Look Back in Anger

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.

None of the characters here have any redeeming qualities. What keeps you watching, almost against your will, is the repulsive human being that Richard Burton plays with such enjoyable relish. You can't believe that anyone like this character as played out could have lived as long as he has without being punched to the ground dead. Keeps the viewer on edge waiting for it to happen. The two women are just as damaged in their own way. Susceptible to being vulnerable to the dominance of male testosterone and ready made victims to end up drowning in it.

source: Look Back in Anger

Oh, what a depressing movie! A product of the Angry Young Man school of filmmaking in Britain, it is Burton who unleashes his wrath in this one. He's college-educated but works as a street vendor. Yes, that would make one bitter but does not really explain his anger with the whole world and his mistreatment of his wife. It would be an understatement to say that Burton is bombastic; he chews the scenery to bits. Faring better are Ure as his wife and Raymond as his friend and business partner. Bloom is lovely as Ure's friend, someone who inexplicably is attracted to Burton the brute. Richardson's directorial debut is disappointing.

Jimmy Porter (Richard Burton) lives with his demure wife Alison (Mary Ure) and business partner and friend Cliff in a tiny London flat. There is probably no one who can unleash a vicious, rapid-fire verbal attack as well as Richard Burton and that talent is on display here in his fulminations against his wife. A friend of Alison's, Helena, temporarily comes to stay in the already overcrowded space. Alison finally gets enough of the abuse and moves back to live with her wealthy parents and a relationship ensues between Jimmy and Helena. And a pregnancy is thrown in to complicate matters. It is hard not to compare Jimmy in this melodrama to Stanley Kowalski in "A Streetcar Named Desire." They are both brutes and treat their wives abysmally, but they have an animalistic appeal. Brando pulls this off better than Burton does here. It seems that Burton has a hard time reining in his bigger than life personality to play a working class person like Jimmy, who runs a candy stall in a London flea market. I mean, isn't it hard to picture Burton selling chocolates to small children for a living? And he plays his part like he is wanting to reach the folks in the back rows of a theater. All of this is not to say that it isn't a treat to see his performance - he was a great actor. Trying to figure out the relationships between the four main characters is a task. Jimmy is indeed angry; the source of this anger seems to be that he is an educated man stuck in a dead-end job. Why he takes his anger out so brutally on his wife is hard to understand, and hard to watch. The mismatch in social status between him and his wife is an irritant, but is that enough for him to be so vicious? He is initially insulting to Helena, but that does not deter her from falling for him. On the other hand Jimmy treats his friend and coworkers quite civilly and goes out of his way to defend an Indian gentleman who is being discriminated against. But Jimmy's vulnerability and pain does leak out on occasion. I felt that I understood him best through his playing the trumpet. The solo he plays toward the end expresses such sadness, pain and despair that you feel you are getting to the core of the man. After the solo in the nightclub, the audience is stunned into silence. I found the atmospheric black and white photography and editing to be impressive. There are many abrupt cuts from one scene to the next that at first I found discordant, but then I came to appreciate them - why linger on a scene when its essence has been established. And the quick cuts are consistent with, and help establish, the emotional tone. This role for Burton could be considered a warm-up for his great performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." There he had a sparring partner in Elizabeth Taylor who could give back whatever he dished out.

