Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

jcappy The unusual depth and range in the love between Alice (Simone Signoret) and Joe (Laurence Harvey) are what takes "The Room at the Top," to another level. However, this almost classic film doesn't always rise above its flaws. The truth is that Signoret is consistently convincing in her role, and Harvey is not. His biggest problem is his two-faced persona. He is the young, naive, rustic in one scene, and the older, authoritative, sophisticate in the next. He shifts between these two types more often than he switches accents. And his voice seems to follow the same pattern, so mellow when a yokel, so deep and masculine when a convincing dominant.This convenient inconsistency seems most apparent in his scenes with Susan Brown, where one sometimes gets the impression he is reading lines from a children's play, and yet at other times, he's the worldly older lover who cannot be bothered with such a vapid and square youth. His age seems to veer from 21 to 33, and back again, in according to the scene's mode. Unlike Signoret, Harvey doesn't adjust to the script's unevenness. He can be a faltering innocent with Alice or he can as likely be her suave superior. His juvenile jealous tirade over Alice's artist model experience is one of several examples of his character deviations. His venom here makes Mr Brown, the villainous capitalist, seem both relatively mild and complex. However, it's true that when the love scenes with Alice move beyond the literary, Harvey does achieve remarkable acting heights. Whether Simone Signoret's ability to be more than a match for her scripted lines has been transferred to him, or because she, in her first-class artistry, has covered for him, is hard to tell but, in the end, he towers, and the movie soars, despite his and its letdowns.

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?"

tomsview I've always thought of "Room at the Top" as an important movie.Although the story seems anchored to life in Britain at the end of WW2, and driven by the class struggle and sense of delusion after the war, the major themes are universal.Joe Lampton (Laurence Harvey) in his attempt to rise above an impoverished background by latching onto a girl from a wealthy family has many cinematic soul brothers – Montgomery Clift in "A place in the Sun" and "The Heiress" for starters.In Joe's case, he sacrifices the woman he really loves, for comfort, security and position. Needless to say, he comes to regret that decision and therein lays the soul of this movie.It's easy to see why Simone Signoret won the Academy Award as Alice Aisgil, the older woman he loves. She is at once worldly, but vulnerable; it is painful to watch her as she realises the fragility of her relationship with Joe.Then there is Laurence Harvey. His was a difficult role, and although he may be a little too strident earlier in the movie, by the end, he inhabits Joe Lampton like a second skin.Laurence Harvey gave a certain gravitas to many movies, although his critics would seem to deny him any stature as an actor at all – I often wonder if they mixed up his off-screen life with his on-screen roles? Apparently he was promiscuous, bi-sexual, perennially late on set, and used people to gain advantage – not unlike Joe Lampton – but all that was off camera, it's not the Laurence Harvey 99.9% of us ever saw.When British actor Robert Stephens described Harvey in his autobiography as "an appalling man and, even more unforgivably, an appalling actor." It's hard to take that as a particularly astute observation when we watch not only this film, but also "Darling", "Butterfield Eight", "The Manchurian Candidate" and even "The Alamo", where Laurence Harvey's cultivated Colonel Travis is the perfect counterpoint to the testosterone charged performances of just about everyone else in the cast. But maybe those smooth good looks and that superb voice just got up the nose of less photogenic peers – there seems much peevishness in their comments.There is considerable depth to his performance in "Room at the Top", especially at the end when the anguish over what he has done breaks through his icy demeanour; it's understated and all the more powerful for it. Made in 1959, but set in the late 40's, the film looks good, and has that sense of timelessness often achieved by films made at a later date than when they are set.The sequel, "Life at the Top," made in 1965, was a polished production that had something to say about the politics of the time, and also featured a more mature performance by Laurence Harvey. However, it didn't have the immediacy of the original, which ushered in that brilliant period in British cinema in the late 50's and early 60's. History aside, "Room at the Top" is a powerful experience full of fascinating and attractive stars.

