Reeling Backward: Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)

John Schlesinger's follow-up to the electric "Midnight Cowboy" is a turgid love triangle, one of those films beloved by filmmakers -- all moments and behavior.

John Schlesinger won an Oscar for directing “Midnight Cowboy,” one of the most electric films of its era and a true game-changer in cinema. But he was attacked for presenting a screen depiction of homosexuality that was seen as negative, and as a gay Jewish Brit that clearly hurt him on a personal level. So for his next project he went back to a long-gestating idea about a gay Jewish Brit who’s involved in a love triangle with another man and a woman.

I love “Cowboy” and regard the accusations of its homophobia as deeply misplaced. But I also think “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” while certainly a more superficially positive depiction of gayness circa 1971, is just a depressingly turgid piece of filmmaking. It’s one of those movies that’s best loved by other filmmakers, a film not driven by storytelling but by singular moments and actor-y “behavior.”

Gawd, what a load of tripe.

Clearly others disagree. It was a decent box office hit, despite its challenging-for-its-time subject matter, and was feted with awards: four Oscar nominations (including Schlesinger and stars Glenda Jackson and Peter Finch) and winner of five BAFTAs (including that same trio plus best picture).

Schlesinger approached novelist Penelope Gilliatt, who had recently authored a book about a doctor in a love triangle, into collaborating on the screenplay. (Her only feature film credit.) They worked together on a first draft, which Schlesinger and his producer hated, so he and David Sherwin rewrote it. However, due to her contract Gilliatt was given sole credit, received her own Oscar nom, and later even tried to downplay Schlesinger’s contribution, saying she came up with the idea herself.

So, a bit of a hate triangle inside the making of a love triangle.

There is one scene where Finch and co-star Murray Head exchange a moderately passionate kiss, plus a little bit of modest groping in bed — caressing a back, etc. Still, that was fairly transgressive stuff in a mainstream film of the time. Ian Bannen was up for the Finch role but backed out over worry of how it would impact it career, and he reportedly regretted it the rest of his life.

Interestingly, the phrase “Sunday Bloody Sunday” would take on a whole other meaning the following year when British troops killed Irish protesters, further ingrained in pop culture by the U2 song of the same title.

The story takes place over the course of a week or so, and despite the title nothing particularly bloody happens, other than the death of the dog of some family friends. I suppose it’s meant to be less literal, more about the emotional violence that comes to pass.

Finch plays Daniel Hirsch, a middle-aged physician who is closeted gay. Jackson is Alex Greville, a recently divorced woman suffering disillusion about her love life and her job at an employment agency. Each is simultaneously carrying on an affair with Bob Elkin (Head), a capricious young artist.

Jackson was 35 when the movie came out and Head 25, and I’m guessing their characters are supposed to be right about the same age. Finch was 55, though I’d say Daniel is supposed to be about 10 years younger — which just happened to be Schlesinger’s age.

I base that on subtle cues, such as the fact Daniel’s mother is still trying to set him up with eligible women. I think at 45 people would still have hope for a confirmed bachelor, but by 55 that would all be dashed.

Much is made of the contrasting ages of Bob with his two lovers, with a slightly pathetic taint attached to their mad attraction to him. Lithe, long-haired and cupid-faced, much is made of the camera gazing longingly at Bob’s often-unclothed form, including a scene where Alex watches him taking a shower with unabashed covetousness.

Not only are Alex and Daniel aware of each other, they actually share some of the same friend pool — it’s not a difficult supposition it’s how they met. As the story opens Bob and Alex have agreed to babysit a weekend (or “wee-kend,” as the British say it) for the Hodsons (Vivian Pickles and Frank Windsor), who have five small and incorrigible children.

The little un’s behavior is appalling, up to and including openly smoking pot. Their oldest, Lucy (Kimi Tallmadge), who’s perhaps 7, mostly watches over the baby but is less careful with the family Rottweiler, Kenyatta, inadvertently luring the dog into being run over by a delivery truck.

