Mubi Monday: Room At The Top (1958)

A British film from the late 1950s that I somehow knew absolutely nothing about, aside from the phrase being used in other ways (including the pop single by Adam Ant), Room At The Top is a film that has immediately become a new favourite of mine, thanks to the way it drags viewers through some very dark and bleak territory without having it all seem too unbearable.

Laurence Harvey plays Joe Lampton, a young and ambitious accountant who goes through life with an eye on the ladies and a chip on his shoulder. He sets his sights on the lovely Susan Brown (Heather Sears), the daughter of a fairly rich and powerful man, but also keeps himself busy by having an affair with the unhappily married Alice Aisgill (Simone Signoret). As time passes and feathers start to become ruffled, Joe becomes bolder in his behaviour while distancing himself from the home and working-class background he came from.

Adapted into screenplay form by Neil Paterson, from the novel by John Braine, this works brilliantly as both a character study and a look at the class system. There are times when Lampton seems to be careening towards self-destruction, but there are also times when his attitude and actions only seem worse because of how the upper-classes judge him. Everything is relative, for better or worse, and this is strongly underlined in an astonishingly impactful finale.

Director Jack Clayton may be more celebrated for his next directorial feature, a classic of the horror genre (The Innocents, 1961), but this deserves an equal amount of praise, particularly with regards to how Clayton seems to get as close as he can to what was permissible and acceptable onscreen back at this time. Maybe I am misjudging the era, but this still feels very much like the main character, full of pent-up resentment and aggression. Morals are discarded in favour of social progression, many characters are used as stepping stones, and there are a couple of moments that deliver the cinematic equivalent of a slap to the face.

Harvey is impressive in the lead role, delivering a fine performance that leaves vanity at the door. His character is very easy to dislike, even outright hate at times, but viewers are allowed to start piecing together the backstory that turned him into what he is. In the role of Susan, Sears is a delight for every moment she’s onscreen, as she has been in other movie roles, and her bubbly naïveté is nicely juxtaposed alongside the pragmatism and weariness of the character portrayed by the excellent Signoret. Donald Wolfit and Ambrosine Phillpotts are both very good, playing the parents of young Susan, and Donald Houston is a friend/colleague who often tries to be the voice of reason for our leading man. Other familiar faces crop up in small roles, but the only other one I will mention here is the wonderful Allan Cuthbertson (star of many films and TV shows, but arguably known to many for his appearance in the Fawlty Towers episode that has Basil Fawlty thrashing his car).

If there’s one criticism to be made here, I would say that I wish there had been a way to coat the bitter pill with a bit more sugar. That isn’t something I always consider, which maybe says more about how much I wanted to stay aligned with the central character, but I felt that the third act was as disorientating as it was effective, teetering on the edge of being a terrifying journey into a very particular realm of purgatory that is only available to those with enough money and not enough consideration for others.

9/10

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Filmstruck Friday: Les Diaboliques (1955)

Paul Meurisse plays Michael Delassalle, a school principal who is disliked by both his wife (Christina, played by Vera Clouzot) and his mistress (Nicole, played by Simone Signoret). They dislike him so much that they plot together to kill him. But the murder is the easy part. Things start to unravel when the body disappears, an unusual turn of events that puts even more strain on the weak heart of Christina, gives both women reason to mistrust one another, and creates quite the atmosphere of unease at the school.

Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, who has more than one masterpiece in his filmography, this is about as wonderful and twisted a thriller as you can get, with just a tinge of the supernatural to allow it to have one toe dipped in the horror genre (anyone in any doubt about that just needs to remember the final scene). Clouzot is an expert at creating tension, with a number of scenes here akin to a tightened spring, going and going until you just know that it will snap uncoiled at any moment.

The script, adapted by Clouzot and Jerome Geronimi, with some input from others, from the novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, is judged to perfection. Characters are set up quickly in the opening scenes, motivations are established, and then it's on to the more dastardly work, when things start to alternate between that tension and a certain amount of playfulness. Even the finale manages to provide explanations without feeling as if everything has stopped just for the sake of exposition, meaning that not one moment of the (approximately) 90-minute runtime feels unnecessary or wasted.

Mesdames Clouzot and Signoret are both fantastic in the main roles, the former constantly pained and strained while the latter tries to keep her cool in the face of a situation growing ever more improbable and stressful. Meurisse, despite not actually being on screen in non-corpse form for too long, also does a great job, enjoyably delivering lines of dialogue that show just how callous and unlikable he is. There are some other memorable characters here, but Charles Vanel is the main standout, a policeman who offers to help a distraught Christina after she has been to the morgue to identify a body she assumes will be her "missing" husband.

There may be modern movie viewers who watch Les Diaboliques and find themselves looking out for twists and turns, confident that they know how things are going to pan out and feeling as if they've seen it all before. I would ask those people to not do that. Don't try to second-guess the film, just sit back and enjoy it all. Yes, it may do some things that will feel familiar, but this is a film from the mid-1950s, meaning most of the other films that you have seen covering similar territory have most likely been influenced by this. And it's a damn fine film to be influenced by.

9/10

There's a lovely edition of the film here.
Americans can buy it here.