Look Back in Anger

For the next few weeks I'll be jumping on an article in a recent issue of Film Comment and taking a look at a generation-spanning genre known as "British Miserablism." Essentially a product of post-war despair, the British, while still making comedies and musicals, also had what was called the "British New Wave," with directors like John Schlesinger, Tony Richardson, Lindsay Anderson, Ken Loach, and Karel Reisz. Unfortunately, some of the key films of the early period, such as A Taste of Honey, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and A Kind of Loving are not available on DVD, but I'll do my best to hit the others. I'll also go right up to the present and examine films that have continued this legacy.

I start with the film adaptation of the play that changed everything for British drama, Look Back in Anger. John Osborne, at the forefront of the movement that became known as the "Angry Young Men," wrote the play in 1956, and it was panned by almost all critics, except notably, Kenneth Tynan, who sought it for what it was--a refreshing and revealing look at what life was actually like, and a profound change from the well-mannered plays of the time (by writers like Terence Rattigan, who has had several films made from his plays recently).

The film version, directed by Tony Richardson, was released in 1958, and starred Richard Burton as Jimmy Porter, an educated by underemployed (he operates a sweet stall in a public market) twenty-five year old in a dreary midlands city (one of the themes of British miserablism is that anyplace in England is horrible, except for London, where everyone wants to go). Burton is angry at almost everything, especially his wife (Mary Ure), a daughter of the privileged class. They live in a small flat, where on Sundays Burton and their neighbor, Cliff Lewis (Gary Raymond) read the newspapers and complain. Raymond is a more sensitive soul, and cringes to see Burton mistreat Ure, as when he pushes Raymond while Ure is ironing and she burns her arm.

Ure's friend, an actress (Claire Bloom) comes to stay with them while she's acting in town. Burton hates her, for unspecified reasons, and calls her a cow. Ure confides to Bloom that she is pregnant, and Bloom urges Ure to leave him and go back to her parents. She does, but then Burton and Bloom fall in love, and they start playing house. But Bloom realizes this is a betrayal of her friend, and after Ure loses the baby, she comes back to Burton.

After seeing the film, and being kind of underwhelmed by it, I read the play, and there are two possible reasons why I didn't enjoy the film--for one, there were no subtitles, and the dialects were pretty thick, and I missed a good portion of the dialogue, and two, there just isn't enough subtext in the film that that is contained in the play. Watching the film you may think, "Just what is his problem?" while in the play it's clearer--it's basically a class issue. Jimmy Porter is steeped in cynicism because he sees no way out--the system seems to be rigged.

The film, as one would expect opens the play up. It opens with Jimmy playing his trumpet at a jazz club. His music seems to be his only outlet, and says that anyone who doesn't like jazz doesn't understand music or people. (He also says that "it's dreary living in the American era, except of course if you're an American."). There are also scenes at the sweet-stall. A character in charge of monitoring licenses, played snivelingly by Donald Pleasance, is an addition, as is a subplot involving an Indian man who is driven away because of race. Jimmy and Cliff come to his aid, I suppose to show us that deep down Jimmy is an all-right sort of fellow.

As with the play, though, there's no getting around the hard to grasp conversion of Burton and Bloom. If the sexual tension is there in the beginning, it could work, but it's not there in the film. Bloom is so prim and proper--she outrages Burton by taking Ure to church--that it's just impossible to imagine she would fall into his arms. Burton, for as great an actor as he was, just doesn't seem to understand the character, and I found much of his performance to be unnecessarily showy.

As one would imagine, the film is shot in an ashy black and white (by Oswald Morris). Miserablism doesn't look right in color.