It’s a heartbreaking scene, made more so by Alex’s cruel scolding, but the movie soon tosses Lucy aside. The moment has passed, onto the next.

Both Daniel and Alex have fallen in love with Bob, and tell him so. He is equally forthright in expressing his affection, and that it is momentary and circumstantial. The minute things start to drag or any kind of friction arises, Bob grabs his totemic fur-lined coat and is out the door. He actually leaves Alex with the Hodson children for an afternoon so he can go canoodle with Daniel.

The truth, obvious to any but these two, is that Bob is a leech and a psychopath, only around for the sex and the fun. Emotionally he’s a renter, not a buyer. The story ends with him running off to New York City at the offer to start his own art gallery, only bothering to say goodbye to his two lovers via the telephone answering service they both subscribe to.

Schlesinger pays a lot of attention to this phone system, even showing the inner workings of the machinery and the line of old biddies who punch cables into holes and cheerily pass along notes about the whereabouts of Bob, never grasping the romantic nature of these comings and goings. It made me think of today’s technology of chats and texts; now the go-betweens are nonhuman but no less intrusive.

I was bothered by the film’s seeming indifference to probing Bob’s interior, or perhaps just giving up and failing to grant him one. His art involves making glass-and-water fountains — Daniel has one in his backyard — and he’s also fascinated by machinery that produces concentric circle drawings. At one point Bob watches Alex asleep in bed and pulls out some paper, we assume to sketch her, but instead he starts free-handing more circles.

I suppose it’s as close to an idea of what the man is about as the movie is willing or able to provide — a closed loop.

Later, Alex tries to make Bob jealous by sleeping with a 50-year-old client, George Harding (Tony Britton), a former executive who has lost his job but hasn’t even bothered to tell his wife. Bob professes to be totally unconcerned, declaring them both free to do as they please, but we can see the notion of someone else modeling his own behavior clearly annoys.

The movie goes on like this, with standalone moments that are sometimes interesting, sometimes not, but seemingly unconnected to tracing the momentum of these three people’s lives.

Daniel attends his nephew’s lavish bar mitzvah; Alex grinds the ashes from a spilled tray into her carpet with her heel; Daniel bumps into a former lover strung out on heroin, and attempts to obtain more for him from a pharmacy; Alex and Daniel unwitting pass each other in their cars as they drive by Bob’s loft, peering up to see which of them he’s with.

Alex visits with her parents, perhaps prompted by a dream of her childhood, and is shocked to learn her mother briefly left her father when she was a small child. She returned, of course, and chides Alex for giving up so easily on her own marriage, and for her feminist wish to have it all.

“You keep throwing your hand in because you haven't got the whole thing. There is no whole thing,” mum says.

For my money, Jackson is the best thing in the movie, to the point I wish it was just about her and Bob, and her struggle to recognize her own self-worth separate from whatever man she’s with. Early on Alex resolves to quit her job, even without another lined up, and we sense she’s reached a pivotal breaking point in her life.

“I'm always fitting in and making do and shutting up,” she self-diagnoses.

As for Daniel… honestly, he’s a bore. For the guy who’s supposed to represent Schlesinger’s avatar in the story, he’s an incredibly passive and uninteresting guy. The power dynamic with Bob makes him unattractive, what nowadays we’d call a simp. He plans an elaborate driving tour of Italy together, secretly knowing it’ll never happen.

If Alex strives toward a point where she’s ready to give Bob the heave, we know Daniel never will.

The film ends with Daniel turning directly to the camera and giving a speech to the audience, admitting he’ll miss Bob but insisting he will be happy. It’s supposed to be shocking moment, but it feels contrived and artificial. Rather than breaking convention, it crashes into the axiom that it’s always better to show than tell.

Is Daniel a “good” gay character? Some would argue. I’d turn it around and say that Bob is a far more dastardly figure for LGBTQ screen depictions, a user of other people for his carnal conquests. Daniel’s obeisance to Bob’s whims renders him a diminished man, a timid aging gay defined not by his affections but his fear in losing the object of them.