language
I really enjoyed watching this, but I found it very difficult to understand the accents! Perhaps I should have used closed captioning when I watched it.
shareSpoken English has changed a lot since 1962. In British films of that time, the dialogue was often stylised to portray people of different regions, classes and callings. It was a shorthand way of placing characters in a recognisable context.
Sillitoe could use his native language of working class Nottingham authentically but his middle/upper class people tended to mouth clichés (which many do in real life, of course). Also, profanity was impermissible, so all the speech is artificial.