Look Back in Anger (1959)

Directed by Tony Richardson. Starring Richard Burton, Mary Ure, Claire Bloom, Cliff Lewis, Edith Evans, Glen Byam Shaw, Donald Pleasence.

Big screen adaptation of John Osborne’s famous play cemented Britain’s “angry young man” attitude and the kitchen sink realism movement. Bitterly disaffected and spiteful working-class man (Burton) lashes out at a pitiless society, outdated values, and his submissive wife (Ure), alienating her enough to become involved with her more self-assured friend (Bloom). Well-acted but hard to watch, with Burton’s seething and bristling a formidable force I wanted to escape from; the trouble is, behind all that anger, he’s a hard person to relate to even of the level of an abusive bully when the targets of his aggression are unwarranted and (by the end) easily placated. Tony Richardson lets the actors and dialogue control the action, but without satisfying character arcs, I sometimes felt trapped in an inert slice-of-life drama, and freeing up the space and action would have tipped the thorny material back into balance. Adaptation by Nigel Kneale, who’d work the following year with Richardson on a different Osborne play, The Entertainer.

69/100