I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Room at the Top (1959) is an engrossing story of ambition and deceit set in postwar England. Laurence Harvey is the very definition of a cad as Joe, WWII vet and former POW, who arrives at a new town to take a job in the Treasurer's Department of Warnley, a fictitious, bustling manufacturing center. He is from the poor town of Dufton. Joe uses his good looks to get what he wants, whether it be sex or the attentions of the pretty, innocent daughter (Heather Sears as Susan) of the town's leading citizen and employer (Donald Wolfit - serious yet upbeat).In the first five minutes of Top, we see that this is a different kind of movie. Sexual attraction and frank admiration of the object of one's desires are the stuff that gives Top life. As Joe enters the office where he will be working, every woman there is shown to be checking him out silently, in a wonderful panning shot. He moves into a flat with his chum and co-worker, Charles (Donald Huston). Charles recruits Joe into a local drama repertory club, and we meet all sorts of lively young people, as well as Simone Signoret playing a libidinous older woman. Room at the Top is not explicit in any way, but the players and their casual remarks and gossip are very revealing and engagingly authentic.Room at the Top was nominated for 6 Academy Awards and won two, one for Signoret and one for Best Adapted Screenplay, going to Neil Paterson's work in translating John Braine's novel to the big screen. It is vastly more entertaining and thought-provoking than any Romantic Comedy* today, and it is more adult than any explicit sex romp film ever released. Absolutely Smashing!!!* Room at the Top is a drama through and through, but most of the plot could work in a Romantic comedy also."How about salary?"

Simone Signoret's Oscar-crowning film is a Black & White adaption of John Braine's renowned melodrama ROOM AT THE TOP, directed by British Jack Clayton (which is his maiden work in the director chair and the film was a huge success in that year, nabbed 6 Oscar nominations including BEST PICTURE, DIRECTOR, ACTOR, SUPPORTING ACTRESS and two wins, BEST ACTRESS and BEST ADAPTIVE SCREENPLAY). However, compared with his later accomplishments THE PUMPKIN EATER (1964, 8/10) and THE INNOCENTS (1961, 9/10), the film's sentimental gloss couldn't outlive the modest platitude of the over- familiar story. A working-class man's oscillation between an affluent young girl and a 10-years-older married woman ends with a tragedy which devastatingly foreshadows his ominous "bright future" of his marriage and even the entire life. If one can pay no heed to the ageism and sexism undertones of the narrative (which is a bona-fide reflection of that time though), the film sails adeptly alongside a nimbly yet convincingly deployed ill-doomed love story between two so-called "loving friends", their intimacy has been nurtured through an irresistible mutual attraction, peeped by the close-ups examining the highly theatric conversations such as, the dated "you cannot imagine a man looking at a naked woman without wanting to make love to her" argument, which may sound abrupt in this day, nevertheless, it has an earnest confessional self-conscious at that time I dare to assume. While it is unambiguous to say that Laurence Harvey and Simone Signoret both hold the passion burning amid them, which contributes to the major relish extracted by the contemporary mass, Ms. Signoret stuns in her not-that-ample screen time by rendering her pathetic anguish and determined desire to even every minimal gesture or movement (albeit her heavily accented English), same could be referred in her another English- speaking, Oscar-nominated film SHIP OF FOOLS 1965, 6/10. Taking the most poignant scene, the farewell at the train station, it is a tour-de-force achievement which certainly intrigues me to dig into her more naturally-spoken French filmography (besides ARMY OF SHADOWS 1969, 9/10). Laurence Harvey obtained his sole Oscar nomination for the role, he takes up nearly every scene and did a commendable job in all the transitions and outburst, he and Simone's after-coitus wrangle is so pungent yet thrilling to witness. But Heather Sears' ingénue performance seems to be a false move, it serves merely as a female exploitation and typecast if compared with Winona Ryder in THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (1993). Hermione Baddeley has established a record of getting an Oscar nomination by being on screen for only 2 minutes and 32 seconds, fairly enough, it is a marginalized role, which could be one of the most pertinent case in challenging the Academy members' bizarre percipient prowess. The film's final curtain drops onto a numb face of Harvey's groom contrasting with his cheerful wealthy bride, a solemn force can later be juxtaposed with the similar composition in Mike Nichols' THE GRADUATE (1967, 8/10).

Much has been said about Simone Signorets's magnificence here, but I feel compelled to add my own voice to the mix, so astonished & moved was I by her performance. I want to pay homage to a particular scene. She's been blowing, sheathing herself, in gorgeous plumes of smoke throughout the film, but at a climactic moment, delivers these lines:"No--no, I don't want to smoke, and I don't want to drink. Because cigarettes and drink--they dull you. I want every minute of these four days. And I want them...sharp...and clear." Prosaic lines, in and of themselves. Listen to, and watch, an artist at work here, illuminating the essence of naked, fragile, beautiful humanity. Thank you, Ms. Signoret.

Although it was clearly not intended to be, nor promoted as, a two-hander the fact remains that there are only two actors in Room At The Top; Simone Signoret and Everyone Else. Co-star (and if this isn't a joke I don't know what is) who had actually played Shakespeare on screen may well have paraphrased the Bard and felt moved to say, 'Why, she doth bestride this narrow film like a colossus and we, like petty men, creep under her huge legs to find ourselves dishonourable roles'. Of course Signoret brought considerable acting chops to bear, in the nineteen fifties alone she had appeared in Manages, La Ronde, Casque d'Or, Les Diaboliques, and Therese Raquin, all distinguished titles; Harvey had also managed to amass the odd credit in the same decade, The Dancing Years, The Scarlet Thread, There Is Another Sun, A Killer Walks, Knights Of The Round Table, King Richard And The Crusaders, The Truth About Women. He also managed to stink up the screen as Romeo in an ill-judged Romeo and Juliet. In Room At The Top he is playing Laurence Harvey in much the same way Frank Sinatra played aspects of himself in Meet Danny Wilson; Joe Lampton is an arrogant chip-on-both-shoulders ambitious social climber quite prepared to marry his way to the top: in real life Harvey was an arrogant, ambitious, social climber who married a far better actor, Margaret Leighton, as a stepping-stone' if not an entree to life at the top. At the time (1959) the film probably packed quite a punch but things had come to a pretty pass when an actor who towered over Harvey as a performer, Wilfrid Lawson, was reduced to a couple of uncredited scenes whilst Mr. Mahogany got second billing after Signoret. This rates ten out of ten for Signoret and about half that for the film itself.