Paddy-49 Jack Clayton's brilliant, cynical 1959 movie of John Braine's novel "Room at the Top" (1957) can now be seen in a complete High Definition print on YouTube. I hope this easy availability brings it to the attention of a new generation of not just film fans but those interested in Britain's social history in the Post War years. Braine was at the centre of the "Angry Young Men" literary movement of the 1950s (although in reality there was no "movement" as such - just a coincidence of good writing by young writers troubled by the social mores of the times). Set in a northern town, and with a symbolic background of chimneys and the daily grind, "Room at the Top" is about aspiration and ambition - about how a determined, clever, handsome young man, Joe Lampton (Laurence Harvey) finds room at the top for himself artfully and by trampling over a few hearts along the way. New to the town of Warley - a step up from his more downmarket home town - Joe declares early his intention to succeed. His job as an accountant in the local authority offices is to be no more than a stepping stone to better things.Notwithstanding the political revolution of the Labour government of 1945-1951 Britain's establishment regrouped and reinforced its barriers to entry. Kingsley Amis in "Lucky Jim" (1954), Stan Barstow in "A Kind of Loving" (1960), Alan Sillitoe in "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" (1958) as well as Braine and others describe these barriers and the difficulties of breaking them down. In "Room at the Top" class and privilege are the key. With his brashness and brains Lampton is clearly a man on the make. Warley's big cheese is Abe Brown (Donald Wolfit) millionaire, factory owner, stalwart of the Conservative Club. A man used to getting his own way. Brown has a pretty daughter in her late teens, virginal and with a cut glass accent to contrast with her father's self-made-man Yorkshire. Susan Brown (Heather Sears) falls for Joe and he sees not just the challenge (easily overcome) of breaking down her barriers but also her potential usefulness to him in his determined climbing of the ladder. Whilst decorative and useful Susan Brown inspires no passion in Joe - but he also meets Alice Aisgill (Simone Signoret), older, beautiful, physically stunning, married, unhappy. Susan is prettily naive but Alice is worldly and desirable. Lampton's seduction of Susan is carried out clinically and dispassionately. His affair with Alice is the real thing - for both of them. When it becomes known to Alice's husband George (Alan Cuthbertson) the latter threatens Joe with financial and social ruin unless he breaks it off. This is a pivotal scene symbolising the "Them and Us" world of that time and place. Another symbol of the class divide is the portrayal by John Westbrook of Sarah's boyfriend Jack Wales. Wales, like Lampton, was in the RAF during the war and also like Lampton was a Prisoner of War. But where Joe was a humble Sergeant Wales was an Officer and a heroic escaper from captivity. Wales demeans Joe by calling him "Sergeant" - a gratuitous bit of class snobbery that makes Lampton all the more determined to succeed!When Joe Lampton gets Susan Brown "In the family way" the story approaches its climax. In a cameo of exceptional quality Donald Wolfit's Brown tests Joe's intentions over Game soup at the Conservative Club. "My father would be horrified to see me here" says Joe. "So would mine" says Brown suggesting that he has more in common with his daughter's seducer than might be thought. He offers Joe an incentive to break up with Susan which Joe flatly refuses. That was the test. The real offer is a job at Brown's and a ticket on the gravy train if he marries Susan. Joe accepts.Alice is to be abandoned - a casualty of Joe Lampton's ambition and choice of fortune over love. Alice goes alone to the pub, drinks herself into a near stupor, drives away in her car and kills herself. A distraught Joe wanders alone through the Warley streets, lands up in a pub himself where he toys with a pretty empty-headed girl who briefly deserts her boyfriend for him. In another strongly symbolic moment the boyfriend turns on Joe and tells him not to think that his (Joe's) class gives him any rights. Joe is now the middle-class man he aspired to be - at least in the eyes of this stranger. Joe wanders away and is set upon by the boyfriend who was waiting for him with a gang. Joe gets beaten to a pulp for his temerity in having chatted up the girl, and for his seeming assumption that he had an entitlement to do so."Room at the Top" ends with Joe and Susan's wedding - it's the full monty with church and bridesmaids and the rest. Joe has arrived - and his beautiful bride is beside herself with perky happiness as they are driven away in the wedding car after the ceremony. But Joe is unsmiling. He has won, but in winning he has lost not just his one true love but some of himself. "Was that really all really worth it ?" you know he must be thinking?