This being the first day of July, 2005, and July being the month of patriotic celebration in America, I thought I'd channel my rather sparse patriotic impulses into a film project for the month: a one-man invasion of Great Britain. My ancestor, Michael, fought in The Revolution, so I'm thinking of this as a little overdue payback for King George. I won't mention, in this context, that another one of my ancestors was Captain of the tea ship Polly that was turned away in Philadelphia as the Revolution was fomenting and very nearly got tarred-and-feathered. I prefer to emphasize my American credentials in July rather than my (rather limited) English ones. That's called convenient memory.

My invasion will consist of reviews for thirty-one (one for each day of July) films made in the U.K. that rank among that nation's best. I make no claim that these films constitute the thirty-one best. My view is that one would need to sample at least the seventy-five most highly regarded films to have a reasonably good shot at constructing a top-thirty list. I suspect, however, that most of my thirty-one selections could reasonably appear on a list of the top-50 British films and all on a list of the top-100. I chose these films from an initial list of 140 or so candidates that I gleaned from various ratings and award lists. I may occasionally revert to reviewing a non-English language film this month, but any such non-English reviews will be over and above the one English film per day. I've got my thirty-one on hand, but the order of the reviews will be entirely by whim and neither best to worst nor vice versa.

The opening volley from my ship's cannon will be aimed not at the white shores of Dover but at Jack Clayton's angry-young-man film, Room at the Top (1958), winner of that year's BAFTA awards for both Best British Film and Best Film. The film also received Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Director. It won Simone Sigoret an Oscar as Best Actress and Neil Paterson one for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Historical Background: Jack Clayton had a long career in cinema, though only a portion of it as a director. Born in 1921 in Brighton, England, Clayton went to work for London Films when he was just 14. He gradually moved up through the ranks to the position of assistant director and film editor. He served during World War II in the RAF's film unit, beginning as a cameraman and gradually moving up until he was the unit's commanding officer. After the war, he was production manager or associate producer for a number of important films, including Moulin Rouge (1952). His first directorial venture came in 1955 with the medium-length The Bespoke Overcoat, which took a prize at the Venice Film Festival. His greatest triumph came with his first feature film, Room at the Top (1958), which paved new ground with its frank treatment of sexuality and class conflicts in British society.

The film helped launch a movement in British cinema that has been variably labeled the British New Wave, "Kitchen Sink Cinema," "Angry Young Men Films" or "Social Problem Films." The movement was short-lived, lasting mainly from 1958 to 1963, though a couple of stragglers came along a bit later. The films of this group featured grim, social realism, frank, course, working-class vocabulary, angry, alienated heroes, details of everyday living, and gritty, grainy cinematography. Jack Clayton's Room at the Top (1959) was the film that launched the movement and one of the movement's best examples. Other directors closely associated with the movement were Tony Richardson (e.g., A Taste of Honey (1961)), Lindsay Anderson (If… (1969)), Karel Reisz (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)), and John Schlesinger (Billy Liar (1963)).

Clayton never again directed anything quite so original or highly regarded as his triumph of 1958. After an absence from directing of seven years, from 1967-1974, he returned to make The Great Gatsby (1974), a lavish extravaganza that proved disappointing and financially unsuccessful. As a result, Clayton had to wait another nine years for his next directorial opportunity. Cinema can be a harsh business. Clayton made just two films in the eighties and died in 1995.

The Story: The story is straightforward on its surface and really only serves as a vehicle for a character study. Joe Lampton (Laurence Harvey) is a young accountant, born into poverty in a small town in the North Country. During the war, he had trained as a pilot but had been shot down early on and held in a POW camp for three years. Now that the war is over, Joe figures that he's going to get what he's due, come hell or high water. He makes his way to a small city where there is greater opportunity, but is angry and impatient when he observes the flagrant class disparities and snobbishness of the well healed.

Joe is handsome and charming and figures if he's going to find himself a girl and, ultimately, a wife anyway, she may as well also serve as his ticket to the upper class. He sets his sights on the sweet and naïve Susan Brown (Heather Sears), daughter of the top industrialist in town. He soon discovers that he has a rival in Jack Wales (John Westbrook), a scion of the upper crust himself. Jack takes malicious joy in tweaking Joe's sensitivity about his lower class upbringing. Joe is simultaneously envious and resentful of those with power and affluence. Still, he's a lot more attractive and charming than Jack, which goes a long way toward gaining Susan's hesitant attention.

