Look Back in Anger

In 1958 Tony Richardson and playright John Osborne formed the innovative Woodfall production company. To quote the words of Osborne, it was created in order "to prove that good films, ones that showed British life as it really is, could be made cheaply". The company was to more than live up to its aim. Its first venture was the screen adaptation of Osborne's seminal Royal Court stage play Look Back in Anger.

For the big screen, Osborne's play was toned.down a bit, some of the infamous class war rhetoric being removed. Even so, the film still packs a punch. It is highly compelling, the dialogue sparkling with terrific one-liners. The hero of the piece is Jimmy Porter (Richard Burton), archetypal "angry young man". By day he runs a sweet stall in a street market, by night he plays jazz, harangues his downtrodden wife (Mary Ure) and voices polemics against the world.

Richard Burton, though strictly too old to play the 25-year-old Jimmy, is excellent and the supporting cast, (including Claire Bloom and Edith Evans) is very good. Mary Ure positively lights up the screen. Richardson directs with skill - his extensive use of dramatic close-ups is intensely rewarding.

Review by Stephen Townsend
Taken from EUFS Programme 1993-94