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Look Back in Anger (1959)

Director: Tony Richardson

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Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Archetypal squalid British realism in an effectively scripted and well acted version of John Osborne's now dated play about the miseries induced by angry young graduate Jimmy Porter, railing against society and taking out his frustrations on his long-suffering wife (Ure). Burton is too old for the part, and Richardson's turgidly literal approach is none too involving.

Author: GA 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

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User reviews of this film

  • Penvronius Miles Cambrens said...
    Posted on Mar 03 2008 13:45 At this time, most people went to the cinema for relaxation and entertainment so this film was extremely challanging at the time. So, as today, to get ordinary people to see the film, it had to be a vehicle for a star, namely, Richard Burton. I find the film particularly interesting because Burton's character Jimmy Porter is a jazz trumpeter and the film uses Chris Barber's jazz band - I had a trad band of my own at the time and met Chris Barber on several occasions. The film recalls a very specific aspect of British popular music at the time. One had the rock and rollers and the ballad singers - but unusually for any time in British popular music history, jazz often entered the charts - princioally this was traditional jazz - Christ Barber, Kenny Ball and Acker Bilk being the most popular but which also included Humphrey Lyttleton and Ken Colyer. Jazz only features very briefly in the charts after this period, with Brubeck's Take Five and Stan Getz's Desafinado.and the ocassional rendering by Louis Armstrong - Hello Dolly, What a wonderful worlld, So, from the point of view of the popular musical cultural background at the time, this film shows that for a period jazz music entered the mainstream of British popular music. Burton may be old in the part but he is so well suited to playing both anger and angst - there is nothing anachronistic nor aged about his performance. It is a dark film but look at Britain today and it is so much darker with knifings and gun fights on the streets, young persons' suicide, homeless on the streets - this play still has resonsnce today.
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Cast & crew

Director: Tony Richardson

Producer: Gordon LT Scott

Cast: Richard Burton, Mary Ure, Claire Bloom, Edith Evans, Gary Raymond, Glen Byam Shaw, Phyllis Neilson-Terry, Donald Pleasence, George Devine full cast

Duration: 101 mins

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