Powerful

Good concept, poorly executed.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

I've seen over thirty Richard Burton movies, and there really isn't any good reason to watch this one. Even if you particularly like his acting, all he does is shout cruelties for ninety minutes. And even if you particularly like Claire Bloom, she wears one deadpan expression for ninety minutes. There's just no point to Look Back in Anger, besides an intriguing title.A married couple doesn't get along, and for no explained reason a mutual male friend lives with them in their English flat. Also, for no explained reason, the male friend never stands up to Richard Burton when he berates his wife. And, it's never really explained why the two were married in the first place, or why they haven't thrown in the towel since whatever they have isn't working. Claire Bloom invites her actress girlfriend Mary Ure to stay with them for a couple of weeks, and even though Richard and Mary claim to hate each other, we can all guess what's going to happen. Figure that you've guessed correctly and rent Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? instead.

This film was based on John Osborne's very successful autobiographical play. When a press release of Osborne's 1956 play called him an 'angry young man,' this coined the phrase and started the movement.As the movie begins, we see Jimmy Porter (Richard Burton) with his trumpet jamming at a jazz club. This may be one of Jimmy's freeist and happiest moments in the whole movie, because here he is free to be rebellious, and the audience in the jazz club loves it and appreciates it. When he gets home to his cramped attic apartment, he must face his demons---life with his wife, Alison (Mary Ure) and their friend, Cliff (Gary Raymond), who cohabits the apartment with them and serves as sort of a peacemaker between them, just by his presence. As Jimmy rants, we realize that he is from the lower class and Alison is from the upper- middle class. Before they were married, Jimmy had to campaign hard against her family's disapproval in order to marry her. Jimmy's anger is not so much against Alison as it is against what she stands for by continuing to write letters to her mother. He hates to compete against Alison's family for her love. He wants her to make a decision between him or them, and Alison is unable to do it: reference in continually made to her as a fence sitter—unable to commit to one side or the other.For income, Jimmy and Cliff operate a sweet stall in a public market that is owned by Jimmy's friend, 'Ma' Tanner (Edith Evans). Ma makes an appearance to see how her investment is going. But, the symbol of evil petty middle-class values is best shown by the constant badgering from the market's inspector, Hurst (Donald Pleasence), who is always threatening to have them closed down for one violation or another. Next, we find out that Alison is pregnant and, temporarily, wants to abort the baby. She first tells Cliff about the pregnancy; Cliff urges her to tell Jimmy about the baby as soon as possible. But, before she can tell Jimmy, he learns that Alison's friend, Helena (Claire Bloom), is going to stay with them for a week while acting in a local play. Jimmy openly despises Helena. As tensions grow, Alison returns to live with her parents after Helena sends them a telegram to come and rescue her. When Cliff learns of this, he leaves Helena behind to give Jimmy the news about Alison's departure. Jimmy is angry because he is informed by a note that Alison left behind with Helena rather than in person. As far as Alison having a baby is concerned, he 'could care less' because he has been busy looking after Ma Tanner while she is dying. When Ma Tanner dies, he is angry because Alison doesn't think to send a letter of condolence or flowers to the grave site.After Alison leaves, Helena stays with Jimmy and Cliff for a while longer. Unlike Alison, Helena is up to Jimmy's anger; when he slaps her, she slaps back and the two of them fall in love. The chemistry between Burton and Bloom in this film--neither of which was in the original stage play—is electric. As Cliff notices their closeness, he tells Jimmy that he wants to strike out on his own and leave the business. As Helena and Jimmy are at the train station to say good bye to Cliff, Alison reappears and tells Helena she had lost the child. Feeling guilty, Helena leaves Jimmy, and Jimmy and Alison make up. In their happier moments in the movie, the two had compared themselves to a bear and squirrel. As the movie ends, they again use this comparison. Somehow, the loss of the child seems important in bringing them back together again. Now, Alison had learned the pain and uncertainty of life and death. Now. Alison is no longer sitting on the fence. And now, Jimmy knows that Alison understands his rage and its cause.

Richard Burton, the worst actor of all time, overacts like never before in this dated crapfest. Burton, a wooden film actor who just copied Laurence Olivier, shouts his way through the entire film as he always did. Despite being from a working class background he could never portray working class characters convincingly. As if that were not bad enough, at 33 he was far too old to play Jimmy Porter. They mention that Jimmy is only 25, well Burton looked early 40s due to his alcoholism and chain smoking. Such a pity that they had to cast a far too old Burton, a graduate of the shouting school of acting, instead of Kenneth Haigh, star of the original acclaimed West End version. At least Haigh would only have been 27 at the time of filming, easily able to pass for 25. The whole story is uninteresting, dated and irrelevant.

Interestingly, for a film celebrated for its unrelenting realism, 'Look Back in Anger (1958)' is entrenched in theatricality. From the compact cast, the cramped sets, and the verbose dialogue, I guessed (correctly, as it turned out) that Tony Richardson's film was surely adapted from a play. John Osborne's production of "Look Back in Anger" initially premiered in 1956 to considerable success, and the characteristic harshness of his writing, exposing the unpleasant underbelly of working-class life, spawned the phrase "angry young men" to describe Osborne and other British playwrights who explored similar themes. Richardson's film triggered what is often described as a British New Wave, a movement of important (or perhaps self-important) films that explored pressing political issues and, in particular, the social alienation borne from class distinction. Easily the best example I've come across so far is Jack Clayton's 'Room at the Top (1959),' which obviously followed in the footsteps of this picture. The film's strong, intimate cast includes Richard Burton, Claire Bloom (of Chaplin's 'Limelight (1952)'), Mary Ure, Gary Raymond and Donald Pleasence.Over the years, many films have explored the anger and prejudices of disturbed and alienated men. But, even in the most powerful of these – such as Scorsese's 'Taxi Driver (1976)' and 'Raging Bull (1980)' – the filmmaker distances himself from his characters' prejudices. 'Look Back in Anger' doesn't seem to do this. Whether it's Osborne's dialogue, or Burton's phenomenal execution, everything Jimmy Porter says comes across as a genuinely bitter attack on contemporary society. When Porter questions the worth of his wife, or cruelly disparages her middle-class parents, the attack seems to be coming from the author himself {my research tells me that Osborne's play was strongly autobiographical, based on his failed marriage to Pamela Lane – this offers some explanation for the apparent bitterness}. In fact, so venomous is Porter's tongue that wife Alison is afraid to reveal to him that she's pregnant, and, shockingly, he appears not to care, in any case. Only towards maternal-figure Mrs Tanner (Edith Evans) does he show genuine compassion, his hostility is only amplified by her passing.Richard Burton, however tied to the stage is his performance, nonetheless commands the screen in every scene. His anger is so pure and undiluted, made all the more shocking because he otherwise speaks with the eloquence of an educated and civilised man. If its dialogue is undoubtedly tied to the stage, then 'Look Back in Anger' achieves realism through its more cinematic traits. The film was photographed by Oswald Morris – a talented cinematographer who also worked with, among others, Stanley Kubrick, John Huston and Carol Reed – who exquisitely captures the shadowy decadence of working-class London. There's a grittiness to Porter's squalid surroundings, sometimes he almost seems trapped in a noirish urban backwater. Stylistically, the film closely resembles Lean's 'Brief Encounter (1945)' – probably because both have brilliant scenes set on a railway platform, amid the smoke of a idle locomotive. Subsequent "kitchen sink" dramas also owe their visual aesthetic to Morris' work here, just as British cinema owes its brief late-1950s revival to Osborne and Richardson.