To celebrate the release of Room at the Top, on Blu-Ray, DVD and Digital from 11th March, we are giving away Blu-Rays to 2 lucky winners!
Based on the best-selling novel by John Braine, Room At The Top is Jack Clayton’s debut feature and is one of the earliest examples of the ‘Kitchen Sink Drama’ that helped pave the way for the incoming ‘British New Wave’ of film-makers. Featuring the first open reference to sex as well as the earliest depiction of adultery in a British film, it was a controversial film for the era and was initially refused a certificate by the censors before eventually securing an “X” certificate.
Starring Laurence Harvey, Simone Signoret, Heather Sears and Donald Wolfit, the film went on to become a major box-office success and opened the floodgates for more adult orientated movies.
The film also gained widespread critical acclaim and was nominated for six Academy Awards,...
Based on the best-selling novel by John Braine, Room At The Top is Jack Clayton’s debut feature and is one of the earliest examples of the ‘Kitchen Sink Drama’ that helped pave the way for the incoming ‘British New Wave’ of film-makers. Featuring the first open reference to sex as well as the earliest depiction of adultery in a British film, it was a controversial film for the era and was initially refused a certificate by the censors before eventually securing an “X” certificate.
Starring Laurence Harvey, Simone Signoret, Heather Sears and Donald Wolfit, the film went on to become a major box-office success and opened the floodgates for more adult orientated movies.
The film also gained widespread critical acclaim and was nominated for six Academy Awards,...
- 3/9/2024
- by Competitions
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
A rerelease of the John Braine novel adaptation is no masterpiece but sits alongside films such as Lucky Jim and Billy Liar in its depiction of class conflict and young male frustration
“Joe … be gentle with me … ” It’s easy to imagine this demure invitation to premarital sex getting some ribald hooting in British cinemas in 1959. Jack Clayton’s multi-Oscar-winning film was adapted by Neil Paterson from John Braine’s moody, zeitgeisty bestseller, and it’s rereleased now with the traditional trigger warning about offensive and outdated attitudes. Now, that could mean pretty much everything about this film – but without doubt it is specifically aimed at Hermione Baddeley praising the hero’s manliness and grimacing: “Too many pansies about these days … ”
Room at the Top gave us Laurence Harvey as Joe Lampton, the smouldering, ambitious young working-class Yorkshireman with a chip on his shoulder and a burning desire to get on,...
“Joe … be gentle with me … ” It’s easy to imagine this demure invitation to premarital sex getting some ribald hooting in British cinemas in 1959. Jack Clayton’s multi-Oscar-winning film was adapted by Neil Paterson from John Braine’s moody, zeitgeisty bestseller, and it’s rereleased now with the traditional trigger warning about offensive and outdated attitudes. Now, that could mean pretty much everything about this film – but without doubt it is specifically aimed at Hermione Baddeley praising the hero’s manliness and grimacing: “Too many pansies about these days … ”
Room at the Top gave us Laurence Harvey as Joe Lampton, the smouldering, ambitious young working-class Yorkshireman with a chip on his shoulder and a burning desire to get on,...
- 3/6/2024
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Jenna Coleman is one of the most talented and charming actresses working in the film and TV industry. The English actress made her TV debut with the 2005 British soap opera Emmerdale, and her first feature film role was a very small one but it was in Captain America: First Avenger. She recently starred in the adaptation of Neil Gaiman‘s DC comics The Sandman as Johanna Constantine and she is currently starring in the Prime Vide thriller series Wilderness. So, if you also love Coleman’s performances here are the 10 best movies and TV shows starring Jenna Coleman that should be on your watchlist.
10. Room at the Top (Not Available in the US) Credit – BBC
Synopsis: Room At The Top is a drama series based on John Braine’s classic book about Joe Lampton, a young man on the make in 1940’s Yorkshire.
9. Dancing on the Edge (Tubi & Prime Video...
10. Room at the Top (Not Available in the US) Credit – BBC
Synopsis: Room At The Top is a drama series based on John Braine’s classic book about Joe Lampton, a young man on the make in 1940’s Yorkshire.
