The 1960 Movie "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning"

The 1960 British movie Saturday Night and Sunday Morning includes an attempted abortion. A single young man, Arthur Seaton (played by the actor Albert Finney), has been having an affair with a married woman, Brenda, a mother and the wife of an ambitious co-worker of Arthur. Brenda gets pregnant during a time when she has not been having sex with her husband, and so Brenda knows for sure -- and her husband eventually would know for sure -- that she has become pregnant from Arthur.

In this video clip, Brenda informs Arthur about her pregnancy. (I suggest you turn on the closed captions.)

Part of the movie is skipped over at about 2:50 in the above video clip. During that interval, Arthur learns from his cousin that the cousin's mother -- Arthur's aunt -- knows how to do abortions. So, then at 2:50 the video clip shows Arthur taking Brenda to his aunt's home to do the abortion.

Later in the movie, Brenda tells Arthur that the aunt's abortion method was to have Brenda sit in a bathtub of hot water for three hours and drink a bottle of gin. The aunt's abortion method does not work; Brenda remains pregnant.

Then Brenda learns about a doctor who does illegal abortions. The doctor charges a lot of money, and Arthur promises Brenda that he will give her the necessary money in a few days. During those days, however, Brenda decides to give birth to Arthur's child after all. She will accept whatever the consequences might be with her husband and family.

Brenda does not explain her reasoning. At one point she remarked that the criminal penalty for abortion might be as long as ten years in prison. Maybe she fears imprisonment.

At the point when she decides to give birth, Brenda has no hope that Arthur might ever marry her.

Brenda does not express any moral objections to abortion. In general, she seems like a very immoral person, cheating on a nice husband who is working hard to get ahead and who spends quality time with their son.

Toward the movie's end, the audience perceives that Brenda has told her husband about her affair and her pregnancy and that her husband has agreed to forgive her and raise the child as his own.

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The movie was a commercial and critical success in the United Kingdom, winning many British awards -- including Best Film, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay. It is ranked #14 in the Top 100 British Films.

The movie depicts the British lower-middle class as living in economic, intellectual and moral squalor. Arthur and his family and his neighborhood spend most of their time working, drinking alcohol, watching television or committing mischief.

Everyone's speech is ungrammatical, slangy and dialectic. The movie was shown in some American theaters, but I assume that American audiences could not understand much of the dialogue. Here is the trailer for American movie theaters.

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The problems of unwanted pregnancies and abortions are depicted as phenomena of society's lower classes. Uneducated, poor people deal with these problems all the time. These people are stupid, and so they get into unwanted pregnancies, many of which are solved by illegal abortions. Moral considerations are largely dismissed or ignored by these brutes.

In that regard, the abortion issue in this movie reminds me of the abortion issue in the 1967 movie In the Heat of the Night.

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I generally liked the movie. The acting and settings impressively depict a neighborhood that is mostly employed but nevertheless is living in squalor. I would classify the two main characters -- Arthur and Brenda -- as sociopaths. Most of the other characters are contemptible too. Only the few policemen are positive characters.

I recorded the movie from a recent TCM broadcast and watched it with the closed captions turned on.

YouTube provides the entire movie, but without closed captions.