John Schlesinger had a way with humanity. In all of his films, he demonstrated how he had a firm pulse on the nature of existence, an intricate understanding of the human condition that very few filmmakers, even those who dedicated their entire lives to realism, were ever able to convey. While remembered mainly for Midnight Cowboy (deservedly so), his finest achievement just may be something that may hit a little closer to home for the director, both geographically and metaphysically. Sunday Bloody Sunday is a masterful character-driven drama that sees him venturing into the world of working-class England once again and presenting us with yet another compelling story of ordinary people trying to navigate a hostile world, one that is inherently against them for a number of reasons. Much like Schlesinger’s other work, it isn’t a piece that demands attention in the traditional way – rather, it takes the form of a quiet drama that gradually grows in tension until it reaches a crescendo, after which either catharsis or catastrophe is waiting to occur. Simple but effective in innumerable ways,  Sunday Bloody Sunday sees the director make perhaps his most personal film, a social odyssey that finds itself taking on a difficult story with finesse and elegance, the type only someone with as much experience and compassion as Schlesinger could ever achieve.

The film is focused on three individuals. Daniel Hirsh (Peter Finch), is a mild-mannered doctor heading towards middle-age. He has to reconcile his Jewish faith with his homosexuality, which he keeps concealed from the rest of the family, always responding to questions about his lack of a romantic partner as having “not found the right person yet”. Alex Greville (Glenda Jackson) is an office worker extremely unhappy with her mundane career, hoping for something a bit more meaningful. The common link between Daniel and Alex is Bob Elkin (Murray Head), a young artist who is in concurrent relationships with the both of them. For Bob, he sees his separate romances as being important to him for different reasons – Alex provides him with passion, Daniel with security. The arrangement works well for everyone involved – Daniel and Alex not only know that they are sharing Bob with each other but actually are only shouting distance from being friends themselves, occurring in nearly the exact same social circles, only narrowly avoiding each other purely due to reasons of jealousy. However, none of these characters are entirely stagnant, and eventually they start to realize what used to work is now a burden, and the only way to mend the despair they feel is to make radical changes, even if that means hurting someone they care about.

Sunday Bloody Sunday is a film that is often categorized as a romance, which is not necessarily untrue, but seems to assert a certain set of expectations on this film, looking at it through a particular framework, which doesn’t ever work, not only because Schlesinger was just about as far from conventional as a filmmaker of his neo-realist capabilities could be, but because there’s a lot of deeper meaning to this film that just doesn’t quite come through in the way the film looks at romance – we’d be hard-pressed to even consider this film as being a love story, because there doesn’t ever appear to be any tangible love anywhere in the film. Passion, lust and desire are prominent themes, and where the film seems to focus the majority of its attention. Yet, it’s in the deeper search for something deeper throughout the film, a certain sensation all of the characters, peripheral or central, want to experience, yet none of them actually seeming to know what it precisely is, or what it entails. Occurring at the tail-end of a tumultuous era, Sunday Bloody Sunday looks at the post-war generation now exiting the Swinging Sixties, where free love was preached and liberation was not an aspiration, but a goal for many. Of the several social and political developments at the time, perhaps the one that’s most potent is the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1967, a mere four years before the events depicted here. While never outright mentioned, it does form a pivotal part of the film, being the thrust for not only the relationship between Daniel and Bob, but the former’s own internal quandaries.

In taking on this challenging role, Finch gives a performance that is almost an antidote to his most famous role, that of Howard Beale in Network, a great performance that unfortunately overshadowed the decades of astonishing work he did prior to the film that would serve to be his last. Daniel Hirsh is amongst the actor’s finest portrayals – an individual suddenly struck by the realization that he’s not a young man anymore, and while he has had his flirtations with passion in the past, he’s left without any direction, especially when he’s at an age where being a bachelor was cause for suspicion, a socially-mediated belief that Daniel struggles to ignore, especially when trying to keep up appearances with his extensive family and coterie of friends and colleagues, the majority of which are oblivious to the fact that he is not one for the ladies. Sunday Bloody Sunday is not initially very compassionate towards Finch – the entire first act sees him as secondary to his co-stars, who are given the most to do in the earlier portions of the film. Yet, Finch commands the screen, and it eventually becomes his film as Daniel starts to reflect on his own life, and how the passions that caused him so much shame throughout his life that he needed to hide it from everyone except a privileged few, were actually what made him who he was. Compassionate, caring and empathetic, Daniel knows exactly what it’s like to suffer. We could read deeper into the film, looking at his profession as a doctor being of interest in itself – he’s a trusted member of the community, someone who many confide in, yet he struggles to confide in nearly everyone himself. However, we can also praise the film for never using this quality to make it more obvious, such as a cheap correlation between the character’s apparent “condition” (up until the 1950s, homosexuality was still considered a disease in major psychiatric research) and his desire to “cure” himself of it. Elegant but forceful without ever needing to resort to anything other than his intense sophistication, Sunday Bloody Sunday is a wonderful performance from Finch, who may just be doing his best work here.