9. Dancing on the Edge (Tubi & Prime Video...
- 9/11/2023
- by Kulwant Singh
- Cinema Blind
One of the first ‘kitchen sink realist’ films of the British New Wave is also one of the best English films ever — believable, absorbing, and emotionally moving. The adaptation of John Braine’s novel launched Laurence Harvey as a major star, and English films were suddenly touted as being just as adult as their continental counterparts. It attracted a bushel of awards, especially for the luminous Simone Signoret. Unlike the average Angry Young Man, Joe Lampton’s struggle feels universal — bad things happen when ambition seeks a way through the class ceiling, ‘to get to the money,’ as says Donald Wolfit’s character.
Room at the Top
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1959 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 115 min. / Street Date January 14, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Laurence Harvey, Simone Signoret, Heather Sears, Ambrosine Phillpotts, Donald Wolfit, Donald Houston, Hermione Baddeley, Allan Cuthbertson, Raymond Huntley, John Westbrook, Richard Pasco, Ian Hendry, April Olrich,...
Room at the Top
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1959 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 115 min. / Street Date January 14, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Laurence Harvey, Simone Signoret, Heather Sears, Ambrosine Phillpotts, Donald Wolfit, Donald Houston, Hermione Baddeley, Allan Cuthbertson, Raymond Huntley, John Westbrook, Richard Pasco, Ian Hendry, April Olrich,...
- 1/28/2020
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
In the fall of ‘64, while Hollywood was gently satirizing the battle of the sexes with Send Me No Flowers and What a Way to Go!, Europe was at work in the trenches, peppering art houses with piercing dramas like François Truffaut‘s The Soft Skin and André Cayatte’s dual release, Anatomy of a Marriage: My Nights With Francoise and My Days with Jean-Marc (“One Ticket Admits You to Both Theaters”). Perhaps most unforgiving of all was Jack Clayton’s The Pumpkin Eater starring Anne Bancroft, Peter Finch and James Mason.
Bancroft plays Jo Armitage, a fragile beauty who responds to her husband’s infidelities by getting pregnant. Finch is Jake, a screenwriter whose recent success has emboldened him to walk on the wild side thereby provoking Jo to over-crowd the nursery. Mason is, once again, the odd man out, the deceptively genial husband of one of Jake’s conquests.
Bancroft plays Jo Armitage, a fragile beauty who responds to her husband’s infidelities by getting pregnant. Finch is Jake, a screenwriter whose recent success has emboldened him to walk on the wild side thereby provoking Jo to over-crowd the nursery. Mason is, once again, the odd man out, the deceptively genial husband of one of Jake’s conquests.
- 12/17/2019
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
'Saint Joan': Constance Cummings as the George Bernard Shaw heroine. Constance Cummings on stage: From sex-change farce and Emma Bovary to Juliet and 'Saint Joan' (See previous post: “Constance Cummings: Frank Capra, Mae West and Columbia Lawsuit.”) In the mid-1930s, Constance Cummings landed the title roles in two of husband Benn W. Levy's stage adaptations: Levy and Hubert Griffith's Young Madame Conti (1936), starring Cummings as a demimondaine who falls in love with a villainous character. She ends up killing him – or does she? Adapted from Bruno Frank's German-language original, Young Madame Conti was presented on both sides of the Atlantic; on Broadway, it had a brief run in spring 1937 at the Music Box Theatre. Based on the Gustave Flaubert novel, the Theatre Guild-produced Madame Bovary (1937) was staged in late fall at Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre. Referring to the London production of Young Madame Conti, The...
- 11/10/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Writer whose novels signalled a sea-change in British literature
Stan Barstow, who has died aged 83, belonged to a generation of working-class writers who became famous in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Like his peers Alan Sillitoe, John Braine, David Storey and Keith Waterhouse, he was born in the depression years of the interwar period and flowered as a novelist in the booming welfare state of postwar Britain. Barstow and his fellow, primarily northern, writers were products of this remarkable transformation in the social landscape of Britain, and their creativity was fuelled by the opportunities and anxieties that such an enormous process of change inevitably generated.
