User reviews

I recently viewed this film from 1959 and was totally riveted to it. Directed by Jack Clayton, it is a timeless love story set in post-war Britain with the incomparable Simone Signoret and Laurence Harvey at the centre of the storm. The background highlights the struggle between class and ambition in 1950's Britain. Laurence Harvey plays Joe Lampton, the "angry young man" who is motivated to make something of himself in a world that he is not comfortable with. Harvey portrays a new kid on the block who has taken a job at city hall, where he works with other young men like himself. He and his buddies remind us of randy high school students discovering the world and women all at once.

While Joe shows all the aptitudes necessary for advancement, he is a man of principle who inherits the hostility of the working class that flares up when provoked by snide remarks about where he came from. He has trouble playing the game but no trouble attracting the attention of the ladies. At first attracted to the daughter of a local tycoon, he knows that he is an outsider and seeks the advice and friendship of an older woman - the genuine and magnetic Signoret, who plays the lovelorn wife of a local businessman and philanderer. Over time, he falls deeply in love with the older woman and the time they spend alone provides some of the most compelling scenes you are likely to find in the cinema of the 1950's. After successfully wooing her, he runs headlong into the realities of life, leading to a gut-wrenching climax, which you won't forget.

This is a superb movie. The plot is reminiscent of "An American Tragedy." But it takes place in England, and the hero is very much an Angry Young Man. Nevertheless, it is so beautifully written and directed it feels as fresh and new as if the such issues had never before been touched in movies.

Laurence Harvey, whom I'm generally not crazy about, is superb as the lower-class guy determined to make it big. He sets his sights on the boss's daughter, appealingly played by Heather Sears. But something happens to sidetrack him. And that something -- Simone Signoret -- is the main reason to see and to cherish "Room At The Top." She is very believable as the slightly shady older woman with whom he has a romance. And her eyes! Her eyes, suggesting wisdom and great depths of sadness, will break you heart. It seems like a simple performance and it is uncluttered, stark. But it is flawless. I can think of almost no other performance by a woman in an English-language movie that compares to Signoret's.

There's a rather angry man by name of Joe, he's been shaped by past events and they bestow, a ruthless urge to find success, fiscal and personal progress, and he's found a girl who'll give him just the tow. Susan Brown is being courted by another, but Joe's target is for him to be the lover, her family oozes affluence, the father has great influence, although he's far too working class for Susan's mother. Into the works, a spanner enters and distracts, a married woman pulls Joe over to new tracks, Alice is somewhat mature, but she's opened up a door, and Joe's struggling to keep himself intact.

We follow Joe Lampton as he attempts to climb the social ladder shortly after the close of WWII. He's a dislikeable bloke, unstable, abusive with a very short fuse, most likely because of the life he's led to date, but still no excuse. He soon finds out that dreams don't come true, that happiness is fleeting and that the grass isn't always greener. Two outstanding performances from Laurence Harvey and especially Simone Signoret (watch her in Les Diaboliques if you haven't already), but this needs to be watched with the era it was written and subsequently filmed in mind, as it doesn't carry over well into more modern times and parallels.

Loneliness and longing in this extraordinary, ageless masterpiece. The film is dominated by the phenomenal Simone Signoret and I got dizzy looking at her beautifully complicated face. Laurence Harvey's petulance works wonders here and Jack Clayton, the director, orchestrates a soap opera for the thinking man. Everythings rings true even the most unbelievable details. The older woman syndrome is so masterfully captured here that, at times, you want to look away because the truth in Signoret's eyes is piercing as she sexily smokes her cigarette blowing the smoke right at us. I'm just rambling I know, my intention is to wet your appetite. Another extra bonus is the superb performance by Hermione Baddely, renamed by Noel Coward as Miss Gooddely. A total must!

Room At The Top filmed in 1959 takes place some ten years earlier in post war Great Britain as veteran Laurence Harvey takes it in his mind to rise from his lower class origins by any means possible. He's a devilishly attractive fellow and if that's what it takes to do it, than so be it. Not like it hasn't been done before on either side of the pond.

Harvey's got no family so to speak, his parents were killed in his small town when a German bomb hit their house. He's rootless now and has a crying need to belong somewhere.

