Movie Review: Room at the Top

Room at the Top is about a young man named Joe Lampton (Laurence Harvey). He is a World War II UK veteran who spent much of the war in a prison camp. The movie opens with him arriving at his new job in Warnley (I believe this is a fictional city in the UK). He is working at the Treasurer's Department for the city. Moving to Warnley is an upgrade for the young man as he previously grew up in the city of Dufton, which is a factory town while Warnley is a more vibrant city. He is an attractive young man and all the women in the office look at him with keen interest. They may have an interest in him, but he has no interest in them. Instead, his eyes turn to Susan Brown (Heather Sears). Why? Because her father is one of the wealthiest men in the city. She is involved in the theater and so he joins that theater group in order to gain her attention. The problem is that she is dating someone named Jack Wales (John Westbrook). Jack Wales is of the same social class as the Brown family and if the two marry there will be a combination of these two wealthy families. 

As Joe begins to gain Susan's attention, the Brown family goes about trying to figure out a subtle way to break up the potential couple. First, what appears to be a random job opportunity pops up for Joe, which would provide him opportunity for a solid career in accounting. The job so happens to be back in his hometown of Dufton. He learns by accident that the Brown family set him up for the job and so he turns it down. As that move failed, the Brown family sends Susan off to France. 

Movie Review: How Green Was My Valley

How Green Was My Valley is a 1941 movie that was nominated for 10 Oscars and won 5 of them. One of those victories was for Best Picture where it beat out such movies as Citizen Kane, The Maltese Falcon, Sergeant York, and Suspicion. The film is about the Morgan family who work the coal mines in Wales. The story is occasionally narrated by the youngest son Huw (Roddy McDowall) -- perhaps a decade or two after the events of the movie. The movie starts off with a positive tone. The father and working age brothers are all employed at the mines. Wages are collected by the mother for the betterment of the family as a whole. And the eldest son, Ivor (Patric Knowles) gets married to Bronwyn (Anna Lee). At the same time, there appears to be the start of a romance between the sister, Angharad (Maureen O'Hara), and the new preacher, Mr. Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon). 

That happiness doesn't last long. The mine owner cuts the wages due to what sounds like a recession. The workers go on strike. The father, Gwilym Morgan (Donald Crisp), opposes the strike and is ostracized by the community. The mother, Beth (Sara Allgood), and Huw fall into a frozen stream and suffer significant health consequences due to the exposure to the freezing temperatures. Angharad is courted by the mine owner's son and they marry -- even though she is still in love with the preacher. Ivor dies in a coal mining accident. Two of the other sons eventually get laid off from the mine and move to America. And as the movie ends, the father also dies in the mines.