Room at the Top (1959)

A really bitter pill of a movie, "Room at the Top" presents the world as a place full of those who trod on people to get ahead and those who get trod upon.There's not much room for anyone else, the film suggests, and the film's dreary visual style matches its tone. Everything looks equally bleak, both the cheap rooms that serve as locations for trysts and the swanky clubs and homes of the rich.Laurence Harvey plays nasty jerk who leaves a trail of hurt women wherever he goes and whose comeuppance comes at the sake of one dead woman and another who he's only marrying because he gets her pregnant. Simone Signoret plays an older woman who falls hard for him and tries to convince him, unsuccessfully, to forget about getting ahead and instead do what will make him happy. It's a solid kitchen sink drama, but a deeply depressing one."Room at the Top" made a big impact on American audiences and garnered two Oscars in 1959: Best Actress (Signoret) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Neil Paterson), with that win becoming the only film to stop juggernaut "Ben-Hur" from making a clean sweep of that year's Oscars. It also snagged nominations for Best Picture, Best Director (Jack Clayton), Best Actor (Harvey), and Best Supporting Actress, for Hermione Baddelley's teensy-weensy performance as best friend to Signoret. Indeed, I believe Baddelley's performance is the shortest to ever be nominated for an Oscar, and it's a testament to how much the movie community liked this film that she snuck in at all.Grade: B+

The unusual depth and range in the love between Alice (Simone Signoret) and Joe (Laurence Harvey) are what takes "The Room at the Top," to another level. However, this almost classic film doesn't always rise above its flaws. The truth is that Signoret is consistently convincing in her role, and Harvey is not. His biggest problem is his two-faced persona. He is the young, naive, rustic in one scene, and the older, authoritative, sophisticate in the next. He shifts between these two types more often than he switches accents. And his voice seems to follow the same pattern, so mellow when a yokel, so deep and masculine when a convincing dominant.This convenient inconsistency seems most apparent in his scenes with Susan Brown, where one sometimes gets the impression he is reading lines from a children's play, and yet at other times, he's the worldly older lover who cannot be bothered with such a vapid and square youth. His age seems to veer from 21 to 33, and back again, in according to the scene's mode. Unlike Signoret, Harvey doesn't adjust to the script's unevenness. He can be a faltering innocent with Alice or he can as likely be her suave superior. His juvenile jealous tirade over Alice's artist model experience is one of several examples of his character deviations. His venom here makes Mr Brown, the villainous capitalist, seem both relatively mild and complex. However, it's true that when the love scenes with Alice move beyond the literary, Harvey does achieve remarkable acting heights. Whether Simone Signoret's ability to be more than a match for her scripted lines has been transferred to him, or because she, in her first-class artistry, has covered for him, is hard to tell but, in the end, he towers, and the movie soars, despite his and its letdowns.

It is very easy for me to overlook films such as Room at the Top because I was always reading similar books at school and watching kitchen sink dramas all the time as a kid.Yet this was one of the films that heralded the kitchen sink dramas in British cinema, the naturalistic films set in working class towns. It has a bitter bite as men who fought in the war still faced up to the class divide.Joe Lampton (Laurence Harvey) arrives in a provincial Yorkshire city such as Bradford with a secure job in the council's accounts department. Joe who was a prisoner of war is determined to succeed and does not lack in confidence. In his sights is young, vulnerable Susan Brown (Heather Sears), daughter of the local businessman, Mr Brown (Donald Wolfit) who like Susan's snooty boyfriend is all too aware of this social climber.While Susan is sent abroad to be kept away from Joe's clutches, he turns for solace to Alice Aisgill (Simone Signoret) who he met at a local theatrical club when he was pursuing Susan. Alice is an older married woman from France, still sensual but unhappily married to her husband who is also cheating on her.Joe thinking that Susan and her riches are outside his grasp falls in love with Alice attracted to her European sensibilities, but divorcing her husband is not easy and then Joe finds Alice is pregnant and her family want a quick wedding.This is a tempestuous drama helped by Signoret's layered performance oozing sexuality as well as vulnerability. Harvey also gives a good performance, wanting to get to the top but conflicted in pursuing a girl for her wealth and a woman whom understands him.

Much has been said about Simone Signorets's magnificence here, but I feel compelled to add my own voice to the mix, so astonished & moved was I by her performance. I want to pay homage to a particular scene. She's been blowing, sheathing herself, in gorgeous plumes of smoke throughout the film, but at a climactic moment, delivers these lines:"No--no, I don't want to smoke, and I don't want to drink. Because cigarettes and drink--they dull you. I want every minute of these four days. And I want them...sharp...and clear." Prosaic lines, in and of themselves. Listen to, and watch, an artist at work here, illuminating the essence of naked, fragile, beautiful humanity. Thank you, Ms. Signoret.