Look Back in Anger

The play that defined a whole generation—and revolutionized British theatre in the process—became the landmark film Look Back In Anger, the attention-grabbing directorial debut from Tony Richardson built foursquare around a volcanic performance by the peerless Richard Burton. As prototypical "angry young man" Jimmy Porter, Burton relishes every syllable of his incendiary monologues in a film which catches the mood of a nation in a period of belated and painful social upheaval. Caught in a love-triangle between his upper-class wife (Mary Ure) and her best friend (Claire Bloom) while stuck in a dead-end market-stall job in a drab Midlands city, university graduate and aspiring jazz-musician Porter wastes no opportunity to vent his spleen against whatever target catches his fancy. Nigel (Quatermass) Kneale adapted John Osborne's original text into a downbeat but powerfully compelling character-study of a complex and articulate individual. An enduringly influential film nominated for four BAFTAs and a Golden Globe—the first of Burton's six Best Actor nods from Hollywood's foreign press association.