Daily Archives: December 29, 2016

Room at the Top
Directed by Jack Clayton
Written by Neil Paterson from a novel by John Baine
1959/UK
Romulus Films/Remus
First viewing/FilmStruck

[box] Susan Brown:  Darling, you’re crying! I believe you really are sentimental after all.[/box]

This is a beautifully shot film with perhaps Lawrence Harvey’s best performance and an Oscar-winning turn by Simone Signoret.

Joe Lampton (Harvey) has worked himself up from his depressing home town and working class origins through education and service in the RAF, which he mostly spent at a POW camp. He gets himself a position as an accountant with the Town Council of a less depressing factory town.  Joe has dreams of wealth and status.  He is well aware that he is a babe magnet and focusses his efforts on Susan Brown, the naive single daughter of the richest man in town.  Her family and friends have nothing but contempt for Joe and his origins and try hard to separate the two.

In the meantime, Joe begins an affair with an older married woman, Alice Aisgill (Signoret).  Poor Alice has one of the worst husbands in movies and what begins as a “loving friendship” with Joe becomes love for her and, more gradually, for him.  Joe’s inability to shed his dreams of a home at The Top ends in tragedy for both of the lovers.  With Hermione Baddeley as Alice’s friend.

This is a hard-hitting entry in the British Angry-Young-Man genre prevalent at the time.  Joe is less angry than deluded and confused however.  I generally find Harvey to be wooden but here he is fairly good and does well with a Northern working class accent.  Signoret is always magical and deserved her award in a very strong year for actresses.  She can say so much with her face and eyes.  The movie is also brilliantly lit and shot.  Recommended.

Room at the Top won Academy Awards for Best Actress (Signoret) and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Picture; Best Actor (Harvey); Best Supporting Actress (Baddely) and Best Director.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XbD27eSNkg

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Day of the Outlaw
Directed by Andre de Toth
Written by Phillip Yordan from a novel by Lee E. Wells
1959/USA
Security Pictures
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Blaise Starrett: The trail ends in this town. There’s no place to go but back.

Jack Bruhn: The trail back is closed.[/box]

I love me some Robert Ryan but Burl Ives steals this movie out from under him.

Blaise Starrett (Ryan) is a cattleman who has lived in Montana for 20 years.  He spend much of that time chasing bad men out of the area.  Now homesteaders have moved in and bought chicken-wire fences to keep his cattle off their farms.  Starrett has murder on his mind.  His first victim is slated to be Hal Crane, whose wife (Tina Louise) just happens to be Starrett’s lover.  She begs him to spare her husband to no avail.

Fortuitously Jack Bruhn (Ives), a mean former Union army captain, arrives with his gang of even meaner hombres, and confiscates every gun.  Bruhn has suffered a wound.  The local vet tries to disguise the fact that he will very likely die from it from the men who are held back from rape and drunken revels only by Bruhn’s orders.  Will Starrett or Bruhn prevail and what will be the outcome for the town?  With David Nelson as the youngest of the outlaws.

This is a solid Western with some nice vistas of snowy landscapes.  Some of the dialog comes off as stilted but Ives is completely wonderful in it and Ryan isn’t bad himself.

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