In the meanwhile, Joe also makes the acquaintance of Alice Aisgill (Simone Signoret), a woman unhappily married to the loathsome, abusive, and philandering George Aisgill (Allan Cuthbertson). Alice is about thirty-five and Joe just twenty-five, but the two find a deep commonality in their shared working class sincerity, openness, and sensuousness. Alice has the wisdom of broader life experience to impart to Joe, while he has the earnestness and ambition of youth to breath new life into her humdrum existence. She's sensitive to their age difference, but at this particular stage in each of their lives, it's actually an enhancement rather than a deficit. At first Joe engages in the relationship mainly out of lust, but gradually he discovers himself falling in love with Alice. They begin to talk about sharing their lives, but George stands in the way, declaring that he will never divorce Alice and that he'll sue Joe for enticement if he continues seeing her.

Joe is simultaneously confronted with multiple obstacles in advancing his relationship with Susan. Susan's powerful father (Donald Wolfit) sends word via Joe's boss that he'll be blocked from any chance of promotion if he continues with his pursuit of Susan. Susan's snobbish mother (Ambrosine Phillpotts) sends her on an excursion in the south of France to cool her burgeoning interest in Joe. Later, when Joe encounters the entire group at a dancehall, the Browns feign politeness but are unable to mask their disdain for his social background. These impediments merely fan Susan's determination to have her heart's desire rather than stuffy old Jack. Susan and Joe ultimately find a way to be alone together and Susan gives up her virginity to him. As they're making love, Joe finds himself thinking about Alice instead.

Obviously, winning both gals is out of the question. Will Joe follow his heart's desire and link up with his soul mate, Alice? Or will he sell out himself and his working class background and marry Susan for a trip to the top? One of the joys of this film is not simply that one of the alternatives emerges but in how it all transpires.

Themes: Part of what makes this film special is that it is simultaneously strong social commentary and effective human melodrama. There are both social and psychological messages and both sets of messages are complex rather than simplistic. The social message relates to the obscenity of the class disparities that existed in postwar British society, made all the more evident and insupportable by the fact that the nation had had to pull together, from top to bottom, merely to survive, during World War II. The magnificent resolve that the British people had mustered in the face of a life-or-death struggle depended on uniformity of purpose. For the British upper classes to then turn up their noses once again, when the great job had been completed successfully, was indefensible. Joe finds himself being abused by the sons of the wealthy, like Jack Wales, who persists in calling Joe "Sergeant," by way of emphasizing the difference in the ranks each held in the military, which was, in turn, largely a result of class privilege. Then, there're Susan's parents, who can seemingly barely refrain from holding their noses when Joe comes around. So far, Joe has the sympathy of nearly every viewer.

Joe makes no bones about his working class origin and claims, "I'm working class and proud of it." The truth is that Joe is proud of himself, not of his class origin. A more truthful statement on his part would have been, "I'm working class and proud despite it." People who find themselves stymied by classism react in one of two quite different ways. Some come to despise and reject classism as a mode of social interaction. Others accept classism as how things operate and simply become determined to improve their class standing. The latter kind of person we call a "social climber," a "gold-digger," or, in more modern parlance, a "yuppie." They've existed in every time and place where class disparities are pervasive. Joe loathes those who would deign to look down on him but hopes to rectify the intolerable situation by joining the smug aristocracy, so he can then do the looking down. Near the end of the film, Joe stops in at a working class bar in his old neighborhood and is ironically mistaken for one of the snobby rich folks, illustrating how far along he already is in his transformation. Alice, in her wisdom, understands that if Joe sells his soul, by marrying Susan in order to reach the top, he'll never truly be happy and, worse, he will have abandoned his personal pride and values. If Joe is truly proud of his working class roots, he doesn't need to buy his way into the aristocracy.

Still, we can sympathize with Joe because his conflicts are ones that we all might feel. With Alice, Joe is not so much duplicitous as he is conflicted. He tells her he wants to be with her forever and, as he says it, he truly believes it. With Susan, he is clearly playing a part, though he is not an especially avid or polished liar. He tells her that he loves her and how much he enjoyed their first sex together, but can barely make the words come out of his mouth, knowing that they aren't really true. He is saying them because he wants them to be true. He had convinced himself from the beginning that he could just as well love one girl as another, so why not a rich one?

