AllMovie

An honest look at the changing attitudes toward sexual identity in the early 1970s, Sunday Bloody Sunday rises above the standard hot-button topical melodrama, thanks to some sensitive performances from its leads. Glenda Jackson and Peter Finch are both outstanding as the two lovers of the same man; Finch in particular imbues his character with a quiet dignity. Though somewhat less skilled, Murray Head is still surprisingly effective as the center of the romantic triangle. Director John Schlesinger made his name with 1969's Midnight Cowboy, another film which dealt with controversial homosexual issues; Sunday is less urgent than Cowboy, but no less perceptive. Both Jackson and Finch garnered Academy Award nominations, as did Schlesinger and New Yorker film reviewer Penelope Gilliatt.