Leilão de Almas

The Kitchen Sink was beginning to get a bit clogged up by the time "Life at the Top" appeared. This was the sequel to Jack Clayton's "Room at the Top" and the critical reception was a good deal cooler than it was back in 1959 which was a pity as this is a pretty good film. Joe, (Laurence Harvey, obviously, and very good indeed), hasn't really changed his ways. He's still married to the boss' daughter, (now played by a superb Jean Simmons), but he embarks on an affair with TV anchor woman Honor Blackman while wife Susan plays around with Harvey's friend Michael Craig.

There isn't a great deal that is new in Mordecai Richler's script which basically rehashes the first picture, (and Blackman is certainly no match for Signoret), but director Ted Kotcheff keeps it ticking along very nicely and Oswald Morris' cinematography is definitely a bonus. In the end it boils down to the chemistry between Harvey and Simmons and they certainly rise to the occasion. No classic then but no turkey either.

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?

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.

This worthy sequel to "Room At the Top" (1958) reunites a few from the old gang, Laurence Harvey, Donald Wolfitt, and Allan Cuthbertson and welcomes Honor Blackman, Nigel Davenport and Robert Morley. Heather Sears has morphed, somewhat improbably, into Jean Simmons. DP Oswald Morris conveys a sense of doom in the saga of Joe Lampton, which could be subtitled, "you may take the boy out of the proletariat, but you can't take the proletarian out of the boy." Rigid class divisions, more a feature of England than most other countries, are clearly limned here. John Braine's themes of sin, forgiveness and redemption are well-articulated.

I came to this film not having seen Room at the Top (1959) and not having read the novel. So my thoughts are based on it being a stand alone film - which might be a failing on my part, it is a sequel after all. I suspect this film was made (like so many sequels) on the back of the success of Room at the Top, rather than a stand alone piece of work. Anyway, my view of this film must be taken in this context.

Notwithstanding it's production in 1965 it somehow felt dated, perhaps exacerbated by being in black and white. The themes and the characters all seemed so stereotypical, outmoded and emotionally shallow. The main character played by Laurence Harvey (Joe Lampton) was very hard to like, he didn't seem to have many redeeming facets to his personality at all, often I felt I didn't really care what happened to him. There needs to be something in a main character to carry you through the story from beginning to end, not as in this case a man managing with a colossal chip on his shoulder. This wasn't the fault of Mr Harvey - more the way his character was written. This pretty much goes for all concerned. A superb cast do the best with what they have, hamstrung by what is often wooden dialogue.

My interest was only sustained by seeing the film as a document to mid-sixties England, the gorgeous Jean Simmons and glimpses of some fabulous cars - especially a Maserati Quattroporte.