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Room at the Top

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This was the era of John Osborne and Britain's "Angry Young Man" whose influence was becoming so widespread in the post-Suez period. Laurence Harvey gives a masterful performance as an opportunistic young man who, on the surface, has apparently succeeded, but yet, if this is so, why does he have a funereal look on his face as he is being transported from the church sitting next to beautiful Heather Sears, his new bride and daughter of the wealthiest man in town?

The answer to that question lies in the woman who took her life, and was Harvey's true love, Simone Signoret, who delivered one of the most captivating performances of the post-World War Two period in achieving a notably deserved "Best Actress" Oscar. When Harvey arrives in the small English factory town he resents the lowly position he has, seeking to graduate to the world of wealth. The restrictive surroundings mandate that the only way for him to do so in that town is to successfully romance Sears, the daughter of a wealthy factory owner, which he does. Eventually he impregnates her and the two marry after her father, who earlier sought to get rid of Harvey by arranging a possible position for him in another town at an excellent salary, rescinds his opposition.

The heart and soul of the movie is Signoret, whom Harvey meets at a local drama club, where they appear in a play together and immediately establish a torrid romance. Harvey knows that, from the standpoint of a deep, abiding, romantic love, he vibrates with the older French woman in a way he never can with Sears. It all comes down to ultimate opportunity, and so Harvey leaves the woman he deeply loves. When the heartbroken Signoret takes her life Harvey is left with the trappings of success while enduring a painful inward death.

As a form of expiating what he has done, Harvey seeks out physical punishment by behaving in an unruly manner at a local pub. His actions invite reprisal from a group of young toughs, who resent him as an interloper from the upper class who has come to sneer at them. He is savagely beaten on a bridge near the bar a few minutes after his departure from the pub. He makes no attempt to defend himself and encourages the beating, his eyes containing a dead look as he thinks about the recently deceased Signoret. The scene contains such a realistic ring that, when director Jack Clayton and crew were shooting it late one evening, townspeople confused it for the real thing and contacted the police.

Clayton directed with a sure hand, insuring that the emotions appeared genuine, always asserted with tangible meaning at the proper level with none of the overacting of soap opera. Harvey is seen as a young man torn emotionally between his genuine feelings for Signoret and his quest to escape a humdrum life in a small town, the prospect of which clearly terrifies him.

Throughout the 1950s, a group of young British writers were referred to as "angry young men" because, in their novels and plays, they excoriated what they perceived to be the dominant materialistic values of their society following World War Two. They included playwrights John Osborne and Kingsley Amis and novelists John Braine, John Wain, and Alan Silitoe. This film is based on Braine's novel Room at the Top; Neil Patterson received an Academy Away for best adapted screenplay. Joe Lampton (Laurence Harvey) is the focal point. Driven by smoldering ambition to overcome his modest circumstances and deeply resentful of the wealthiest man in a North Country village (Brown, played by Donald Wolfit), he finally obtains a position in Brown's company and begins his difficult journey to "the top" while including marriage to Brown's daughter Susan (Heather Sears) among his ultimate objectives. Along the way, he meets an older but still attractive Frenchwoman, Alice Aisgill (Simone Signoret) with whom he has an affair. For Joe, it is a mere dalliance along his career path; she, however, falls in love with him. Beyond the passionate sex which she enjoys as much as he does, Alice also helps Joe to refine his social graces and increase his understanding and appreciation of the cultural arts. (Signoret received an Academy Award as best actress for her performance in this film.) Joe seems grateful for her contributions to his self-improvement but really has no long-term interest in her. He remains obsessed with reaching "the top" with wife Susan at his side, possessing great wealth, power, and prestige.

And then he learns from Susan that....

Alice is the most sympathetic character in the film, largely because Joe exploits her so callously. As for Brown, "what you see is what you get": a class-conscious, hard-driving, no-nonsense capitalist. Unlike Joe, no need for dissembling. Brown is at "the top" and (by God) he intends to remain there. Susan is of great importance to Joe (and to her father, of course) but is of little importance to the film's story line except as one of the ambitious goals which motivate Joe. He really cares little for her as a person, one way or the other. Were she in his own social class, Joe would probably have little to do with her...except, perhaps, for occasional sexual gratification (for himself). At least Alice offered more than sex...she offered unconditional love. Only at the end of the film does Joe begin to realize what he has gained by reaching "the top" and at what a cost. Both in the novel and in this film, Joe symbolizes just about everything which enraged Braine and other British writers.

