| Room at the Top | |
|---|---|
 Original British 1959quad size film poster | |
| Directed by | Jack Clayton |
| Screenplay by | Neil Paterson |
| Based on | Room at the Top 1957 novel byJohn Braine |
| Produced by | John Woolf James Woolf |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Freddie Francis |
| Edited by | Ralph Kemplen |
| Music by | Mario Nascimbene |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | British Lion Films |
Release date |
|
Running time | 115 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | £280,000[1] or £231,387[2][3] |
| Box office | $2,400,000 (US)[4] |
Room at the Top is a 1958Britishdrama film based onthe 1957 novel byJohn Braine. It was adapted byNeil Paterson (with uncredited work byMordecai Richler), directed byJack Clayton (his feature-length debut), and produced byJohn and James Woolf. The film starsLaurence Harvey,Simone Signoret,Heather Sears,Donald Wolfit,Donald Houston, andHermione Baddeley.
The film was widely lauded, and it was nominated for sixAcademy Awards, winning two:Best Actress (Signoret) andBest Adapted Screenplay (Paterson). Its other nominations at the32nd Academy Awards were forBest Picture,Best Director (Clayton),Best Actor (Harvey), andBest Supporting Actress (Baddeley).[5] Baddeley's performance, consisting of 2 minutes and 19 seconds of screen time, is the shortest ever to be nominated for an acting Oscar.[6]
Soon after the Second World War, in theWest Riding of Yorkshire, England, Joe Lampton, an ambitious young man, moves from his hometown, the dreary factory town of Dufton, to the somewhat larger town of Warnley to assume a secure but poorly paid and dead-end post in the Borough Treasurer's Department. Determined to get ahead, and ignoring the warnings of his colleague and flatmate Charlie Soames, he pursues Susan Brown, the daughter of a local industrial magnate. She has been dating wealthy Jack Wales but Joe is able to charm her. Mr and Mrs Brown attempt to frustrate Joe's social climbing by persuading Joe's boss to encourage him to pursue a woman of his own class; getting him a job offer back in Dufton, which he refuses when he discovers the machination; and sending Susan on a trip abroad, but Susan remains smitten.
While pursuing Susan, Joe continues to see Alice Aisgill, an unhappily married Frenchwoman ten years his senior who came to England as a teacher a decade earlier and married George Aisgill, a haughty and abusive upper-middle class Englishman who is now having numerous affairs. Joe thinks he is just killing time with Alice and Alice says they can just be "loving friends". Their feelings for each other begin to turn into something more and Joe starts to lose interest in his pursuit of Susan. The relationship is passionate, tempestuous and after a particularly heated argument, Joe switches his focus back to Susan. He manages to take her virginity but is unsatisfied and finds himself drawn back to Alice.
Joe and Alice go away on a short holiday and Alice is overjoyed that Joe seems to have decided to end his quest for wealth and social status in favour of simply being happy with himself and with her. They decide she will ask for a divorce when she gets home but when she does, George refuses and declares he will ruin Joe and Alice, both socially and financially, if their relationship continues. While Joe is brooding over this, Mr Brown delivers the news that Susan is pregnant and that he expects Joe to stop seeing Alice and marry Susan, in which case Joe can come to work for him at a generous salary.
Seeing no way around his obstacles to a relationship with Alice, Joe tells her that he is going to marry Susan. Heartbroken, Alice gets drunk in a pub and the next morning, while his co-workers are celebrating his engagement, Joe hears that she drove her car off a cliff to which she and he used to go together and died slowly over the course of several hours. Devastated, Joe leaves the office and wanders to the flat where he and Alice had their trysts but Alice's friend Elspeth, who owns the flat, drives him away by screaming at him and blaming him for Alice's death.
Joe goes to a pub on the waterfront, where a woman named Mavis comes on to him because he is well-dressed. Although he is very drunk and does not seem very interested in her (he calls her Alice), Joe keeps a man from taking Mavis away against her will. When Joe is alone, the man and some of his friends beat Joe unconscious. In the morning, Charlie finds Joe lying in the street with a battered face but Joe's only concern is his guilt over what he feels he led Alice to do.
A short time later, Joe and Susan get married. With a rich wife and high-paying job, he has got everything he thought he wanted. As they are driven away after the wedding, Susan's effusive praise of the ceremony is cut short when she notices that there are tears in Joe's eyes, which she misinterprets by saying "I believe you really are sentimental after all".
There are some differences between Braine's novel and the film. For one, Joe's friend Charlie Soames is a friend from his hometown of Dufton in the novel, whereas, in the film, he meets Charlie in Warnley (which is called Warley in the book). Also, in the book, more is made of Joe's lodging at the Thompsons', which, in the novel, he arranged before his arrival in Warley (in the film, Charlie arranges it soon after they meet): it is through his association with the Thompsons that Joe is able to gain entry to a higher social circle than that to which he had previously had access, and Mrs Thompson's room is noted as being at "the top" of Warley geographically, which serves as a metaphor for Joe's social-climbing.
Producer James Woolf bought the film rights toBraine's novel, originally intending to castStewart Granger as Joe andJean Simmons as Susan.Vivien Leigh was originally offered the part of Alice.[7] Woolf hiredClayton as director after seeingThe Bespoke Overcoat,[1] anAcademy Award-winning short film that was produced and distributed by companies founded by theWoolf brothers.
For the production, in addition to filming on sets atShepperton Studios inSurrey, there was extensivelocation-shooting inHalifax,Yorkshire, which stood in for the fictional towns of Warnley and Dufton. Greystones, a large mansion in theSavile Park area of Halifax, was used as the location for exterior scenes of the Brown family mansion;Halifax railway station doubled as Warnley Station in the film; andHalifax Town Hall was used as the Warnley Town Hall. The wedding was filmed at All Souls church, Boothtown, Halifax. Some scenes were also filmed inBradford, notably the one in which Joe travels on a bus and spots Susan in a lingerie shop and those outside the amateur dramatics theatre.
Freddie Francis says John Woolf wanted to fire Francis during filming but Clayton refused.[8]
The film was critically acclaimed.[9] Reviewing the movie forThe New York Times,Abraham Weiler praised Braine's novel, which he compared favourably toJohn Osborne'sLook Back in Anger, and noted the depth of Harvey's, Signoret's, and Sears's portrayals, concluding that the movie "may be basically cheerless and somber, but it has a strikingly effective view."[10]
Room at the Top marked the beginning of Jack Clayton's career as an important director. It was the third most popular film at the British box office in 1959 (afterCarry On Nurse andInn of the Sixth Happiness),[11] grossing $700,000.[12]
Room at the Top is seen as the first of theBritish New Wave ofkitchen-sink-realism film dramas.[13] It was followed by a sequel in 1965 titledLife at the Top.
