MovieChat Forums > Look Back in Anger (1959) Discussion > It all seems so irrelevant now...

It all seems so irrelevant now...


I've just watched this on TCM - and it's like watching a play about a totally different country, not just era and culture. The only factor which seems to have remained unchanged is the abiding hatred of the educated middle classes for their own kind, and the white working class - still plenty of that about, finding a handy outlet in the tyranny of PC.

I wonder if the UK today bears any resemblance to what Osborne and his baying mob had in mind. If he is happy I reckon he's the only one who is!!!

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Well I should hope that it is very different from the Britain of today. It was made in 1958. The Canada of 1958 when my father was a child seems pretty foreign to me.

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I don't know.. I still think it's pretty relevant. Underneath everything, the class system does still exist in some people's minds, as does jealousy and resentment - which is what this play really deals with.

Oh, Lady Margaret ~ you are naive

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One thing that really distracted me with this play was how misogynistic it felt. Even if Jimmy Porter felt he had a good reason to shout at the world why did the one he supposedly love have to take so much abuse about it. Yes, his wife had been spoiled and yes, her parents were 'the man' we'd say today, but the parts where he's waving around the letters from her mother and yelling about her correspondence with her I thought was pushing it. He doesn't have to sing praises to his in-laws but his wife did leave her home to be with him and she is the one who seems the more isolated, now he's upset because she corresponds with her parents? That would be considered the sign that you were with an abuser if it were now.

I kept wishing that Alison would run off with Cliff.

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Burton's character is just raging and flailing in this, making any accusastions that "the lower classes are basically animals" seem absolutely true. This was the final angry young man drama I needed to watch after having already seen Loneliness, Room at the Top, If.. etc.

I found watching this to be very miserable.

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This is a very unpleasant film indeed. Normally I'm drawn to dark dramas, but these people just seemed to wallow in it, without any insight. The only surprise was that no one committed suicide. This would probably work better on the stage, especially because Richard Burton is projecting to the cheap seats.

As for this being irrelevant now, I guess misery is eternal, and the working-class certainly hasn't made any progress since this film. But as for these small people and their small lives, I'll be happy to forget them.

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Talk about a character who communicated via monologue, actually a form of verbal abuse. I just wish Jimmy had applied himself to finding a solution to his problems instead of sprawling on the easy chair or bed in the flat, verbally abusing his wife. I wonder if Osbourne even saw it that way; believing, instead, that Jimmy's angry diatribes to his wife were a "normal" to express oneself in any era. The more personal way of asserting oneself, '70's and women beginning to fight back, were years away. First, society at large had to change.

Watching this film made me understand why the '60's had to happen. Alison and her father seemed to think sunny England was long gone and it may have been. But, just around the corner were the Youthquake, Swinging London, Cockneys becoming "in", Vidal Sassoon and seminal hairstyles, Twiggy and "The Face of 1966", Michael Caine and "Alfie", the great British films of the 1960's, Mary Quant and the miniskirt, "Blow-up" and fashion photographers, Jean Shrimpton, The Beatles, the Mersey sound, The Rolling Stones, Jimmy Page, The Kinks, LuLu, so many great ideas, attitudes and fashions coming from the lower classes of Jimmy and Cliff.

"Two more swords and I'll be Queen of the Monkey People." Roseanne

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Excellent post, Noir-It-All! It is often said that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, but I suspect this film (and stage play) were more John Osborne's perception of working-class desperation and rage rather than reality. Of course, even if this is an exaggeration, I believe it has a degree of truth.

It's interesting to watch a film like this and "Georgy Girl" or the original "Alfie" back-to-back and realize just how much things changed once London learned to swing. I only hope that Alison was able to hold on long enough to learn for herself -- and to enjoy it, in spite of herself, once it arrived.

The repression of the '50s produced a profound upheaval in art and society in the '60s throughout Britain and the United States. I'll leave it to others to debate the effects of this upheaval on future generations, but for those victimized by Jimmy's attitudes, it was absolutely necessary.

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Why, Thank you, WarpedRecord!

"Two more swords and I'll be Queen of the Monkey People." Roseanne

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It's downright astonishing to me that anyone in 1958 thought that Jimmy Porter was a character deserving of sympathy. He understands nothing and learns nothing during the course of the film, and the women go from being dumb to being pathetic. The only happy ending would involve Jimmy being shot dead by his wife.

If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive.

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Apparently this was shocking for its era - if so they were easily shocked! Audiences fainting at a woman asking a doctor for an abortion. Crikey they must have led sheltered lives.What were these 'angry young men' actually raging about? Themselves.

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This is a very unpleasant film indeed. Normally I'm drawn to dark dramas, but these people just seemed to wallow in it, without any insight


I wouldn't say without insight. Jimmy's rants were angry introspections of his feelings about society and his self-worth, wandering where it all went wrong for him.

I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.

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