Barstow arrived on the literary scene in 1960 with his first published novel, A Kind of Loving. An unsentimental and unpatronising portrayal of an unhappy marriage, it struck a new note of sombre and sensitive realism. He was riding the crest of a wave: Braine's...
Stan Barstow, who has died aged 83, belonged to a generation of working-class writers who became famous in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Like his peers Alan Sillitoe, John Braine, David Storey and Keith Waterhouse, he was born in the depression years of the interwar period and flowered as a novelist in the booming welfare state of postwar Britain. Barstow and his fellow, primarily northern, writers were products of this remarkable transformation in the social landscape of Britain, and their creativity was fuelled by the opportunities and anxieties that such an enormous process of change inevitably generated.
Barstow arrived on the literary scene in 1960 with his first published novel, A Kind of Loving. An unsentimental and unpatronising portrayal of an unhappy marriage, it struck a new note of sombre and sensitive realism. He was riding the crest of a wave: Braine's...
- 8/2/2011
- The Guardian - Film News
Copyright law can be a minefield – as the BBC found out over Room at the Top
The sudden removal from the BBC4 schedule last week of a new dramatisation of John Braine's novel Room at the Top, following a dispute over whether the broadcast rights had been secured, is an example of the worst luck a production can have. To disappointed viewers, it may also have seemed spectacularly incompetent. Surely they should have known if the book was theirs to film or not?
The answer is: not necessarily. While we don't know the exact details in this case, the programme makers seem to have suffered a version of the phone call every producer in every medium quietly dreads. Every year, movies are delayed and theatre, TV and radio productions abandoned because of a copyright claim from a third party who claims to have signed an exclusive deal. In the...
The sudden removal from the BBC4 schedule last week of a new dramatisation of John Braine's novel Room at the Top, following a dispute over whether the broadcast rights had been secured, is an example of the worst luck a production can have. To disappointed viewers, it may also have seemed spectacularly incompetent. Surely they should have known if the book was theirs to film or not?
The answer is: not necessarily. While we don't know the exact details in this case, the programme makers seem to have suffered a version of the phone call every producer in every medium quietly dreads. Every year, movies are delayed and theatre, TV and radio productions abandoned because of a copyright claim from a third party who claims to have signed an exclusive deal. In the...
- 4/11/2011
- by Mark Lawson
- The Guardian - Film News
The BBC has postponed airing Room At The Top at the last minute due to a "contractual issue". Maxine Peake and Matthew McNulty star in the latest two-part adaptation of the 1950s novel about the rise of amorous Joe Lampton, who is willing to do anything to get to the top. According to the Daily Mail, the last-minute withdrawal of the show was down to a legal challenge. The John Braine-penned story was previously turned into a film in 1957, while Thames produced spinoff comedy series Man At The Top in the 1970s. Braine's family and widow approved the BBC adaptation, but (more)...
- 4/8/2011
- by By Alex Fletcher
- Digital Spy
Every week, Film School Rejects presents a movie that was made before you were born and tells you why you should like it. This week, Old Ass Movies presents: Room at the Top (1959) The class wars concept has always been handled in a not-so-subtle way by manipulative and creative minds alike. In the latters' case there are probably two ways to do it. You either use your characters as toy soldiers to pinpoint some didactic pre-determined class-conscious moral or use the stereotypes that go with that to establish your characters' starting position and let them develop from there. Just like Jack Clayton did back in 1959 in his first feature film, Room at the Top, based on a novel by John Braine. It's the rags-to-riches story of Joe Lampton (Laurence Harvey), a working class bloke and WWII vet who gets a chance to escape his miserable hometown of Dufton and work as a civil servant in a richer...
- 6/14/2009
- by Loukas Tsouknidas
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
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