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Life at the Top | |
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Directed by | Ted Kotcheff |
Screenplay by | Mordecai Richler |
Based on | Life at the Top 1962 novel by John Braine |
Produced by | James Woolf |
Starring | Laurence Harvey Jean Simmons Honor Blackman Michael Craig Donald Wolfit |
Cinematography | Oswald Morris |
Edited by | Derek York |
Music by | Richard Addinsell |
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 117 min |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Life at the Top is a 1965 British drama film, a production of Romulus Films released by Columbia Pictures. The screenplay was by Mordecai Richler, based on the 1962 novel Life at the Top by John Braine, and is a sequel to the film Room at the Top (1959). It was directed by Ted Kotcheff and produced by James Woolf, with William Kirby as associate producer. [1] The music score was by Richard Addinsell and the cinematography by Oswald Morris. The film's art director, Edward Marshall, received a 1966 BAFTA Award nomination. [2]
The film stars Laurence Harvey, once again playing Joe Lampton, with Jean Simmons, Honor Blackman and Michael Craig. Four actors reprised their roles from Room at the Top: Harvey, Donald Wolfit, Ambrosine Phillpotts and Allan Cuthbertson.
In Room at the Top , Joe Lampton's escape from his working-class background through his seduction of, and marriage to, the daughter of a wealthy mill owner had been portrayed.
Ten years on, Joe is living the dream of the successful young executive, complete with luxurious suburban house, white S-type Jaguar, and two young children. However, Joe's life is not the dream it appears to be.
Joe's father-in-law, Abe Brown, is the mayor of the town, and mill owner (Illingworths, Thornton Rd, Bradford). To Joe's disapproval, Abe insists on sending Joe's children to a private boarding school. Joe's son is also unhappy about this and when Joe invites the paper-boy in for a cup of tea, his son looks jealously on.
Joe goes to a sherry party with his wife, but would rather be in the pub. The party is in the huge house of his father-in-law. There he meets Norah.
Joe says goodbye to his son at the railway station. Later that night his in-laws, rather than himself, choose which carpet will be in Joe's house.
Joe no longer makes love to his wife and she is having an affair with Joe's married friend.
Joe goes to the Savoy Hotel in London with his friend for lunch with Tiffield. After Tiffield leaves they go to a strip show and the friend discusses dodgy business deals.
Joe meets George Aisgill and they discuss how Joe caused the death of his wife, but he has a new love - Norah.
Joe goes home wearing a Huckleberry Hound mask and finds signs of another man being in the house. He hears the other man in the bedroom with his wife but does not enter. He is sitting downstairs when they come down for a drink.
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Another thoroughly mean-spirited film of a kind which has been taking root in the British cinema over the past few years. ... This is social criticism run down and gone to seed. ... Dramatically speaking, the film is concocted out of updated versions of the oldest clichés of melodrama. ... The film is even further – and centrally – flawed by its ambiguous attitude to Joe himself. His vague stirrings of conscience and self-awareness are quickly drowned as soon as his own interests are at stake; but the film can't resist trying to have its cake and eat it, so that for the first half, his budding awareness of the hollowness of his way of life is allowed to assume almost heroic proportions, as though he really were crusading against the corruption and pretensions of his milieu. Ted Kotcheff, starting off inauspiciously with a couple of ugly dramatic zooms as Abe Brown presides over his boardroom, directs with heavy reliance on TV-style close shots, and the brusque editing style looks like a desperate attempt to give the film some sort of momentum. Laurence Harvey and Jean Simmons do their best with thankless roles, Donald Wolfit overacts enthusiastically, and the rest of the cast are inconspicuous, except for a marvellously languid Margaret Johnston, who relishes one wonderfully bitchy scene in which, aware that Susan has been sleeping with her husband, she tears the poor girl to pieces over the cocktail glasses." [3]
Room at the Top is a 1959 British drama film based on the 1957 novel by John Braine. It was adapted by Neil Paterson, directed by Jack Clayton, and produced by John and James Woolf. The film stars Laurence Harvey, Simone Signoret, Heather Sears, Donald Wolfit, Donald Houston, and Hermione Baddeley.