Years later, in a brief excerpt from "The Paradox of Our Time," George Carlin observes that "We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years." He could well be describing Joe Lampton and countless others who seem to know the cost of everything but the value of nothing, who (in Socrates' words) live unexamined lives, in Thoreau's words "lives of quiet desperation."

Those who share my admiration of this film are urged to check out A Place in the Sun (1951), Look Back in Anger (1958), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1961), and A Taste of Honey (also 1951).

I was barely in my teens when I first saw this movie. Mylene Demongeot's comment about Ms. Signoret's Oscar triumph have been forgotten. That summer of 1959 is long gone; but I still cannot erase the image of Harvey and Signoret on the beach in raincoats [sans everything else]; her husky voice [Kathleen Turner inherited that charm]; and that unforgettable backward handwave as she walks away from Harvey. ONE of the all time ultimate movies about finding love in the wrong way, and very much about a woman and a man in love.

Harvey, social climbing his way to the top [perhaps reflecting his own, beautiful, flawed, tragic life] has never been better - went on to do "Life at the Top" later. Wolfit, now forgotten by the younger ones - and possibly the inspiration for Albert Finney's "Sir" in "The Dresser" - is a formidable presence.

Shot in velvet black and white this film pulsates with gritty sexuality.

Worthy of being viewed over and over - together, alone, sad or happy - it always returns like the wayward lover it is, and leaves you depleted, but sated.

I don't think I need to add anything to the glowing reviews this film has received -- back when it was released in 1959 or now on Amazon's website. I hope that Criterion gains the rights to re-release the film with a clean, sharp image. Screenplay, two extroardinary central performances (Harvey and Signoret seem made for it), direction and location filming add up to a realistic, brutal love story of a young man with values in the wrong place. See it anyway. The beginning of the DVD is also partially missing -- an altogether careless, rush job.

Strong feelings of hate, anger and saddness could not have been evoked without the tremendous performances of Simone Signoret and Laurence Harvey. Simone Signoret was ideal for the part of Alice, the very intelligent, worldly but totally feminine character, and Laurence Harvey lived that part as the boy from the working class, not trying to deny it, but utterly ruthless in his pursuit to reach the top in the factory in Northern England.

The sex scenes were only incidental in comparison with the deep issues beneath the surface. Oh, yes, Joe was a cad with a capital C. He cared for Alice to a point, but he was looking to further his own nest, namely with the daughter of the factory owner. So, he had a full relationship with Alice while seducing Susan in order to gain his own ends, to marry to the boss's daughter. You feel compassion for Alice with the cruel creton she is married to, and let's face it, the way she is being used by Joe. Anger and hatred are stong feelings only too good for Joe.

This movie is over 40 years old, but comparisons can be drawn to issues of the present day of abrasive, coarse young people along with their own arrogance employing all kinds or any kind of measures to get places in the corporate world with no concern of stepping on or hurting anyone along the way. And at the other end of the spectrum, comparisons could also be drawn to an era before WWII, when at the turn of the century, Clive (?) seduced the young woman, and at the same time, he was trying to inveigle his way in the factory with the boss's daughter in "An American Tragedy."

Laurence Harvey had a true to life 'industrial north' accent. The black and white clearly depicted the bleakness of an industrial Yorkshire town during the post war period in England.

Although this film was produced in 1959, and might be thought of as dated, the issues of ruthless ambition, marital abuse, and class distinction as very well played by the factory owner's wife still exist and might even loom larger than life today.

Simone Signoret will break your heart! She deservedly won an Oscar for one of the all time great performances ever given by any actress. She is simply devastating. Matched all the way by Laurence Harvey, alternately cruel and callous and then warm and tender. Their scenes together ring true and are timeless depictions of deep emotional and sexual intimacy. The other themes of the film, class distinctions etc. are still valid...but it will be Simone, touching the heart of this callow young man and making him better for it, feeling their age difference yet unable to stop herself from loving and hoping for happiness against her own experience, that will haunt you. A shattering film masterpiece.

An extraordinary film, one that retains its full impact to this day. The story is fairly simple ---- man loves a woman, but loves and covets even more the money and power that another woman can provide. This British film is atmospheric and very vivid, aided greatly by the black and white filming, which adds a starkness and a reality that is almost painful. Laurence Harvey was a very skilled actor whose tragic early death in the early 1970's choked off a brilliant career. Simone Signoret, one of the greatest actresses since the end of World War II, won a much-deserved Academy Award as best actress of 1959 for her work in this film (she also died at an age where more great work would have been forthcoming). This is not a film to make you feel good, but one that has still has a lot of truth and empathy to it. Highly recommended.

