Popular reviews

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  Review by Sam Meltzer ★★★★ 2

  As I continue through my Best Actress project, I expect it to be like this: good performance, movie is whatever. And sometimes I don't even get a good performance. But with Room at the Top I was surprised. This is a great movie! Thoroughly engaging with its plot involving romance and love triangles, and beautifully acted and scripted. If you’re into classic films, this is for you. It captures the essence of black and white films from the 50s and 60s. Laurence Harvey carries the film with ease and brilliance, and gave a really passionate and fierce performance. Simone Signoret is brilliant. Now, her role isn’t that big in comparison to some other Best Actress winners, but her performance is terrific. It’s…

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  Review by trolleyfreak ★★★★½ 8

  'Don't worry about the way the world's run, lad. Enjoy it while you're young..' (Donald Wolfit as Mr. Brown)

  This was the first feature film to be directed by Jack Clayton and he brought to it a delicacy, insight and maturity which set new standards for filmmaking in Britain in the late '50's; it’s a gritty and realistic 'kitchen sink' drama - powerfully adapted from John Braine's novel - which is striking for both its focus on the lives of regional working class people and its love scenes, considered very 'risqué' at the time but very tame by modern standards.

  It also won a deserved Best Actress Oscar for Simone Signoret, giving one of the finest performances of her career…

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  Review by sakana1 ★★★½ 8

  Stuck in a POW camp with shelter and enough food, but no path for escape, it's easy to imagine Joe Lampton wiling away the hours (days, weeks, months) by meticulously plotting his escape from his working class life. As he lays out his plans, they become more and more elaborate, built upon his clever manipulation of women (girls) who he will use in order to secure the money and power of their fathers.

  By the time he's freed, Joe's been over the blueprint of advancement so often that it's not a question of whether or not it will work, but simply who will be plugged into the spot reserved for the virginal, naive girl upon whom the plan hinges. Completely…

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  Review by UltimateMovieRankings ★★★★ 1

  One of my movie going goals is to see every Oscar winner in the following 6 categories....Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Director. Since the Oscars started handing out trophies they have given these 6 categories 501 Oscars. After watching Simone Signoret's Oscar winning performance in this movie I have now seen 481 of those Oscar winning movies or 96%....the hunt for the final 20 Oscar winners continues.

  Room At The Top actually received 6 Oscar nominations (including Best Picture) and won two times. In this one Laurence Harvey plays an ambitious young accountant that schemes to wed a wealthy factory owner's daughter, despite falling in love with a married older woman,…

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  Review by Dylan ★★★★

  Exceptionally captivating and entertaining, Room at the Top captures and dissects social realities with delicate elegance and superb emotion. While the life of luxury and status may be characteristic by “the room at the top”, Jack Clayton brilliantly emphasizes that it may frequently be polluted by a feeling of discontent and even sorrow. Laurence Harvey embraces his part and shows both Joe's humanistic and loving qualities while also highlighting his opportunistic traits. Simone Signoret subtly illustrates the human experience of loving someone but it not working out due to factors beyond your own control while masterfully capturing the emotions of her character. And with a powerful emotional punch, the ending simply ties everything together.

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  Review by RanchoTuVu ★★★★★

  An ambitious office worker from a working class family lands a civil service job and sets out to win over the daughter of the richest man in town. His mission in life is sidetracked when he gets involved with an older, married woman. He discovers the bitter truth about his shallow ambitions, getting what he thought he wanted in one of the more ironic endings ever put on film. It's so expertly acted by Laurence Harvey and Simone Signoret, with several other great performances also, plus terrific cinematography and a fantastic soundtrack. Pretty shattering.

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  Review by Frances Meh ★★★★

  A day will come when you think yourself safe and happy, and suddenly your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth.

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  Review by Daniel Staebler ★★★★★

  In the UK at the end of the 1950s, two factors seemed to be decisive in classifying people: their wealth and whether or not they belonged to the nobility, be it of high lineage or lower. And Joe Lampton meets neither of these conditions.

  The scenario takes up an important theme found in classic 19th-century novels, whether by Balzac or Maupassant, to name but two of the best-known authors: the use of the fair sex to accelerate one's ascent up the social ladder.

  Jack Clayton's description of this modern-day Rastignac's journey through a small English industrial town is fascinating and, ironically, the only characters in Joe Lampton's entourage who emerge unscathed are those who didn't try to step out of line.

  Freddie Francis's cinematography is sublime, and the main and supporting actors are excellent. A masterpiece that I always enjoy rediscovering, and which occupies a special place in my DVD library.

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  Review by Mark Cunliffe 🇵🇸 ★★★★

  One of my favourites. Joe Lampton has long been a hero of sorts for me, thanks to picking up John Braine's novel in my formative late teens. Coming from a Northern provincial town with chimneys surrounding its skyline (though admittedly St Helens is more Dufton than the upmarket Warnley that Lampton finds himself in) and having a fair sized chip on my shoulder regarding class and social injustice, Room at the Top was always going to resonate with me. Except I have never had Lampton's ambition, I'd rather rip it all down than join it!

  This 1959 film version is just as strong as the novel and in some ways the changes made for the big screen actually improve some…

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  Review by Jim Dooley ★★★★★

  Wow!  I’m still dazzled by what I just watched!
     
  There have been many movies with a theme similar to ROOM AT THE TOP.  A young opportunist with a massive chip on his shoulder sets his sights on the easy life by wooing and marrying his way into Big Money.  However, this movie isn’t content to stay on the superficial level.  The opportunist changes as he “plays the game” across class levels and cultural norms, comes face-to-face with devotion growing into love, and then discovers what he’s really made of when Influence exercises its Power.  (Without giving too much away, this latter is beautifully juxtaposed with the Influence and Power of the street.)
     
  Through it all, ROOM…

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  Review by Brandon Stanwyck ★★★½

  Men suck

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  Review by phoebe 💫 ★★★½

  I feel like I've seen this exact plot in a million different movies (although I can't for the life of me name one) so the whole thing came off as very predictable and the ending didn't pack that much of a punch, but the British New Wave style of it is superb, especially with such a high definition version