Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) poster
1971 · drama · romance · lgbt · schlesinger

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Directed by John Schlesinger1h 50m1971
ElsewhereIMDb7.07kRT83%TMDB6.6138
  • sombre
Movie DNA

Sombre, steady, measured drama / romance, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, intimate, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

Recently divorced career woman Alex Greville begins a romantic relationship with glamorous mod artist Bob Elkin, fully aware that he's also intimately involved with middle-aged doctor Daniel Hirsh. For both Alex and Daniel, the younger man represents a break with their repressive pasts, and though both know that Bob is seeing both of them, neither is willing to let go of the youth and vitality he brings to their otherwise stable lives.

Our read · Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) reads as a sombre, steady, grounded drama · romance · lgbt entry — measured in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

Where the cast leads
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The shape of Sunday Bloody Sunday

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want a frank seventies London triangle drama with groundbreaking queer honesty.

ends bittersweetit stays with yousteady all the waygrips by minute 10attention 4/5earns its length
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-upnuditydrug useanimal harm

Skip it tonightSkip if explicit sexuality, drug scenes, or animal harm will bother you.

If Sunday Bloody Sunday is your film
Maurice (1987)
reserved British longing and queer love under social pressure
(unless period restraint feels too stately)
The Go-Between (1971)
Schlesinger's same-era English class and desire
(if you want more contemporary London)
Another Country (1984)
British repression, sexuality, and class-coded intimacy
(unless schoolboy setting narrows the mood)
DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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