The issues broached in Room at the Top are as relevant today as they were in 1958. In the 1960's, the majority of idealistic young people rejected classism as a part of the questioning of the values of the establishment in relation to the Vietnam War and civil rights. Since about 1975, however, the predominant response among young people in relation to the increasing classism in American society has mirrored that exhibited by Joe Lambton. It's part of the nation's shift to the right. Most young people are mainly interested in how they can themselves get to the top or reasonably near it, rather than how to improve generally the lot of the lower class and impoverished members of American society. There just aren't enough Alices around, anymore, telling these new yuppies that they impoverish, corrupt, and betray themselves in the process of becoming pushy, obsessed social climbers.

Production Values: Room at the Top was based on a novel of the same name by John Blaine. It captured the anger being experienced by many postwar youths in England, especially those from the working and lower middle classes who had sacrificed themselves to the war effort yet still found themselves systematically excluded from both dignity and opportunity, by the pervasive class system. Screenwriter Neil Peterson and director Jack Clayton did a marvelous job conveying the spirit of the novel onto the big screen. All of the realistic dialog and sexual frankness is retained and the characters are imbued with multidimensional qualities that hold viewer interest. Joe is a calculating social climber who still struggles to hold onto the moral values acquired through his working class roots. Alice cheats on her abusive husband but out of a simple longing for tenderness and affection. Susan is naïve and pampered but has a sweetness and basic sensitivity for the feelings of others that forces her to reject her parent's pompous presumption of superiority. These are the kind of conflicted characters that viewers can identify with, sometimes admire, and sometimes pity. The result is a finely crafted little drama that is never dull, even now that we are several decades beyond the prudish cinematic standards that made a bit of provocative dialog something of a novelty.

The cinematography is not especially lovely to look at, being the gritty, grainy variety that was characteristic of the Angry Young Men films. Nevertheless, the choreography of the characters is strong and the montage editing especially effective. There's an appealing range of camera movements and balance between close-ups and broader perspectives. The camerawork complements the strong acting during the various intimate scenes.

French import Simone Signoret deservedly won the Oscar for her performance in this film. She is sensual and sincere, intense and believable. Signoret's other film appearances included La Ronde (1950), Diabolique (1955), Ship of Fools (1965), The Sleeping Car Murder (1965), The Deadly Affair (1966), and Madame Rosa (1977). Laurence Harvey was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor, but lost out to Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur, which took a total of eleven statues. I thought Harvey's performance commendable but not great. He had an extremely complex character to portray and there were times when I thought him not really up to the challenge of providing the degree of subtly and nuance required. His character was waffling on the cusp of bitter cynicism and youthful idealism, and Harvey didn't always capture that torment fully. On the other hand, Harvey had all of the cold, charming exterior and shark-like intensity to make his seductions of Susan and Alice credible. Harvey is perhaps best known for his role in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), but also appeared in I Am a Camera (1955), Butterfield 8 (1960), The Alamo (1960), and Darling (1965).

Heather Seals did a nice job capturing the ambivalence of her character, both her youthful sweetness and her pampered naivety. Though she earned no award nominations for her work in this film, she had received a BAFTA award the year before for her role in The Story of Esther Costello. There were some good supporting performances, notably Sir Donald Wolfit (Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Becket (1964)) as Mr. Brown, Ambrosine Phillpotts as the pompous mother, and Hermione Baddeley as Elspeth. Baddeley received a nomination as Best Supporting Actress, though it's difficult to understand why, for such a small part. The accents for all of the performers will seem rather thick to an American audience.

Bottom-Line: This is a fine film featuring human drama combined with some interesting things to say about truth and corruption, classism and social climbing. The DVD extras are minimal indeed: just a couple of bios and previews for some other films. There was a sequel made to this film entitled Life at the Top (1965), but it was not well regarded, though Harvey reprised his role. The original is the one to see, especially all you yuppies out there. You know who you are! You need this film's lesson in life. As for you hippies, you can just sit there and watch it smugly!

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age