Room at the Top

The Misery of British Cinema II. Just like with other films of the "stream" of Kitchen Sink Realism/Free Cinema, we must not overlook their ambiguity (understood naturally from a historical perspective): they are quality films, no doubt, but rather "quality" than "films." In this film, it is possible to retrospectively observe the fate of British cinema - while in 1959 Breathless was created in France, Room at the Top was created in England. While the dialogues of Belmondo and Seberg appeared to some contemporary viewers as so thoughtless that they believed Godard invented them on the spot, the verbal exchanges of Harvey and Signoret and company are naturally deliberate, pointed, soaring... While in 1959, French audiences started learning to understand the story through editing, references to other films, and getting used to characters literally talking to the audience, understanding Seberg's mood rather than what she says by how she walks along the summer streets of Paris and turns her back to the camera, in the UK in 1959, people were still reliant on the dramatic-literary work of classical editing, "only" (although that is, of course, important) spiced up with new content (thus, a social critique of typical British life). At the time of the rise of new waves in cinema, the British fatefully lagged behind, and as a whole, today, they still cannot free themselves from the captivity of theater and literature. (30/04/2015)