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.
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.