CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

Micitype Pretty Good

Janis One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

jc-osms I recently read the John Brain novel and so was keen to see this celebrated adaptation of it. It was the debut feature of director Jack Clayton, two of whose relatively small number of succeeding films I've seen and enjoyed ("The Innocents" and "The Great Gatsby"). I'm a fan of the British realist cinema movement of the late 50's and early 60's and see this movie as a trailblazer for other important films which followed.Set in the immediately post-war period as witness the bomb-site locations which appear throughout as backdrops, the film unquestionably speaks to societal attitudes of masculinity, marriage, class snobbery, provincialism and morality still prevalent at its time of release in 1959.I was pleased to see in the credits that the director of photography was the great British cameraman Freddie Francis and he doesn't disappoint with typically imaginative and memorable set-ups and portraits. In one tracking shot I'm sure I detected a hand-held camera tracking shot long before it became the vogue. The story of a young working class accountant on the make is gripping and grittily portrayed, although perhaps this distinctly non-working class occupation with a taste for amateur dramatics belies the underlying class-war which underpins Lawrence Harvey's Joe Lampton character's cynical path up the greasy pole - namely to bed and wed the virginal young daughter of the monied industrialist with influence everywhere in the Northern town where his factories are based.What he doesn't count on is falling sideways into a steamy affair with older woman Alice Aisgill herself the put upon wife of her obviously philandering husband, when they meet at the local theatre rehearsing a play. At first she's just a bit-on-the-side while he works out his plan to entice sweet young Susan but Alice's worldliness and maturity speak to Joe far more than Susan's perkiness and naïveté. Of course Joe's balancing act has to fail and it does so after he cynically deflowers Susan, getting her pregnant in the process and bringing himself into the line of fire of the seemingly omnipotent father and so inadvertently gets what he originally wanted, an easy path to the upper classes and all the wealth, comfort and privilege that go with it, only when he gets up close to it, the grass is far from the verdant green he believed it would be.Clayton's direction is assured and stylish. There are many memorable scenes, perhaps none more than in the climactic scene where a newly-engaged Joe learns at his office of Alice's fate with a clever piece of overlapping dialogue. The movie is decidedly adult in its attitude to sex, not only the extra-marital affair between Joe and Alice, but also in the cold calculating way Joe takes away the too-trusting and adoring Susan's virginity. Even the language is more direct and abrasive than you'd expect, especially the tirade that Alice's flat mate Elspeth lets rip at Joe after he dazedly returns to the flat where he and Alice shared their trysts.As regards the acting, I'd have to agree with those critics who contend that Harvey just doesn't seem quite working class enough for the part. Possibly the movie came just too early for actors who would have carried off the role better like Albert Finney or Richard Harris, although their time would soon come. Simone Signoret was good value for her Oscar as the doomed Alice, but the casting all the way down the credits is uniformly good.An epochal British film, blazing a trail for the kitchen sink dramas of the next decade, but one which still stands up today on its own merits.

Prismark10 It is very easy for me to overlook films such as Room at the Top because I was always reading similar books at school and watching kitchen sink dramas all the time as a kid.Yet this was one of the films that heralded the kitchen sink dramas in British cinema, the naturalistic films set in working class towns. It has a bitter bite as men who fought in the war still faced up to the class divide.Joe Lampton (Laurence Harvey) arrives in a provincial Yorkshire city such as Bradford with a secure job in the council's accounts department. Joe who was a prisoner of war is determined to succeed and does not lack in confidence. In his sights is young, vulnerable Susan Brown (Heather Sears), daughter of the local businessman, Mr Brown (Donald Wolfit) who like Susan's snooty boyfriend is all too aware of this social climber.While Susan is sent abroad to be kept away from Joe's clutches, he turns for solace to Alice Aisgill (Simone Signoret) who he met at a local theatrical club when he was pursuing Susan. Alice is an older married woman from France, still sensual but unhappily married to her husband who is also cheating on her.Joe thinking that Susan and her riches are outside his grasp falls in love with Alice attracted to her European sensibilities, but divorcing her husband is not easy and then Joe finds Alice is pregnant and her family want a quick wedding.This is a tempestuous drama helped by Signoret's layered performance oozing sexuality as well as vulnerability. Harvey also gives a good performance, wanting to get to the top but conflicted in pursuing a girl for her wealth and a woman whom understands him.

raymond_chandler Room at the Top (1959) is an engrossing story of ambition and deceit set in postwar England. Laurence Harvey is the very definition of a cad as Joe, WWII vet and former POW, who arrives at a new town to take a job in the Treasurer's Department of Warnley, a fictitious, bustling manufacturing center. He is from the poor town of Dufton. Joe uses his good looks to get what he wants, whether it be sex or the attentions of the pretty, innocent daughter (Heather Sears as Susan) of the town's leading citizen and employer (Donald Wolfit - serious yet upbeat).In the first five minutes of Top, we see that this is a different kind of movie. Sexual attraction and frank admiration of the object of one's desires are the stuff that gives Top life. As Joe enters the office where he will be working, every woman there is shown to be checking him out silently, in a wonderful panning shot. He moves into a flat with his chum and co-worker, Charles (Donald Huston). Charles recruits Joe into a local drama repertory club, and we meet all sorts of lively young people, as well as Simone Signoret playing a libidinous older woman. Room at the Top is not explicit in any way, but the players and their casual remarks and gossip are very revealing and engagingly authentic.Room at the Top was nominated for 6 Academy Awards and won two, one for Signoret and one for Best Adapted Screenplay, going to Neil Paterson's work in translating John Braine's novel to the big screen. It is vastly more entertaining and thought-provoking than any Romantic Comedy* today, and it is more adult than any explicit sex romp film ever released. Absolutely Smashing!!!* Room at the Top is a drama through and through, but most of the plot could work in a Romantic comedy also."How about salary?"

T Y I'd rather watch an old, high-aiming movie than just about anything, especially one I haven't seen before. And Britain's Kitchen Sink school intrigues me quite a bit. If the entirety of Room at the Top was as good/modern/shocking as three or four of its best scenes, it would be a remarkable movie, but unfortunately, normative conventions of the era end up burying the more original moments. It's far less subtle than the uniformly great reviews led me to expect.It adopts a controversy-seeking position with its characters, but it also underscores every point, so you don't miss the morality of the film's viewpoint.I find Signoret to be miscast. She's looking pretty long in the tooth, and worldly, to be so impressionable and go to pieces over a man. I don't buy her character or her situation for a minute. She's a tough cookie.I pull this DVD out now and again, when I doubt my mediocre opinion of it. And I'm always disappointed to see again that there's too much dross, and too many melodramatic flourishes. Room at the Top is corny.