The film’s best performance coming on behalf of Finch doesn’t mean we should discount his co-stars. Glenda Jackson, in particular, gives another one of her astoundingly complex performances, proving herself to be one of the most fascinating actresses of her generation. Her character of Alex is one that is a bundle of contradictions – her outward persona suggests that she is a confident, outspoken and relentlessly strong woman, yet as the film goes on, her insecurities and inner quandaries start to appear. Jackson has always had a remarkable ability to play individuals that hide their true nature by way of appearing stern and austere, which is something that benefits the Alex character, but only for as long as its necessary – the film eventually reveals that she is a far more nuanced person than we’d expect, and Jackson brings a sense of ferocity to the role, finding the balance between commanding and subtle, to the point where some of the film’s most extraordinary moments come towards the end, where she finally lets her guard down and embraces her vulnerability. Contrasting both Finch and Jackson is Murray Head, who may not be at the stature of the people he shares the film with, but still delivers a captivating performance as the young man who finds himself the object of desire of two very different people. Head’s youthful naivete and bohemian sensibilities work well towards constructing a character who is not only an element of the story of the two other performers but a fully-formed, interesting individual all on his own. Head isn’t given much of the same dramatic material as his co-stars but is nonetheless impressive as a young man trying to balance his young ambitions with the responsibilities that come with adulthood. The trio at the centre of Sunday Bloody Sunday is exceptional, and bring these sometimes quiet characters to life with a certain vivacity that would have been otherwise lost had the performances been so compelling, both individually and across from each other.

Schlesinger is dedicated to a story that isn’t necessarily demanding in the traditional sense but can still be extremely heartbreaking at times, especially when we consider how earnest and direct this film is towards very real themes. Sunday Bloody Sunday is a frank and sometimes harrowing depiction of modern romance, which remains just as confounding now as it did when this film was made. The director was certainly not one for false sentimentality, and while there is obviously no shortage of moments of genuine beauty found throughout the film in terms of the story it tells, everything is absolutely authentic. The emotions underpinning this film are genuine and delivered with such fierce conviction and honesty, the film doesn’t ever find itself deviating into being manipulative or dewy-eyed in any way. This was a considerable strength found in all of the director’s work, and considering this may be  Schlesinger venturing into a society that he himself was very familiar with, we have to look at the broader implications pulsating throughout the film. Sunday Bloody Sunday is a film about society and its contradictions – everyone in this film is hiding something, a secret that they conceal from the world. Perhaps they feel some form of shame for it, or rather just don’t want to expose themselves to those they don’t trust. This manifests mainly in the desires of the main characters – the candid sexuality is effective because it allows the film to comment on the liberation, both personal and societal, that came in the decades following the war, where the youth was not only finally celebrated, but also started to take charge. This is mainly represented in the cross-generational relationship between the characters, and how society was seeing a major shift in the mentality – the world belonged to people like Bob, and that while Daniel is certainly respected, his institutionalized mentality will always put him at odds with the gradual changes society was witnessing.

Ultimately, what makes Sunday Bloody Sunday so wonderful is its simplicity – it is executed in a straightforward manner, flourishes and excesses being entirely ignored in favour of a more personal story, a construction of an intimate character study of three profoundly lonely individuals trying to find solace in an unconventional romantic relationship that doesn’t quite work, even if they do their best to pretend that it is. Daniel, Alex and Bob are all holding onto their youth, or what remains of it somehow, which comes to the fore in their romantic exploits, with passion being a mere distraction from their existential ennui, and the realization that like everything, romance is finite. This film isn’t one that demands much from the viewer other than just a momentary surrender to the intricate construction of a trio of lives, as we watch them make their way through a world that only becomes more bewildering the more they try and make sense of it. Sunday Bloody Sunday has deep humanity, and its compassion, more than anything else, is what makes this such an enthralling piece. Often quite uncomfortable, and frequently heartbreaking, but not without consistent glimmers of hope embedded within it, Sunday Bloody Sunday is a masterful example of social realism that isn’t too involved with representing life as it is to ignore the intricacies that come with a story like this, but still manages to be a beautifully-composed, often endearingly funny but always extremely moving film that represents the trials and tribulations of modern existence with such elegance and tact, its difficult to ever forget the astounding brilliance of this effortlessly simple dramatic masterpiece.