Look Back in Anger
by Tony Richardson
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DVD details
Actor: Claire Bloom, Edith Evans, Gary Raymond, Mary Ure, Richard BurtonDirector: Tony Richardson
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 100 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-12-11
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
DVD Reviews of Look Back in Anger
DVD Review: Complexity and cruelty a la Richard Burton
Summary: 5 Stars
Had read this dark play which was excellent - full of cutting, witty dialogue and complex characters. These actors brought it to life and did it proud. Flawless acting by all. A must for Richard Burton fans.DVD Review: awful
Summary: 2 Stars
This film is full of problems. The first problem is that Richard Burton is horribly miscast as the lead. He is too old for the part, doesn't have the right speaking voice for the part and comes across as whiny.
The second problem is the play itself. The play wants to be all socialist, proletarian and giving it to the middle classes. But in the end what its about is the middle classes slumming and feeling sorry for themselves. Its difficult to find much sympathy for that. There is nothing likeable about Jimmy. It might have worked if Jimmy was actually working class, didn't have the middle-class connections and was a frustrated person with no way out. But as it is, there is no real value in listening to a big baby wallow in self-pity for two hours.
The other thing thing thats really bad about the piece is the relationship between Jimmy and "wife". Its flat-out abusive. Jimmy tries hard to cut her off from the outside world including her parents. While the play tries to make it a class issue, it comes across far more as Jimmy wanting to dominate and control her in every way. She is to be reduced to a prop that listens to his self-pity monologues.
In the end there is nothing political or rebellious about what Jimmy is. Jimmys have always existed. Subtract the intellecutal pretensions and he is the typical wife-beating self-pitying drunk. The war or losing the empire or any other historical excuse people want to come up with doesn't really change what Jimmy is.
DVD Review: Look Back in Anger
Summary: 5 Stars
Based on John Osborne's excoriating play, Tony Richardson's "Look Back in Anger" burst onto the screen in 1958 with piercing dialogue reflecting the stultifying state of the British lower classes. Richard Burton (in his prime) is electric as Jimmy, imbuing the malcontent with his own dark, scathing intensity. And Richardson evokes the Britain of cold-water flats and endless drizzle with a grim authenticity. Look for veteran stage actress Dame Edith Evans playing Mrs. Tanner, Jimmy's surrogate mother, and the only woman he trusts.DVD Review: That's Acting
Summary: 5 Stars
There are great performances by many great actors. but Burton's portrayal of Jimmy Porter is in a class by itself----even with a stellar supporting cast Burton is impossible to catch and even the audience needs to hang on to keep up with the pace. One of the most memorable screen performances in the history of cinema.DVD Review: interesting but overrated
Summary: 3 Stars
This is interesting as a period piece. The interest is not, however, in the somewhat untypical and sometimes unbelievable personalities portrayed, as in the streets, the houses, the clothes and some of the attitudes depicted. For example the class warfare, racial attitudes, and the fact that both Porter's wife and her actress friend, for all their sense of superiority towards Porter and the lower orders, (Porter acts similarly, with his own reverse snobbery) both easily and unquestioningly assume the fifties' feminine roles of ironing and folding clothes, and making meals. The children's games and demeanor are also typical of the times portrayed.
Both Porter and his wife are somewhat typical of their social class, although Porter is far more poetic in his verbal expression than anyone I ever knew back then, and far more emotional. He is domineering, controlling, and egotistical; he has a chip on his shoulder. His wife is unemotional, cold, snobbish, and unfeeling. It is no surprise that they don't get on.
He is too self-centred and doesn't enquire as to his wife's thoughts and feelings; he is too busy describing his own state. He does see that his wife lacks any strong feelings of her own, is merely unthinkingly conventional, and is too easily swayed by others,especially her folks and her friend. She is unhappy and unloved by him, but is all too ready to run away from the situation, and have her unborn child aborted (she doesn't abort because the doctor indirectly warns her not to). She is unwilling even to go with her husband to see his dying "ma" although he tells her he needs her to.
Porter is, like most of us I suspect, too willing to see his own imagined virtues and the weaknesses of others. This is good for the ego but very bad for human relations.
In the end they each realize their own faults. He sees that he is actually "slightly satanic" for example, and overcritical, and she sees that she is too vulnerable, dependent, and emotionally undeveloped. It takes a tragic event to bring them together. Things work out quite well in the end; they seem to each learn something valuable but much of the dialogue is stinted and unconvincing. All actors and actresses do a good job with the material provided.
Description of Look Back in Anger
OscarĀ(r) nominee* Richard Burton delivers a passionate performance, and Mary Ure, ClaireBloom, Gary Raymond and Edith Evans give exciting stand-out portrayals (Los Angeles Times)in this powerful and engrossing motion picture (Cue) that bristles with brilliant dialogue (The Hollywood Reporter) and raw human emotion. Rage! His eyes blaze with it and his bodyseethes with it. Jimmy Porter is a man consumed by anger, and every moment he spends in the rank, suffocating squalor of the English factory town that entraps him, propels him closer and closer towards self-annihilation. But Jimmy's savage cruelty is not limited to himself. He also hurts the ones he lovesagain and again. And this time, he's about to commit an act so brutal, so destructive, that his wife Alison, her best friend Helena, and even Jimmy himself may not be able to survive! *Actor: The Robe (1953), Becket (1964), The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1965), Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf (1966), Anne Of The Thousand Days (1969), Equus (1977); Supporting Actor: My Cousin Rachel (1952)Richard Burton was riding high in grandiose roles in Hollywood and on Broadway when he returned to Britain to portray trumpet-playing social dropout Jimmy Porter in Tony Richardson's adaptation of John Osborne's groundbreaking 1956 play. Burton's Jimmy works in a public market "sweet stall" where he rubs shoulders with the working class with a condescending air, while he takes out his contempt of bourgeois complacency at home on his spiritually whipped wife (a numb-looking Mary Ure) and her best friend (Claire Bloom). Burton is too old for the part of the self-loathing college grad, but his performance simmers with frustration and misdirected rage that masks the sad, vulnerable underside to his misanthropic swipes. The film became the opening volley in Britain's "New Cinema," a new wave of young directors, working-class themes, and social-realist style. --Sean Axmaker
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