Look Back in Anger
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Movie Reviews of Look Back in Anger
Movie Review: Important to see
Summary: 4 Stars
Despite strong acting on the part of all, I didn't think that the film adaptation was entirely successful, due to the script and direction. It remains a filmed play. Burton being always so angry doesn't ring true. But the film remains something important to see - and see again. In comparison with the majority of films coming out today, the films of the '60s had something to say and the acting and writing in general were superior.Movie Review: Gary Raymond
Summary: 4 Stars
The standout for me was this underrated handsome Brit who later wound up on "Rat Patrol" as Sgt. Moffitt. He plays Porter's pal who bears the anger and trumpet outbursts.
Nice period piece. Always good to watch Claire Bloom,, too.
Movie Review: From a real Osborne fan
Summary: 3 Stars
First, one of the other reviews for this film seems to be stating that Burton played Jimmy Porter on stage. This is not true. Osborne's autobiography describes Burton as needing a serious career boost after his previous toga films had gotten him nowhere (though, still, Osborne then says it was Burton's name that got the film financed). Burton took on the film for very little money (and, yes, he is too old for the part.) Mary Ure is the only actor from the stage production. (And at this late date it seems a great loss Alan Bates didn't reprise Cliff in the film.) My thanks to the reviewer who mentioned Pauline Kael's review. It certainly makes me reconsider how much power the film had in its time. But still everyone seems to be missing the point of the story. It isn't a conventional triangle. The play greatly upset the establishment in its day because it is an violent assault on class and cultural issues of the time. Jimmy is not a working-class hero. Kenneth Tynan described him as part of the "non-U intelligensia" but this is wrong. The film mentions, though perhaps doesn't make clear, that Jimmy has been to college, a very mediocre college. His working a sweets barrel is part of his rejection of the social order. But it is his marriage that is the central class conflict, as his wife, Alison, is from a very good family, father an old soldier returned from India, brother at Sandhurst, surely some day an MP. Her family instantly rejected Jimmy, and Jimmy resents Alison's inability to decisively choose sides, hates her for even writing letters to her mother. Alison believes Jimmy decided to marry her only after her parents rejected him. In the scheme of the play it is Cliff who is working class, Alison who is ruling class, and Jimmy in-between raging at the world. His rage, his need for a dust-up, is his response to a collapsing England, an England determined to be static, dead. The movie begins in a jazz club, which was wrongheaded, since the central image of a stiffling Sunday morning reading the papers (with no church attendance) is so important to the play. Jimmy wants to eat more and shout more and love more than the world around him affords him. A previous reviewer states Osborne gives us some pop psychology to explain Jimmy Jimmy, when a boy, watches his father die but one thing Osborne should never be accused of is being faddish. The point is that Jimmy's father died upon returning from fighting in Spain, dying for a cause, while his mother didn't care. It explains Jimmy's sense that there is no cause to fight for. Also it has left Jimmy a deep belief in honoring the dead, and this, in turn, causes him to feel Alison betrays him when she fails to appear at the funeral for Ma Tanner, his surrogate mother, the woman who bought him the sweets stall. (Spoiler warning). This take on death is what makes the ending meaningful when Alison miscarriages. It is why Jimmy cannot just be a bastard who dismisses his wife.Or maybe it's all just Osborne's attack on his first wife in a very autobiographical play (his attacks on second wife Mary Ure in his autobiography can be equally savage).
On whole I find the film a disappointment. Burton's unconvincing performance cannot be saved by good work by Mary Ure and Claire Bloom. Worse, the film eliminates many of the most biting and relevant rages from Jimmy in the play, perhaps the best parts of the play. Nigel Kneale, who wrote some great science fiction, should never have been allowed to rewrite Osborne. The whole teddy bear/toy squirrel metaphor from the play makes no sense whatsoever in the film. I do like the scenes with Edith Evans, which Osborne at least in part wrote especially for the film, the character not ever actually appearing on stage in the play (Evans, priding herself on being Cockney, bought her own wardrobe for the role in second-hand shops). In some ways I prefer the filmed version of the play done years later by Lindsay Anderson with Malcom McDowell (though he too was too old for Jimmy). Oh, and reviewers please note, you won't find the phrase "angry young man" in the play. It was never a phrase Osborne liked. It was invented by the promotions man at the Royal Court Theater.
Movie Review: awful
Summary: 2 Stars
This film is full of problems. The first problem is that Richard Burton is horribly miscast as the lead. He is too old for the part, doesn't have the right speaking voice for the part and comes across as whiny.
The second problem is the play itself. The play wants to be all socialist, proletarian and giving it to the middle classes. But in the end what its about is the middle classes slumming and feeling sorry for themselves. Its difficult to find much sympathy for that. There is nothing likeable about Jimmy. It might have worked if Jimmy was actually working class, didn't have the middle-class connections and was a frustrated person with no way out. But as it is, there is no real value in listening to a big baby wallow in self-pity for two hours.
The other thing thing thats really bad about the piece is the relationship between Jimmy and "wife". Its flat-out abusive. Jimmy tries hard to cut her off from the outside world including her parents. While the play tries to make it a class issue, it comes across far more as Jimmy wanting to dominate and control her in every way. She is to be reduced to a prop that listens to his self-pity monologues.
In the end there is nothing political or rebellious about what Jimmy is. Jimmys have always existed. Subtract the intellecutal pretensions and he is the typical wife-beating self-pitying drunk. The war or losing the empire or any other historical excuse people want to come up with doesn't really change what Jimmy is.
Movie Review: A Lot of Anger
Summary: 2 Stars
I though a classic would naturally be great, but this simply isn't. The story is contrived and implausible, and the acting is so overwrought you wonder if the director was on the set. Richard Burton's sudden mood shifts are so jarringly abrupt, that it's like a switch was thrown on the script. Do not bother with this. It's a nice touch of gritty England, but also gritty writing, directing, and action, as in clogging up the works.