Best Actress: Simone Signoret
You know that scene from Seinfeld, where Elaine's at the movies watching The English Patient and she's finally had enough and she stands up and shouts "Quit telling your stupid story about the stupid desert, and just die already!"?
That's how I felt watching Room at the Top.
Room at the Top is filled with boring, unlikable characters—except for Susan Brown (played by Heather Sears) and Alice Aisgill (played by Simone Signoret)—and it's nearly two hours long with minimal score and so much dryness that it's almost unwatchable. If I ever do this grand rewatch again, I'm watching out of order so I can watch this first and get it out of the way. Followed by The Song of Bernadette.
What's this even about? It swept through the Oscars in 1959, nominated for a slew of awards and winning two; it had serious critical acclaim and was one of the top films at the end of the year. Posh unlikable people who hate each other, sticking to a rigid class system, and Laurence Harvey plays the outsider that upsets the apple cart when he moves to town, but then you find out he's not some hero, he's just as terrible as the rest of them.
Again, this doesn't apply to Susan or Alice. Susan is the charming, virginal girl who Laurence Harvey sets his eyes on. Only she's got a boyfriend, and her parents don't like Laurence because he's not from the same class as the Browns. He pursues her anyway and then loses interest when he finally 'catches' her (if you catch my meaning). Meanwhile, Alice, an unhappy housewife of an emotionally abusive upper class husband, embarks on an affair with Laurence Harvey and that love shatters her.
I can understand why Simone Signoret won an Oscar, because it's a very internal performance, but my God, this film and just about everything in it is awful. I haven't seen too many of her films, but I hope she was in better stuff than this.
I would have voted for Doris Day, unapologetically. She's perfect in Pillow Talk, and yes, it's one of my favourite films, so I'm biased, but it's such a wonderfully comedic performance and comedy is so rarely rewarded and so difficult to pull off. Suddenly, Last Summer is a heavy movie but Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor are both wonderful in it. And Audrey's performance in The Nun's Story is so close to perfect, and the one that her family feels is the closest to who she was as a person, that it would've been a perfect win.
DID I LIKE ROOM AT THE TOP? No.
Did you like Room at the Top? What are your thoughts on Simone Signoret's Oscar win?
Keep up with all my Rewatching the Best Actresses posts here.
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