CinemaLit: Look Back in Anger (1959)

February 3 – Look Back in Anger, 1959, 98 minutes, directed by Tony Richardson starring Richard Burton, Claire Bloom, and Mary Ure

Richard Burton stars as Jimmy, a disaffected shop vender in a Midlands town. Frustration at his dead end job and lack of opportunities lead him to mistreat his wife Alison (Mary Ure), who comes from the upper-classes and has not endured the deprivations known to Jimmy. Complications arise when Alison's friend Helena (Claire Bloom) comes to visit, with smoldering emotions eventually igniting. Richardson, who went on to directed the wildly successful 1963 British comedy Tom Jones, made his film debut here, having directed the original hit stage production of Look Back in Anger.

CinemaLit February 2023: The British New Wave

As the Mostly British Film Festival plays the Vogue Theatre this month in San Francisco, CinemaLit is screening four great films of the British New Wave: Look Back in Anger (1959), The Entertainer (1960), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962). From 1959 to 1963, British cinema came forth with a series of startlingly raw films portraying the struggles of the laboring classes in the Midlands and Northern England. Spare, diamond-hard, and deeply felt, these "kitchen sink dramas" were made on small budgets and directed by mavericks just beginning their careers, including Tony Richardson, Karel Reisz, John Schlesinger, and Bryan Forbes. The films hold up brilliantly sixty years later; their harsh judgments of wealth and social class haven't aged a day. Revel, too, in the powerhouse acting of four actors at the peak of their powers: Richard Burton (Look Back in Anger), Laurence Olivier (The Entertainer), Albert Finney (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning), and Tom Courtney (The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner). Combined, they embody the dispossessed and embittered forgotten men of austere postwar England as envisioned by John Osborne, Alan Sillitoe, Shelagh Delaney, and other screenwriters, novelists, and playwrights of the era.

Host or Publisher Mechanics' Institute