The similarities in character to novelist John Braine's Joe Lampton and Theodore Dreiser's George Eastman are too obvious to overlook. However unlike Eastman, Lampton as played by Harvey is courting two very different kinds of women. Boss Donald Wolfit's daughter Heather Sears is a young and somewhat inexperienced young lady who's easy prey for Harvey. Wolfit and his wife Ambrosine Phillpotts see what's happening with their daughter, but can't ultimately do anything.

But while they're trying Harvey falls in with the unhappily married Simone Signoret. She's married to Allan Cuthbertson who's a cheating dog himself. She's got a lot of passion left in her and even though Harvey's ten years younger, she knows how to show him one real good time. Being French she has a different moral view of things than the folks of her adopted country and she thinks Harvey does as well. He does, but Harvey has his priorities.

Room At The Top was something that still couldn't be made in America because of the Code, but at least it was shown here. What Makes Sammy Run, a work by Budd Schulberg never had a big screen adaption and it had similar themes to Room At The Top, Still it got great critical acclaim and two Academy Awards and other nominations.

Simone Signoret got one of those Oscars, for Best Actress in 1959. It's a very subtle part she undertakes, in fact she's not the main character, Harvey is. Still when she's on the screen even Harvey's flashier character of Joe Lampton takes a back seat. Signoret is just fabulous as the older and still attractive woman, trapped in a loveless marriage will touch you dearly. She's one of the most beautiful and tragic figures ever done on screen.

Harvey was up for Best Actor, but he and the film itself were running in the year of Ben-Hur. He and the picture itself lost to Charlton Heston and the noble character he created on screen. Hermione Baddely who had a role similar to Thelma Ritter's in All About Eve was up for Best Supporting Actress, but she lost to Shelley Winters for The Diary Of Anne Frank.

Room At The Top with its brutally frank talk of sex mixed with ambition has become a classic and Joe Lampton became Laurence Harvey's signature role. Two sequels with Joe Lampton, Life At The Top and Man At the Top, were spawned from the original, the latter with Lampton played by Kenneth Haigh as Harvey had died by then. It's an enduring classic of the British, nay the English language cinema and should not be missed.

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.

Jack Clayton directed two masterpieces: The Innocents, Truman Capote's adaptation of Henry James's The Turn of The Screw, and Room at the Top, based on the novel by John Braine. The story of a young man on the make in postwar Britain is compelling. The black and white cinematography is silken. But what you will remember most is Simone Signoret's heartwrenching performance as a mature woman rendered helpless by her love for the opportunistic character played by Laurence Harvey.

Simone Signoret is the epitome of sexy, womanly vulnerability, and Lawrence Harvey is superb as the money/status seeking blue collar worker willing to do whatever it takes to climb the ladder to success but oh, at what a cost. Heather Sears plays an under-appreciated role as the naive young rich girl who can't understand what Joe Lampton (Harvey) sees in such an "old woman" as Alice Aisgill(Signoret). Each character is fully fleshed out, from the fellow at work and his fiancé June, who befriend Harvey and invite him to the drama group where he meets Signoret, to Heather's parents. Her mother in particular presents a perfect display of class meeting crass in her oh so proper and oh so cold behavior to Harvey. The supporting cast all offer stellar performances. I have seen this film 17 times and will no doubt see it many more times,if I am lucky.

Seeing this for the first time I was surprised to discover it is actually set in 1947, making it a piece about Austerity rather than Angry Young Men. While Laurence Harvey is convincing as a scheming hustler, he never strikes me as a northerner, and not just because his Yorkshire accent comes and goes (sometimes he sounds like he's auditioning for Jud in Oklahoma -- are Yorkshire and Texas/Southern accents that closely linked?). Harvey is more like a penniless Russian nobleman eager to make his fortune by marrying BENEATH him, not ABOVE him like Joe Lampton here. Interesting that Harvey and Richard Burton, who both came from impoverished backgrounds, both had trouble playing working class characters.

"We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground..."

