Flagrante adulterio

I enjoyed this more than Room at the Top, there was more of a storyline and Laurence Harvey wasn't quite so wooden. Jean Simmonds was far stronger as Joes wife, Susan, than Heather Sears in the first film, and this gave a lot more bite to the relationship. A lot was made of the canal-side development, but this never reached a conclusion. It was just left hanging as the film concluded the other storylines.

The first film was set in 1947 and this was 10 years on, so Harry's 10th birthday would have been early 1958, but there were at least two references to be set in the 1960s. The first, in the background is the soundtrack album for Never on a Sunday, which was released in 1960. Also, Joe telling his father-in-law about his halitosis refers to a Christmas Party in '61 and by inference this was at least a couple of years previously.

By Allah, this movie depressed me. Not many people are like a brain this movie because they all have their flaws and of course that is like real life still at remains and moving you want to be entertained where is the entertainment offered in this film flick are not really the kind you want to write home to your parents about and because of this once again the movie ends up to be pretty boring especially if you haven't read your original book on which this movie by the way even is a sequel on so you wonder what it is all about and then when you watch the movie you cannot help but feeling disappointed in the depressing life choices some of the characters are making. Personally I did not dislike the acting performances and by Allah Jean Simmons is always a wonderful marvel to look it. Mashallah!!

"Life at the Top" from 1965 is touted as a sequel to "Room at the Top," which it is, but you could watch this without having seen "Room" without much problem.

Joe Lampton (Laurence Harvey) has had his dreams fulfilled - he's married to the boss' daughter (Jean Simmons), he's working for his father-in-law in a high position, and he's managed to squash his lower-class upbringing. However, he's miserable. He's bored out of his mind and angry with his wife, who keeps getting her father to pay for things. When he meets a pretty TV correspondent (Honor Blackman) he perks up.

This is a good movie with an excellent performance by Laurence Harvey, who really picks up where he left off with Joe Lampton, angry, ambitious, resentful, and womanizing. Jean Simmons is in the Heather Sears role, and she's wonderful - beautiful, sensual, and determined to keep her husband despite her own failings. I've always thought Simmons was highly underrated as she was always in competition with Audrey Hepburn and other bigger stars of the day for roles. She is glorious in her British films that she made when she was very young, and of course, Elmer Gantry and Angel Face, to name only two.

Worth seeing, and it answers the question, will Joe Lampton ever find happiness?

As sequels go, this isn't half bad. Aspirational, working-class lad "Joe" (Laurence Harvey) has managed to marry the boss's daughter "Susan" (Jean Simmons), has the semi detached trappings of middle class luxury but his life consists little of substance. His career is going nowhere fast and he is soon being tempted by the visiting television star "Norah" (Honor Blackman) as his wife embarks on an affair de coeur of her own with the rather unfortunately wooden Michael Craig ("Mark"). Has he the fortitude to go it alone; does he even really want to? The story isn't as potent as "Room at the Top" (1959) but both Harvey and Simmons as well as a strong series of cameos from the likes of Sir Donald Wolfit and Robert Morley still work well to convey many of the frustrations of a young man trying to escape the bonds of a class system and of a woman who has never had to want for anything, efficiently. It looks good. The photography is intense, almost intrusive at times, and the score from the accomplished Richard Addinsell adds much to the story and in many ways substitutes for a rather wordy and descriptive narrative. It's a good film, not a great one, and it is good to see Simmons remind us just how adaptable an actress she was.

Not bad, sequel wise. If it's a long way from "Godfather, Part Two" it is an even farther distance from "Godfather, Part Three". The first half is definitely the lesser part. Canadian director Ted Kotcheff and scenarist, Mordechai Richler (the "Duddy Kravitz" team) examine British snobbery, adultery, and Tory politics amusingly and with a lively pace but do not really give us anything that the 1958 film did not present in much more dramatic fashion. And while the entire cast gives solid performances, as expected from Brit actors, there is no character in the sequel as compelling as Simone Signoret was in the original playing a literal and figurative outsider who must be sacrificed on the altar of Joe Lampton's desire for wealth and status.

However, in the second half a most interesting change occurs. Joe decides to leave his wife and cushy, if humiliating, job in the provinces and journey to London to be with a woman he's convinced will rejuvenate him. The opposite happens as she rises in her profession while he is stuck in occupational limbo and suddenly Joe is faced, as are most of us sometime in our existences, with the question, How will I live my life? I, for one, found that Kotcheff and Richler posed this question interestingly and answered it most intelligently (if heavy handedly, at times, as in the ending where Joe is literally "locked in" to his job). And since interest and intelligence are in short supply in the cinema I'm glad I didn't pull the plug on this movie halfway through. Give it a B.

PS...Is it just me or did Jean Simmons get hotter with age?