Cinema: Up in the Depths

Life at the Top continues to follow the spoor of Joe Lampton, the scheming, snarling anti-hero of British Novelist John Braine’s Room at the Top. In this movie sequel, based on the sequel to the bestseller, nearly everything has changed except Laurence Harvey’s skintight performance as Joe.

Ten deadly years later, Joe finds that he has risen to the top only to hang there, skewered. The poor little rich girl whom he had to marry because she was pregnant is now a bored little rich bitch, played by Jean Simmons with just enough sting to paralyze a mate but not quite enough to kill the pain. “It isn’t what you expected, is it?” she says knowingly, then as an idle, needling afterthought: “Have you ever had a colored girl?” Joe answers no to both questions. What he’s got is a shaky executive job at his father-in-law’s wool factory in Yorkshire. His luxurious home is in his wife’s name, he drives a company car, and his patrician business associates are forever snubbing him.

When Joe comes home from a business trip to find his wife and his best friend in bed together, he meets the challenge to his honor by playing around a bit himself. The gamest girl he knows is a man-eating blonde TV commentator (Honor Blackman) who lives by a rule that might well raise obstacles for Joe: “Only one thing I ask from you—be honest.” Joe follows his mistress to Lon don to earn success on his own merit, but every thread of his being leads straight back home to Brown & Hether-sett’s woolens.

Life at the Top cannot quite make it alone either, and in one brief flashback Director Ted Kotcheff literally splices in a little Room for improvement—shots from the earlier film to establish nostalgia, most notably a tantalizing glimpse of Oscar Winner Simone Signoret retreating into the mist. A smoothly professional cast clips off the randy dialogue with an inexhaustible zest for every sign of moral decay in the life of a British provincial town. Yet a film as good as Room at the Top creates no valid curiosity about the further adventures of Joe Lampton, whose future was contained in his past. Lured to this steamy sequel, bombarded with reminders of its predecessor, audiences soon know exactly where they are—leagues away from the microcosmic Warley, Yorkshire, and no more than a stone’s throw from Peyton Place.