Laurence Harvey wants "Room at the Top" in this 1959 film also starring Simone Signoret and Heather Sears. Directed by Jack Clayton, the story concerns a young man, Joe Lampton (Harvey), sensitive about being from a low British class, who wants to marry the boss' daughter (Sears) for her money and position. She's part of a small amateur theater company, so he joins. There he meets an older woman, the unhappily married Alice Aisgill. The two drift into an affair and fall deeply in love. Two things stand in their way: Joe's ambition and Alice's brute of a husband.

This is, to put it simply, a devastating story that will stay with you long after the film is over. The movie belongs to Signoret, so sexy, so beautiful, so sad - she's perfect. Her vulnerability, her frankness, her coolness, and her deep unhappiness will shatter you. She deserved her Oscar hands-down.

Harvey is magnificent as Joe. He's handsome, sexy, greedy, bitter, evil, and utterly determined to punish the upper class because he was born poor. The last scene is a knockout. I haven't seen the sequel - I can only imagine! Heather Sears does an excellent job as the whiny object of his affections, and Hermoine Baddeley, as Alice's friend, gives a marvelous performance. She was not only a top bawdy comedienne but a brilliant actress.

Signoret was one of the great film presences, and if you see Room at the Top for no other reason, see it for her. The entire film is a knockout.

Harvey is a working class northern English lad looking to get on in the World. He falls for the daughter (Sears) of the local big wig (Wolfit) and an older woman (Signoret).

Something of a film standard in highlighting the snobbery and cruelty that the English class system brought to the country for so long and which contributed so much to the kitchen sink dramas of the sixties. The film follows the power of those that have everything and Harvey's temptation to follow versus his true love for the older Women with nothing to offer but herself. The cast are excellent, with Signoret outstanding and great support from Houston as Harvey's best mate. The possible chink here is Harvey himself, who is ok but isn't always convincing and sometimes the film seems to need an Albert Finney or a Richard Harris. Overall - gritty, well acted and scripted if a little dated now.

I watched most of this movie, but couldn't quite make it all the way through. Not that it was a bad movie. The script was well constructed, the shots were interesting and directed well, and there were some stellar performances by Simone Signoret, Heather Sears, and Hermione Baddeley.

But the weak link was Laurence Harvey, who seemed to glide through the movie in some kind of hypnotic trance. Here, let me demonstrate: Watch the first five minutes or so of the film, where Laurence Harvey arrives in town and begins staring at all the beautiful women. What is he doing? Is he ogling them? Lusting after them? Merely looking at them? Or is he secretly trying to destroy them with his X-ray vision? He puts little effort into showing us what he's thinking. He's just a guy staring oddly at women.

The rest of the film is the same way. It ultimately made no sense to me that so many beautiful women were enamored with him, or why Heather Sears was so taken with him, or why Sears's boyfriend hated him so. Maybe it was because he was a good looking guy, but what in his personality inspired so much passion? Having watched almost all of this film, I had no idea, and toward the end didn't care. Through the script, it was made clear that he was a poor boy trying to sleep his way into the upper classes, but he came across like a rich boy just trying to sleep with a lot of women.

If you're a Simone Signoret fan, there are some golden moments in this film. Otherwise, you may want to opt for another movie selection.

Set in an English factory town, "Room At The Top" tells the story of an ambitious, blue-collar cad named Joe Lampton (Laurence Harvey), the film's anti-hero, attracted to two women. One woman is his boss's daughter; ergo, she is his ticket to a bright financial future. The other is an older woman named Alice (Simone Signoret).

The script trends in the direction of melodramatic soap opera, with emphasis on character development. It's rather talky. And the plot is somewhat slow. On the other hand, because of the way in which sexual relationships are portrayed, the script was a bit ahead of its time. The story has a lot to say about individual sacrifice.

The film's naturalistic, B&W lighting is fine. Background music is nondescript and unimportant. The most significant element of the film, perhaps, is the high quality of acting. Both Donald Wolfit and Hermione Baddeley give really fine performances in support roles. But, of course, the real reason to see "Room At The Top" is to marvel at the outstanding performance of Simone Signoret, who won the Oscar for Best Actress in a lead role.

Although this is not my kind of film, it is very well made. It's an important film, both for its avant-garde sexual content and for the acting achievement of wonderful Simone Signoret.

