This movie was part of the \u201cAngry Young Men\u201d school of post WWII British film.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
(Spoiler Alert \u2013 Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)<\/strong><\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 He leaves the poverty of his hometown of West Riding to find opportunities in the more upscale town of Warnley.\u00a0 He becomes a clerk in the Borough Treasurer\u2019s Office where he meets Charlie Soames who becomes his friend and roommate.\u00a0 And Charlie quickly learns that Joe plans to use his good looks to marry a rich man\u2019s daughter.<\/p>\n Specifically, he finds that Mr. Brown, the local millionaire, has a daughter Susan who would be perfect for the part.\u00a0 She\u2019s young, pretty and susceptible to his charms.\u00a0 Throughout the rest of the movie Joe takes every opportunity to charm Susan.\u00a0 And he\u2019s successful in fascinating her.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 They go as far as sending her to France on holiday just to keep them apart.<\/p>\n Meanwhile Joe has himself fallen in love with a married woman.\u00a0 Alice Aisgill (played by Simone Signoret) is a French woman, older than Joe.\u00a0 Her upper-class husband George is steadily unfaithful to her with women that he visits supposedly \u201con business.\u201d\u00a0 Joe\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Eventually Susan finds a way to escape her parents\u2019 protection and she and Joe wind up in bed together.\u00a0 But Joe finds Susan\u2019s company much less stimulating than Alice\u2019s.\u00a0 Susan\u2019s prattle seems sophomoric and dull compared to his conversations with Alice.\u00a0 Joe discovers that Alice is the woman he wants.\u00a0 He plans to marry her as soon as she can get a divorce from George.\u00a0 But George confronts him and tells him that he\u2019ll never agree to divorce Alice and if she tries to leave him, he\u2019ll blacken their names so badly in the courts that they\u2019ll become pariahs.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 And Mr. Brown has decided to accept him as a son-in-law and bring him into the family business.\u00a0 But the condition is that he must break off his scandalous relationship with Alice.<\/p>\n Joe goes to Alice and tells her of Susan\u2019s pregnancy and the impossibility of Alice and him ever having a life together.\u00a0 And he tells her that he plans to marry Susan and that Alice would never see him again.\u00a0 Alice is devastated.\u00a0 She goes out drinking and we learn afterward that she crashes her car and dies in the wreck.\u00a0 Next morning as news of the impending nuptials between Joe and Susan circulate through the Treasurer\u2019s office and Charlie and his other friends are congratulating him Joe hears of Alice\u2019s horrible death and he goes into shock.<\/p>\n In the next scene Joe has gone on a bender in some dive bar.\u00a0 He has taken up with a woman who\u2019s also quite drunk and when her boyfriend shows up Joe threatens him and scares him off.\u00a0 But later on, this man and his friends find Joe and pummel him into unconsciousness and leave him bleeding in the street.\u00a0 Eventually the next morning Charlie finds Joe and takes him home.<\/p>\n The last scene is Joe and Susan\u2019s wedding ceremony with the priest reciting the vows and Joe, after a perceptible pause, answering, \u201cI will.\u201d\u00a0 As they drive off in the wedding limousine Susan talks about the meaning she found in the ceremony.\u00a0 But she notices that Joe has tears in his eyes so she says, \u201cYou really are sentimental, after all.”\u00a0 But he just smiles brokenly as the movie ends.<\/p>\n I always find English movies of this time period a little depressing.\u00a0 And this film is certainly no exception but for all that I thought it had its merits.\u00a0 Despite his mercenary attitude toward Susan, Joe\u2019s working-class sensibilities and the snobbish cruelty of his upper-class persecutors quickly win over the sympathies of the audience.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I can\u2019t unreservedly recommend this movie for everyone.\u00a0 But if based on my description it sounds interesting give it a try.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This movie was part of the \u201cAngry Young Men\u201d school of post WWII British film.\u00a0 It reflected the dissatisfaction with reduced economic opportunities in the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[3166,3726,43,38,1355],"class_list":["post-20221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-british-cinema","tag-laurence-harvey","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-reviews"],"yoast_head":"\n