Look Back in Anger (1958)
Directed by Tony Richardson

Film Review

John Osborne's 1956 stage play Look Back in Anger proved to be a landmark, not just in British theatre but in British culture generally.  One critic dubbed Osborne 'an angry young man' and the phrase stuck, applying to a wave of new writers and directors who lashed out against the complacency of post-war middle class society.  Having directed the original stage production of Osborne's groundbreaking play, Tony Richardson ended up directing the film adaptation that came just a few years later.  This was to be a milestone in British cinema, the first in a series of 'angry young men' films depicting youth alienation in the late 1950s, early 60s, and the harbinger of a new aesthetic that offered a grittier look at everyday life, so-called kitchen sink realism. 

Richardson's Look Back in Anger is an awkward hybrid of the new and the old.  Too faithful to the original play, it has an oppressive staginess about it that anchors it well and truly in the mid-1950s.  It is the location exteriors that take us outside the hero's cramped lodgings which give the film its thin veneer of modernity, presaging the brutal reality of subsequent kitchen sink dramas.  The casting of Richard Burton is both a plus and a minus.  Burton's acting prowess gives the main protagonist, Jimmy Porter, a powerful presence, but the actor's performance is perhaps too theatrical and becomes overbearing, at the risk of being monotonous.  Burton eloquently expresses the anti-everything rage that scorches every page of John Osborne's play but there is nothing remotely likeable about his portrayal.  Unlike the 'heroes' of subsequent angry young man films, there seems to be no reason for Porter's endless tirades - he just rants and raves and offends because that is who he is, an offensively angry young man who is incapable of making anything of his life.

More convincing are the secondary characters, played with somewhat more restraint by Claire Bloom, Mary Ure and Gary Raymond, with some welcome support from Edith Evans.  As the main victim of Porter's perpetual onslaught against a hostile, unloveable, unloving universe, Ure's Alison has something of the heroic martyr about her, a woman unable to reconcile her conflicting feelings for a truly odious man.  It takes an even more grotesque specimen of humanity, Donald Pleasence's bigoted and suspiciously psychopathic market-stall inspector, to reveal Porter's more human side, but by this time the self-loathing rant merchant has well and truly succeeded in alienating himself from our sympathies.  Helena's sudden switch from hatred of to passionate yearning for Porter is hard to fathom and exposes the fundamental flaw in Osborne's play, namely that none of the protagonists rings true.  Compelling though the film is, thanks to the riveting performances of its exceptional cast, Look Back in Anger feels a tad shallow and prosaic compared with the other social realist films that were to follow it.

Film Synopsis

Jimmy Porter, a disillusioned university graduate, lives with his wife Alison and friend Cliff in a cramped Midlands apartment.  By day, he works on a market stall, selling sweets; by night, he plays the trumpet at a jazz club.  His wife takes the brunt of his anger and he has yet to learn that she is pregnant with his child.  Tensions between the two are heightened further when Alison invites an actress friend, Helena, to stay with them.  No sooner has Jimmy driven his wife back to her parents than he begins an affair with Helena...