This underseen British classic is like a breath of fresh air. Try as it might, prior to the 1960s and the American New Wave, Hollywood could never accomplish an effective sense of realism. Across the Atlantic, the story was an altogether different one: much of their shooting took place on-location in the breathtaking British countryside, or otherwise in the the shabby slums of the lower-class, successfully identifying audiences with the "common man." This realism is clearly evident in many of the Ealing comedies of the late 1940s and 1950s, but, with 'Room at the Top (1959),' British film-making reached a new peak of maturity. A frank and uncompromising treatment of sexuality and class prejudices, Jack Clayton's extraordinary feature-length debut was a seminal work in the development of adult-themed cinema, a commercial and critical success despite being branded with an X-rating in the UK. The brilliance of this film, coupled with that of 'The Innocents (1961)' two years later, leads me to wonder why I don't hear of this director with much greater frequency.

Joe Lampton (Laurence Harvey) is an ambitious young government accountant, proud of his lower-class heritage but determined to ascend the social ladder. Though he loathes the pretension and prejudices of Britain's wealthy upper-class, he is nonetheless determined to become one of them, a hypocrisy that triggers with in him an indescribable inner-torment. With this goal in mind, Lampton sets his sights on the innocent, virginal Susan Brown (Heather Sears), daughter of the most powerful man in town. He tries vainly to justify his advances through the pretext of love, all the while knowing that his intentions are strictly opportunistic. Alice Aisgill (Simone Signoret), a married French woman ten years his senior, proves Lampton's greatest obstacle to wealth, for he soon finds himself falling in love with her, for real this time. Torn between his affection for Alice and his ambitions towards prosperity and respectability, Lampton must eventually choose between the two, the consequences of his decision leaving an empty void where once there had been a bright, fresh and conscientious young man.

Impeccably shot in crisp black-and-white by Freddie Francis, 'Room at the Top' is a refreshing dose of mature drama, and occasionally an angry, scathing assault on the British class system. Laurence Harvey, in the main role, positively burns with rage as the moral-deprived young businessman, progressively less and less identifiable to the audience as he becomes those whom he despises (indeed, near the film's end, he even goes by the name of his sworn foe, Jack Wales). Simone Signoret, a surprise Oscar-winner that year, is smooth, knowing and assertive, with just a fatal hint of vulnerability, as Harvey's sincere but ultimately hopeless lover. Of the main performers, Heather Sears is least impressive, but her appearance could nonetheless put an end to a nagging question: who voiced the child-actor Martin Stephens in 'Village of the Damned (1960)' and 'The Innocents (1961)?' Though no such dubbing was credited, I realised straight away, without a quiver of uncertainty, that Sears spoke with exactly the same voice – either she dubbed Stephens, or a third-party dubbed the both of them.

This film won an Oscar, as did Simone Signoret for best actress and the screenwriter Neil Paterson for best screenplay. It made a huge hit when it was released, and it had a major social impact in Britain as well. Based on the best-selling novel by John Braine, the film dealt with the aspirations of the working class to rise in the world, and the intimidation they felt from the rich upper middle class, in this case a Yorkshire mill-owner, played with ruthless honesty and typical Yorkshire bluntness by Donald Wolfit. The hero, or I should really say anti-hero, of the story is Joe Lampton, played by Lawrence Harvey. His desire to get on in life is all-consuming, and he is desperate to escape the row cottage in the small Yorkshire mill town where he has grown up with his widowed mother. He was in the RAF in the War, but was only a sergeant, and spent most of the War as a POW. It is 1947 and he has now returned to civilian life and has to decide what to do. So he moves to a larger mill town, which is not an entirely working class location, and gets a job in the offices of the local textile mill. On his very first day, he sees the pretty young daughter of the mill owner and decides he is going to 'get' her, both because he wants her and as a means of advancement. He is brutally frank about wanting to 'marry a million pounds'. He wants to get to the 'top'. Wolfit\s daughter is played by the young Heather Sears. It is a great pity that she did not appear in the sequel film LIFE AT THE TOP (1965, see my next review), and that she was replaced with Jean Simmons, who was not right for the part, and the difference in tone destroyed much of the continuity. Heather Sears was absolutely perfect. She played the daughter as a sweet, dreamy, but spoilt and wilful creature lost in her romantic notions. She is completely dazzled by Larry Harvey and in love with him, and keeps saying to him as things work out for them: 'Isn't it wonderful?' For her, she is living out a romantic dream. But she is far from a passionate creature in the carnal sense, which is essential to the story. For that side of things, Harvey has his own passionate love affair with the woman who is to be the one true love of his life, played by Simone Signoret with overwhelming soulful intensity. Signoret could say more with her bedroom eyes than almost any actress one can think of. You can see her thinking, and what is more, you can see her feeling. That takes some doing in moments without dialogue. She certainly deserved her Oscar. Larry Harvey's performance is wonderful and dominates the film, as indeed it should. The film is magnificently directed by Jack Clayton, and is one of his finest achievements. The cinematography by Ossie Morris is even better than his usual superb standard, with Brian West as operator. I knew (at a later date, not when this was made) so many people connected with this film, not least Larry and Jack. Alas, I never met Signoret. That would have been something. This film is a real classic, powerful, emotional, upsetting, compulsive viewing, and deeply tragic. It is what can be called without hesitation 'the real thing'.

