. And the identity crisis of middle-class England which continues to this day.

How Daniel’s line “Here come those tired old tits again” as his drunken, impossible female party guest threatens to take her top off in a jealous tantrum with her husband is still funny. (And, I’d wager, Schlesinger’s own - he was heavily involved in writing the screenplay and dialogue.)

But what struck me harder than anything else is this: how I am now EVEN OLDER than Peter Finch was when he made this film at 55. I remember thinking he was IMPOSSIBLY ANCIENT when I first saw it on late night telly as a teenager - and why I, like the technicians on the set when it was shot, went “Ewww!”.

But I still see myself as Murray Head.

Sunday Bloody Sunday is available to stream on Prime Video