After Diabolique, you wonder how possibly Signoret could make ANOTHER masterpiece. Well ~~~ here it is! A truly deserved BEST ACTRESS Oscar went to Signoret as well as an Oscar for the screenplay.Harvey is most effective in this film, trying to dismiss the "class" system after the war. Every role is expertly cast, and after the film's release, the British were ecstatic, saying "British filmmaking is HERE again."But it is Signoret who steals the film, in EVERY scene, she is riviting. Sexy, vulnerable, smart and portraying a woman whose love is doomed at the start. The scene in which her and Harvey fight is filmed almost with ONE shot. A tearjerker, but not a soap-opera.A classic film, and one for your DVD library. The print is clear and sharp with only ONE splice. Again, I would want the original trailer, but that can be overlooked when you get an overwhelming film such as this! A MUST HAVE! Landmark filmmaking and acting!

Simone Signoret won the best actress Oscar for her portrayal of an unhappily married woman who, clutching at a last chance at happiness, falls head over heals in love with a fiery, social climbing schemer from the North Country. It really is an astounding performance - sensitive, sensual, and eloquent and also heartbreaking in its emotional ferocity.

Indeed, Room At The Top is a ferocious film, full of angry, dissolute people who are still shell-shocked, benumbed, and staggering from world War 11. Post war British society was in tatters, poverty was rife, and the upper classes were desperately trying to hang into life of pre-war privilege. Out of this bitter realization, emerged a generation of broken, angry young men who stepped out into a world that no longer had unlimited opportunity and prospects.

Lawrence Harvey stars as Joe Lampton. Joe was born into poverty into the dirt-poor industrial wasteland of a North Country manufacturing town. But Joe is determined to catapult himself out of a world he never made, wanted, or even needs. He's an ambitious, scrappy, bitter, cynical, war-ravaged, avaricious, and misogynist man who is constantly on the make and relentlessly looking for a way to escape from his past. Determined to rise above his station in life, he eventually takes a job working for the local treasury department in another city.

When Joe descends on his new workplace, he quickly announces his ambitions to rise above his petty bureaucratic position to take his rightful place in the seat of power. At the local amateur theatrical society, he meets Susan (Heather Sears), the naïve, and inexperienced daughter of a local millionaire factory owner. Susan and her family - with their money, social connections and upper-class sophistication - represent exactly the prize and escape that Joe has been waiting for.

But at the same time Joe also meets and falls in love with Alice (Signoret). Alice is a married, ill-used, worldly-wise, woman who is fast approaching middle age and is anxiously groping for real affection and love. Joe obviously belongs with Alice - for he feels most himself when he is with her - but he's also drawn to the dull and unsophisticated Susan who can provide the route to the moneyed, class-conscious world he yearns to inhabit.

Here lies the thematic core of the film - a fiery look at British class distinctions. It is Joe's sense of divided loyalty for these two women that show us this conflict of class and rank. Joe is a manipulative, astute, and pragmatic crusader, who yearns for wealth and the opportunity and to rid himself forever of low-caste stigma through marriage with the heiress to a great fortune.

But he is also a man of conscience, who cannot destroy his last shred of decency; it is plainly obvious that he dearly loves Alice. But as the forces of social propriety gradually and inevitably descend on him and he loses what little is left of his heart, he ends up "betraying the woman he loves, while pretending to love the bride he has also betrayed."

Room At The Top is a marvelously acted film and Jack Clayton, has done a superb job in directing an excitingly effective cast. Full of complex, adult relationships, the film remains a fitting testament to the age-old and longstanding British class war.

Somber and dark, emanating sadness, desperation, and tragedy, the movie is also remarkably effective in portraying a world of unfulfilled dreams, broken love affairs, and an era of angry young men who were seeking to make life more rewarding in an uneasy and anxiety-driven world. Mike Leonard June 05.

Powerful drama with impressive performances that will have you captivated. Admittedly the base of this story has been recycled so many times in cinema since but this film explores characters and situations in a realistic, true to British Free Cinema way. Won an Oscar for best script and Simone Signoret's great performance. Her continental air and sophistication create an antithesis with the mundane, English, small town setting.