A Kind of Loving

Released 1 October 1962
Manchester draftsman VIC BROWN becomes involved with secretary INGRID ROTHWELL, who works at his firm. After they sleep together, she gets pregnant. Vic feels a sense of responsibility and proposes marriage.
The couple are forced to live with Ingrid’s mother who treats Vic with contempt because of his working-class background.
But, when tragedy strikes, Vic must decide what his new wife means to him.
Director John Schelsinger on June.
“June Ritchie, is from Manchester, and was straight out of R.A.D.A. Ultimately, the two of them worked together marvellously but at first there was a certain breaking down of barriers that had to be done. Particularly on the part of Alan Bates, who is a much more conscious actor than June who is more intuitive. She could ad lib a whole conversation much more easily than Bates could. He liked everything a little more carefully worked out.I think this came about quite quickly, as soon as we all of us got used to working together. It is, I think, a very difficult thing for an actor who has been closely involved in a part in a long run entirely to discard it in one week, and realistically play an entirely different sort of character, before the critical eye of the camera. I found that during the first weeks of shooting Alan needed more takes than June did, and whereas his performance improved by, say Take 7, she was always better in the earlier ones.”
(from “A conversation with John Schlesinger” by Robert Rubens, in
The Transatlantic Review No. 10 (Summer 1962), pp. 4-12)