Room at the Top Movie Review
Laurence Harvey (1928–73) is such a snide cad. He could have been the new George Sanders, except he didn't outlive him by very long. As Joe Lampton, he is an opportunistic slime, heartlessly seducing a rich man's daughter to advance himself. The woman Joe really wants is Alice (Simone Signoret, 1921–85), unhappily married to a twit named George Aisgill (Allan Cuthbertson, 1920–88). Why Alice wants a transparent hustler like Joe is a mystery, but want him she does and she is devastated when he leaves her to marry well. Joe is beaten brutally before the so-called “happy ending,” actually a grim resignation to a much grimmer fate, since his bride Susan (Heather Sears, 1935–94) knows that they can never be happy. There was a follow-up film in 1965: Joe Lampton, his in-laws, and George Aisgill are all back in Life at the Top, but Jean Simmons has replaced Heather Sears and Honor Blackman plays Joe's new sexual diversion when he isn't playing local politics. The stakes had been reduced, because Lampton had already sold his soul and his humanity in the first film. By 1973's Man at the Top, Kenneth Haigh was Joe Lampton, dealing with unfamiliar characters in another game altogether. What made Room at the Top so special was the moral tension between Joe and Alice as each sees a different sort of life reflected in the other's eyes. When Simone Signoret won the Best Actress Oscar, it would be 37 years before another French actress (Juliette Binoche for The English Patient) would bring home the Academy Award. Based on the novel by John Braine.
1959 118m/B GB Laurence Harvey, Simone Signoret, Heather Sears, Hermione Baddeley, Avril Ungar, Donald Wolfit, Wendy Craig, Allan Cuthbertson, Ian Hendry, Donald Houston, Raymond Huntley, Miriam Karlin, Wilfred Lawson, Richard Pasco, Mary Peach, Prunella Scales, Beatrice Varley, John West-brook; D: Jack Clayton; W: Neil Paterson; C: Freddie Francis; M: Mario Nascimbene. Academy Awards ‘59: Best Actress (Signoret), Best Adapted Screenplay; British Academy Awards ‘58: Best Actress (Signoret), Best Film; Cannes Film Festival ‘59: Best Actress (Signoret); Nominations: Academy Awards ‘59: Best Actor (Harvey), Best Director (Clayton), Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Baddeley). VHS