A powerful performance by Laurence Harvey highlights this drama about a young man determined to be successful. Joe Lampton leaves the lower class industrial town of his youth with his sights set on achieving success on his own terms. His thin veneer of braggadocio hides layers of insecurity about his class and blue-collar pedigree.

He determination to wed a naïve girl (Heather Sears)from money is sidetracked by his relationship with an older woman (Simone Signoret). Will his cold calculations determine his future or will he learn that life is about more than status and money?

The strength of Harvey's portrayal borders on scenery chewing, but it is eminently watchable. Fortunately, Sears and Signoret are strong enough to balance his flamboyance, with the aid of Donald Wolfit who plays the father of the would-be bride with an understated power.

Filmed in black and white, "Room at the Top" deserves its six Oscar nominations (and two wins). How much viewers enjoy it depends heavily upon their appreciation for Harvey's character, Joe Lampton.

This movie is about a poor English man who wants to claw his way to the top in the business world. To do this, he insinuates himself to the boss' daughter, while at the same time having an affair with a married woman who is 10 years his senior! Despite his being a sleazebag, of sorts, he has genuine feelings for this older lady and wants to marry her. However, at the same time events around him conspire to prevent this--ultimately leading to tragedy.

The reason I liked this film so much is that despite Lawrence Harvey's character being a scheming jerk, he is not 100% despicable and you can understand a lot of his anger and desire to move up the social scale. Several times during the movie, he meets people who think they are better than him simply by virtue of their family background or position at the company. All these work together to produce a gritty, somewhat sleazy drama that seems plausible and definitely holds your attention.

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.

Room At The Top (1958) -

This is a film that shows just what a bunch of arses British men can/could be with their attitudes towards women.

I personally couldn't see what everyone saw in the lead character, Joe, because he wasn't a very nice man at all and it would be easy to believe him to be violent in any relationship.

His voice/accent was also a bit odd. At times he sounded Scottish or French, but I suppose he was a Jewish, Lithuanian, South African, Londoner? So it must have been hard to sound northern.

And Susan was like a young 'Professor Umbridge' from 'Harry Potter'. It would be easy to imagine her growing up to become an absolute witch that demanded all of his time and again I couldn't see the appeal of her.

As much as I loved Hermione Badley, I think her Oscar nomination seemed a bit daft as her part was so small and only her final few lines were delivered with any strength. Her character was actually one of the more interesting and I would have liked to have seen more of her.

I personally believe that the only reason that this featured on BFI's Top 100 British Films List was because it showed sex for the first time, because the story really had nothing else going for it. It's censorship and scenes of adultery and sexual activity gained it an X Rating at the time.

Although it was a forward thinking film in terms of story, I don't think that it was delivered with much skill from a direction and editorial point of view.

It's only been a few days since I watched this film and already I can't really remember what happened to review it, which in itself says how much it meant to me.

370.98/1000.