Look Back in Anger (1958)

Three years after its incendiary run on the London stage, director Tony Richardson's film version of John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger (1959) became one of the precursors to the British "kitchen sink" dramas of the 1960s. Enhancing the aim to show British life as it really was through the hopeless existence of enraged working class stiff Jimmy Porter and his put-upon, better-born wife Allison, Richardson unstintingly reveals the grunginess of their industrial city residential milieu with its drab row houses and unkempt children. Shot in stark black and white to match the dreariness of their lives, Richardson's close-ups intensify the already fraught emotions of Richard Burton's quintessential "angry young man" as he vents Porter's frustrations in Osborne's sharp, incisive dialogue. Mary Ure's Allison and Claire Bloom's neighbor-turned-mistress Helena are as emotionally caught as Jimmy, despite their different attempts at resistance. Richardson's first feature for his and Osborne's newly formed Woodfall Films, the critically praised Look Back in Anger became an international success, leading the way, along with Room at the Top (1959) to the British "New Wave" of gritty, socially engaged realism. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide