Laurence Harvey and Oscar-winner Simone Signoret in John Slayton's "Room at the Top".
By David D. Robbins Jr. | The Fade Out
“Room at the Top” (1959)/Director John Slayton
“To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” — William Shakespeare
The England of the 1950s hit on a period of social restructuring and massive political change, largely brought on after a unified effort to fight the Nazis. In other words, whether you were rich or poor — all hands on deck meant just that. The war became the great equalizer. In its wake followed the “Angry Young Men” and “The University Wits”, a group of anti-establishment writers which included the likes of Kinsley Amis, John Osborne, Philip Larkin, Colin Wilson and Harold Pinter. They were largely men, and from lower-class or middle-class backgrounds, or had climbed the social ladder via the world of elite education. John Slayton’s film “Room at the Top” (1959) was created amid the shifting sands, and asks two questions: Is getting to the top really worth it in the end? And what happens when a person finally gets everything they think they want?
The film is an adaptation of John Braine’s 1957 novel of the same name, and Slayton was spot-on to cast Laurence Harvey in the roll of leading man, Joe Lampton. Lampton is an extremely ambitious 25-year-old accountant for the local government in Warnley — a dirty, smokestack-filled industrial town, just after the end of the war. He believes the only way to shake off the dirt of his social class is to manipulate and connive his way to the top. Like his character, Harvey was also a bit of a fish out of water — a Lithuanian actor who felt the need to change to a much more Anglicized stage name. From the opening of the film, Lampton seethes with class envy. He sees Susan Brown (Heather Sears), the naive daughter of the biggest business owner in town and immediately realizes he must have her. (Or at least must have everything that comes with her.) Lampton’s poor parents question him about his real motivations, asking, “You wouldn’t sell yourself for a handful of silver?”
Lampton goes to see an stage play and first notices Susan playing one of the characters. Also onstage is aging beauty Alice Aisgill (Simone Signoret of “Les Diabolique” fame, who later was the first French person to win an Academy Award for her performance in “Room at the Top”), the wife of a mean and philandering husband, who treats her like dirt. Despite his manipulative manner and ambition, Lampton does notice how Alice is treated — and begins to feel more for her. It’s as if the two a misplaced, Lampton a smart man who can’t rise above his class and Alice a charming woman who is trapped in a horrible marriage. And that begins one of the film’s early dilemmas: Does Joe go after Susan, the childlike girl who comes with social standing and riches, or does he pursue the very real Alice, who is a worldly and kind stage actress and a girl of his own class?
In one of the most beautiful scenes in the movie, Lampton and Aisgill drive out to a lookout point to get away from it all, the grit and grime of belching smokestacks and the dim reality of an grey and industrial England. They sit in the car, top down, taking in their heavenly escape, viewing the town from above. It’s romantic, the mise-en-scène falling into film noir, as Lampton lights a cigarette — both staring into each others’ eyes. He slowly takes the cigarette from his onw mouth and places it gently between Aisgill’s lips, allowing her a few puffs, before taking it back. It’s the beginning of the end, in many ways.
There are a number of scenes used to set up the difference between Lampton’s class and those of the family of the other girl he’s pursuing. Joe is at a formal ball, and sees Susan with her family, their friends, and her boyfriend (who she does not love) and walks up to the table to greet her. Her powerful father asks Joe where he’s from and begins to question him about people from that town that he should know, if he were rich that is. And of course Joe doesn’t know any of them. The intent is to humiliate Joe and he knows it. In another scene, Joe travels back to the town where he grew up, where he visits the crumbled remains of his boyhood home — where his mother and father died in an air raid. While he’s looking at what used to be, a little girl with dirty clothes stands atop the heap and sweetly yells out to him, “This is my home. This is my home.” He picks her up off the dangerous jaded rocks to place her on the solid ground and she asks him, “Do you want to see my garden?” She shows him a little plot of flowers growing within the broken stones of his former home. It’s a sweet scene, turned sour, when the girl’s mother comes out from across the street, grabs the girl, and tells her never to talk to strangers. The scene is used to show that Joe is no longer part of his lower class society anymore either. He’s trapped in a sort of middle ground where he can’t climb the ladder nor can he go back to what he once was. “Room at the Top” is a film where everyone is being judged in some way. Susan’s upper class father calls Alice an old whore, even though she isn’t. Joe talks with his friend and colleague about how he judges women on a number scale.
The black-and-white cinematography by Freddie Francis is masterful, capturing clear lights and shadows — giving a very real feel to the dirt-lined streets, dingy pubs, apartment interiors and poverty stricken ways of an industrial town. Francis has quite a strange and wide-ranging career as a cinematographer, working with David Lynch three times in the films “Elephant Man”, “Dune” and “The Straight Story”; with Jack Cardiff on the D.H. Lawrence adaptation “Sons and Lovers”, and Martin Scorsese in the remake of “Cape Fear”.
Even the sexuality in the film is handled with an adeptness that you don’t often see in older pictures or modern ones. In one of the more telling scenes in the film, Joe takes Susan away to a remote area and finally sleeps with her. We don’t see the actual sex, but we see its aftermath. Susan wants to bathe in the afterglow, it being her first time and all. She asks Joe if he feels different. Of course, the audience knows that Joe is a seasoned man, and has been sleeping with Alice. Joe doesn’t say much but we sense his disappointment. Yes, he now has everything. But that everything is a naive girl who is unaware of the world around her,. And he’s just seduced her for reasons he barely understands himself. And what does that make him?
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