Laurence Harvey was a Lithuanian-born actor and film director. He was born to Lithuanian Jewish parents and emigrated to South Africa at an early age, before later settling in the United Kingdom after World War II. In a career that spanned a quarter of a century, Harvey appeared in stage, film and television productions primarily in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Sir Donald Wolfit, CBE was an English actor-manager, known for his touring productions of Shakespeare. He was especially renowned for his portrayal of King Lear.
John Gerard Braine was an English novelist. Braine is usually listed among the angry young men, a loosely defined group of English writers who emerged on the literary scene in the 1950s.
Philippe Noiret was a French film actor.
Room at the Top is a novel by John Braine, first published in the United Kingdom by Eyre & Spottiswoode in 1957, about an ambitious young working-class man who juggles sexual relationships with two middle-class women in a northern town in post-war England.
Life At The Top is the third novel by the English author John Braine, first published in the UK by Eyre & Spottiswoode and in the US by Houghton Mifflin & Co. in 1962. It continues the story of the life and difficulties of Joe Lampton, an ambitious young man of humble origins. A 1965 film adaptation of the novel was made starring Laurence Harvey.
The Charge of the Light Brigade is a 1968 British DeLuxe Color satirical war film made by Woodfall Film Productions and distributed by United Artists, depicting parts of the Crimean War and the eponymous charge. It was directed by Tony Richardson and produced by Neil Hartley. Its animated credits and linking passages were created by Richard Williams, drawing on the satirical use of Victorian-era jingoistic images. This film features Richardson's daughters Natasha and Joely in their debuts.
Heather Christine Sears was a British stage and screen actress.
The Wildcats of St Trinian's is the fifth British comedy film set in the fictional St Trinian's School. Directed by Frank Launder, it was released in 1980.
The 12th British Academy Film Awards, given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 1959, honoured the best films of 1958.
The Running Man is a 1963 British-American neo noir drama film directed by Carol Reed, starring Laurence Harvey as a man who fakes his own death in a glider accident, then runs into trouble when an insurance investigator starts taking a close interest. It was adapted by screenwriter John Mortimer from the 1961 novel The Ballad of the Running Man by Shelley Smith.
The Truth About Women is a 1957 British comedy film directed by Muriel Box and starring Laurence Harvey, Julie Harris, Mai Zetterling and Diane Cilento.
Man at the Top is a 1973 British drama film directed by Mike Vardy and starring Kenneth Haigh, spun off from the television series Man at the Top, which itself was inspired by the 1959 film Room at the Top and its 1965 sequel Life at the Top.
Man at the Top was a British drama television series that originally aired on ITV, lasting for 23 episodes between 1970 and 1972. The series depicted the character of Joe Lampton, the protagonist of John Braine's novels Room at the Top (1957) and Life at the Top (1962), and of the films based on those novels. In 1973, a spin-off film from the series, Man at the Top, was released.
Operation Bullshine is a 1959 British colour comedy film directed by Gilbert Gunn and starring Donald Sinden, Barbara Murray and Carole Lesley. The working title of the film was Girls in Arms that features as a marching song in the film. Gunn had filmed Girls at Sea the previous year. The new title, based on an American euphemism for a very British word with the same meaning (bullshite), comes from the frenzied activity preparing for their brigadier's surprise inspection. The film features 1956 Olympic gold medallist Judy Grinham as a physical training instructor.
Ambrosine Phillpotts was a British actress of theatre, TV, radio and film. The Times wrote, "She was one of the last great stage aristocrats, a stylish comedienne best known for playing on stage and screen a succession of increasingly 'grandes dames' with an endearing mixture of Edwardian snobbery and eccentric absent-mindedness".
Room at the Top is a 2012 BBC television adaptation by Amanda Coe of John Braine's 1957 novel of the same name, with a cast led by Matthew McNulty, Maxine Peake and Jenna Coleman, and directed by Aisling Walsh.
The Dresser is a 1980 West End and Broadway play by Ronald Harwood, which tells the story of an aging actor's personal assistant, who struggles to keep his charge's life together.
Expresso Bongo is a 1959 British drama musical film directed by Val Guest, shot in uncredited black & white Dyaliscope and starring Laurence Harvey, Cliff Richard, and Yolande Donlan. It is adapted from the stage musical of the same name, which was first produced on the stage at the Saville Theatre, London, on 23 April 1958.