This movie was part of the “Angry Young Men” school of post WWII British film. It reflected the dissatisfaction with reduced economic opportunities in the British post-war era and the anxiety over the breakdown of traditional societal norms and class structure.
(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)
Joe Lampton (played by Laurence Harvey) is a working-class young man who has returned from three years in a German POW camp during the war. He leaves the poverty of his hometown of West Riding to find opportunities in the more upscale town of Warnley. He becomes a clerk in the Borough Treasurer’s Office where he meets Charlie Soames who becomes his friend and roommate. And Charlie quickly learns that Joe plans to use his good looks to marry a rich man’s daughter.
Specifically, he finds that Mr. Brown, the local millionaire, has a daughter Susan who would be perfect for the part. She’s young, pretty and susceptible to his charms. Throughout the rest of the movie Joe takes every opportunity to charm Susan. And he’s successful in fascinating her. But her parents and her whole social circle reject his advances categorically and stand in the way of Joe ever spending any time with the girl. They go as far as sending her to France on holiday just to keep them apart.
Meanwhile Joe has himself fallen in love with a married woman. Alice Aisgill (played by Simone Signoret) is a French woman, older than Joe. Her upper-class husband George is steadily unfaithful to her with women that he visits supposedly “on business.” Joe’s working-class sympathies lead him to despise George and he easily falls into an affair with Alice that is conducted simultaneously with his campaign to wed Susan.
Eventually Susan finds a way to escape her parents’ protection and she and Joe wind up in bed together. But Joe finds Susan’s company much less stimulating than Alice’s. Susan’s prattle seems sophomoric and dull compared to his conversations with Alice. Joe discovers that Alice is the woman he wants. He plans to marry her as soon as she can get a divorce from George. But George confronts him and tells him that he’ll never agree to divorce Alice and if she tries to leave him, he’ll blacken their names so badly in the courts that they’ll become pariahs.
And just after this meeting he is summoned by Mr. Brown to a fancy conservative club where he learns that Susan is going to have a child by him. And Mr. Brown has decided to accept him as a son-in-law and bring him into the family business. But the condition is that he must break off his scandalous relationship with Alice.
Joe goes to Alice and tells her of Susan’s pregnancy and the impossibility of Alice and him ever having a life together. And he tells her that he plans to marry Susan and that Alice would never see him again. Alice is devastated. She goes out drinking and we learn afterward that she crashes her car and dies in the wreck. Next morning as news of the impending nuptials between Joe and Susan circulate through the Treasurer’s office and Charlie and his other friends are congratulating him Joe hears of Alice’s horrible death and he goes into shock.
In the next scene Joe has gone on a bender in some dive bar. He has taken up with a woman who’s also quite drunk and when her boyfriend shows up Joe threatens him and scares him off. But later on, this man and his friends find Joe and pummel him into unconsciousness and leave him bleeding in the street. Eventually the next morning Charlie finds Joe and takes him home.
The last scene is Joe and Susan’s wedding ceremony with the priest reciting the vows and Joe, after a perceptible pause, answering, “I will.” As they drive off in the wedding limousine Susan talks about the meaning she found in the ceremony. But she notices that Joe has tears in his eyes so she says, “You really are sentimental, after all.” But he just smiles brokenly as the movie ends.
I always find English movies of this time period a little depressing. And this film is certainly no exception but for all that I thought it had its merits. Despite his mercenary attitude toward Susan, Joe’s working-class sensibilities and the snobbish cruelty of his upper-class persecutors quickly win over the sympathies of the audience. His guilt and contrition over abandoning Alice and her subsequent death are meant to convince us that he has grown and might become a better man. I can’t unreservedly recommend this movie for everyone. But if based on my description it sounds interesting give it a try.