In 1956 John Osborne stood the British theatre world on it's ear with his rage filled play Look Back in Anger. The Empire was backpedaling, and Osborne's play was a loud broadside to the establishment and the genteel upper crust drawing room plays that dominated the London stage. It was the opening salvo of British generational discontent that would go beyond the stage to film and music and create a social revolution. In England the era of question authority had arrived. Jazz loving, university educated Jimmy Porter seethes with anger over everything around him. Living in a cold water flat with his wife Alison (Mary Ure) and friend Cliff he goes into rages at the drop of the hat lashing out cruelly at the housemates. In one instance he viciously tears into Alison wishing she would have a child and that once bonded to her hoped it would die. When Helena (Claire Bloom) , a school friend of Alison comes to visit she is treated in the same fashion. A pregnant Alison decides to leave as does Cliff and Porter takes up with Helena, his angry young man persona toned down slightly but only for the moment. Look Back in Anger echoed a real sense of urgency for it's day. Osborne's Porter speaks for a generation and class that was invisible and powerless at the time. Anger revels in the sun setting on the Empire and those who created it. The open air push cart market that Porter works in serves as a symbolic battle field where corrupt authorities act like martinets and practice veiled racism. Half a century later though this iconoclastic work has lost a large amount of its controversial steam. As Porter, Richard Burton seethes from start to finish. Every word he utters cuts. Burton's magnificent voice gives powerful expression to Osborne's words but his overall performance is one over the top non-stop ugly whine. There are only tid bits of humor and joy in his character that moves from one rage to the next. This gets tired fast since Porter is unable to channel his anger to change good or bad. It is just one long hissy fit. As lovers and targets Mary Ure and Claire Bloom stand around looking shell shocked most of the time. Their performances are lifeless as they endure tirade after tirade from Jimmy with battered understanding. By film's end there is no character left to respect or performance to admire. It's like listening to your neighbors argue for two hours. Anger was the "kitchen sink drama" archetype but is clearly inferior to most similar films that followed such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, The Sporting Life and The Entertainer, which Osborne also wrote and had the same director (Tony Richardson). In those works the characters had more dimension than the howling Burton and his comatose victims and a basic theatrical understanding of comedy relief which in Look Back in Anger goes down the drain fast.

LOOK BACK IN ANGER has the distinction of being one of the first kitchen sink dramas that would become all the rage in the early 1960s. It's an adaptation of the famous John Osborne play about an angry young man and the love triangle in which he finds himself involving his wife and her best friend. I was surprised to see that Nigel Kneale adapted the story for the screen as this is well away from his comfort zone of science fiction and weirdness. The film features a typically bullish performance from Richard Burton as the protagonist who spends the entire running time bullying the women in his life (apart from his mother, as he loves her). Yes, the film is in essence a couple of of hours of Burton abusing people, so I didn't find it particularly entertaining. The characters are certainly well drawn with plenty of depth and more than realistic, but as a slice-of-life story nothing much really happens during the running time (there are no character arcs or anything like that) and I was left feeling depressed about what I'd just watched more than anything else.

Technically speaking, "Look Back in Anger" is a well made film. Despite that, it's also an incredibly unpleasant picture...so unpleasant that I wonder how many people can actually see the entire movie. Richard Burton plays a completely unlikable jerk. Despite having a college degree, he works a low-paying working class job and would do nothing else. This is because he is seething with contempt for the upper classes and would much rather be poor and angry than anything else. This is a super-serious problem considering he's married to an upper-class girl. And, he makes it his life's work to destroy her and make her feel completely devalued. Boht of these folks are friends with a guy who likes them both...which seems very tough considering he sees his friend mistreating his other friend all the time. If you can stand Burton's very famous film, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", then you MIGHT be able to appreciate and enjoy "Look Back in Anger". As for me, like is just too short to spend this much time watching someone emotionally (and occasionally physically) torture another human being. Very unpleasant.

This film is powerful! The acting, writing, direction all superb! Richard Burton can deliver lines on-screen like no other actor. A "how-to" film in film-making. Claire Bloom sizzles with Burton, you can feel the passion and desire on the screen. His friendship with his Welsh room mate is touching and serves as an anchor for the plot. Tension is always present and the attitudes of the time are perfectly portrayed. His relationship with his wife is interesting in his domineering, passionate and fiery temperament, as only Burton can render it. Today the only word that would be used to describe Burton's behaviour would be "abusive", but there was a reason for this, as Ma Tanner's death would later show. Jimmy Porter, as played by Burton, seems like an irascible creature but there are many good points in his character. Anger is not a "dirty word" in this movie as it would be portrayed in today's films. Society then would try to understand other peoples' foibles by trying to ascertain the underlying root cause. We could learn a lot from this movie today. A "must see" for any intelligent audience. A tremendous film portrayal! Worth owning!

Whats he angry with? What have you got? Much like an English version of 'Johnny' from 'The Wild One', Jimmy Porter is looking for a cause to fight in 1950's Britain, and unable to find one, becomes an armchair politician, exacting his rage and frustration on all around him. Richard Burton was made for this role as the fire breathing, hilariously funny Jimmy Porter and I cannot hold back the tears at the end of this timeless classic.