Look Back in Anger

1959

Action / Drama

4
IMDb Rating 7.0/10 10 4728 4.7K

love triangle market based on play or musical trumpet black and white derbyshire

Plot summary

A disillusioned, angry university graduate comes to terms with his grudge against middle-class life and values.

Director

Tony Richardson Photo
Tony Richardson

Top cast

Abner Biberman Photo
Abner Biberman as Attacked Cultist, in movie
Gary Raymond Photo
Gary Raymond as Cliff Lewis
Michael Balfour Photo
Michael Balfour as Picky Shopper
Philip Locke Photo
Philip Locke as Priest
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
823.81 MB
1204*720
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 38 min
Seeds 2
1.57 GB
1792*1072
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 38 min
Seeds 5

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by MOscarbradley 6 / 10

Working Class Hero? ... hardly.

Before George and Martha there were Jimmy and Alison, the vituperate couple at the heart of Osborne's legendary play and I suppose you could say the British Kitchen Sink movement started here. The difference, of course, being that while the Arthur Seatons and Colin Smiths of this world were unequivocally working-class kicking against the system and the intelligentsia, Jimmy and Alison were the intelligentsia playing at being working-class. And therein lies the rub; unlike later 'kitchen sink' movies "Look Back in Anger" isn't so much looking back as mired in the past, an uneasy amalgam of the kind of British films that were coming out in the late fifties and the kind of ground-breaking British cinema that would come to prevail in the early sixties.There is no denying it is extremely well played. Burton is loudly splendiferous as Jimmy yet he seems strangely miscast at the same time. Perhaps it's that booming, melodious voice; this is a Jimmy that is more Shakespeare than Osborne, (note how Olivier completely subsumed his Shakespearean tendencies to become the definitive Osborne hero in "The Entertainer"). By the time Burton got around to playing George in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" you could say he had grown into the part.Better cast are Mary Ure as Alison and Claire Bloom as Helena. Their performances feel new and edgy, a move away from the traditional kind of performances that British actresses had been giving up to then while Gary Raymond is an admirable Cliff and a miscast Edith Evans does what she can with Ma Tanner. Tony Richardson opens it out from the Porter's depressing flat to give a more 'cinematic' feel yet it still feels stagey and not in a good way. It's a refreshingly 'grown-up' movie but you may still wonder what all the fuss was about when the original play first opened.
Reviewed by Xstal 6 / 10

Excessive Use of Rage and Fury...

There's a very angry lad by name of Jimmy, lives on a squalid upstairs floor, that's rather dingy, seems to hate his gorgeous lass, because she has a bit of class, a perpetual complainer whose quite whingey. Things get worse when wife's friend Helena arrives, as they lock horns, and he goes into overdrive, rage and fury then ensue, there's nothing Alison can do, she calls her father, who picks her up, and off they drive - and right on cue, Helena drops her drawers!Why on earth would such a lovely lass marry a person with such an uncontrollable rage, almost to the extent that it comes across as a mental illness. For me, Richard Burton layers on the anger so much that it detracts from the frustration a man in his position would more realistically feel, and the way it would present.Fine dialogue, the rest of the cast are brilliant, just an over the top performance from someone playing the most melodramatic way they can, detracts from the whole, unfortunately.
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