The Way Up (1959)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The way up |
| Original title | Room at the top |
| Country of production | Great Britain |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1959 |
| length | 117 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 18 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Jack Clayton |
| script | Neil Paterson |
| production |
John Woolf , James Woolf |
| music | Mario Nascimbene |
| camera | Freddie Francis |
| cut | Ralph Kemplen |
| occupation | |
| |
The way up (Original title: Room at the Top ) is a film drama by British director Jack Clayton from 1959. It is the first British film in which sexuality is portrayed realistically and lustfully and not just as a source of sin. It was based on the novel of the same name by John Braine .
action
Joe Lampton wants to go up: As a small employee of the tax office in a small town in the north of England, he has recognized that this is not possible due to diligence and competence in his job. He approaches Susan Brown, the daughter of the local tycoon , wants to marry her and thereby get to the top.
However, his own feelings thwart his ambitious plan. He falls in love with the unhappily married French woman Alice, who is ten years his senior. Joe has ample sexual experience with her and the two are very much in love. Susan, initially quite dismissive, changes her mind and loses her innocence on Joe in a haystack.
Joe is sometimes with Alice and sometimes with Susan. Finally, Alice's husband threatens that Joe should leave her alone. Shortly afterwards, Susan's father orders him to a meal at which he wants to get rid of him with a good offer. But Joe suspects that he has the fish on the hook and knocks it out. Then Susan's father tells him that she is pregnant and that the two of them are going to get married.
There is a final meeting with Alice, where he tells her that he will marry Susan. Alice is hurt and disappointed because Joe would be happier with her and in love with her. She gets drunk in a pub and then dies in a car accident when she hits a rock.
When Joe is congratulated by his colleagues on the upcoming wedding, he reacts very cautiously. When he finally learns of Alice's death, he is dismayed. He drinks in a bar in the evening and gets company from a girl. When her boyfriend is late and wants to take her forcibly, Joe threatens to let go of her. Later, the boyfriend and his cronies lie in wait for him and they beat up Joe, who is now also from the upper class.
After the marriage, he and Susan are in the car and there are tears in our eyes. "Should you end up having feelings," said Susan happily.
background
The script was based on the novel of the same name by John Braine , who is part of the Angry Young Men movement . In the form of the so-called Kitchen Sink Realism , they particularly criticized the still very rigid class structure in Great Britain. They themselves mostly came from the middle class. The film is committed to realism in the spirit of British New Wave . It shows the unadorned image of a northern English industrial city, unadorned class contrasts, the local dialect and clear sexual dialogues. The film could be shown in cinemas without censorship , but it still caused some offense. The British Board of Film Classification rated the film with an "X", which roughly meant rubbish. No distributor then dared to include the film in their program. The English ABC rental company finally dared and achieved great success with audiences on both sides of the Atlantic and also with critics.
The film premiered in Great Britain on July 31, 1959. In the GDR it was released in theaters on September 20, 1963 in a version shortened by 12 minutes. In the Federal Republic of Germany it was shown for the first time on ZDF television on April 24, 1972. For a long time, Room at the Top was only available in English on DVD. In 2001 the film was released in German on VHS . In 2019 a German-language DVD version of the film was released.
In 1965 a sequel called "Ein Platz zum oben" was filmed , also with Laurence Harvey as Joe. Directed by Ted Kotcheff .
Reviews
The lexicon of international films describes the film as “excellently played and atmospherically tightly staged.” Karena Niehoff wrote in the Tagesspiegel on August 9, 1959: “Simone Signoret [...] has a face, big and big, beautiful in an absorbing way, where the dangerous, the deadly comes from the imagination of the head, from the spirituality of the heart. " AH Weiler found in the New York Times of March 31, 1959:" The way up may be fundamentally gloomy and joyless, but it leaves you with a surprise lasting impression "
Awards
The film was nominated for six awards at the 32nd Academy Awards in 1960, but was overshadowed by the blockbuster Ben Hur . Hermione Baddeley was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Role, although she can be seen in the film for less than five minutes. The producers and the director of The Way Up were nominated for an Oscar in the categories of Best Picture and Best Director , but had to admit defeat to Ben Hur . Only in the category of best adapted screenplay ( Neil Paterson ) could the film prevail in a direct comparison against Ben Hur . Another Oscar went to Simone Signoret for Best Actress .
A year earlier, The Way Up had already received the British Film Academy Award for Best British Film, Simone Signoret won the award for Best Foreign Actress. At the Cannes International Film Festival in 1959 she received the award for Best Actress in the same year , the film itself was nominated for the Palme d' Or.
The British Film Institute voted The Way Up in 1999 ranked 32nd among the best British films of all time .
Soundtrack
- Mario Nascimbene : Room at the Top. (Excerpts) . On: The Barefoot Contessa and Others. The Film Music of Mario Nascimbene . DRG / Koch, New York 1996, sound carrier no. DRG 32961 - Original recording of the soundtrack conducted by Lambert Williamson .
literature
- John Braine : The way up. Roman (OT: Room at the Top ). German by Herbert Schlueter. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag (dtv), Munich 1981, ISBN 3-423-01652-3 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ cf. imdb.com
- ↑ The way up. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Der Tagesspiegel , quoted on kinematographie.de
- ↑ " Room at the Top may be basically cheerless and somber, but it has a strikingly effective view." , cf. nytimes.com ( Memento of the original from January 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Web links
- The way up in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The way up in the online film database
- The way up at UCM.ONE