Word: juliene
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Room at the Top. A tragicomedy of Angry Young Manners about a Julien Sorel of the welfare state. Sometimes embarrassingly close to caricature, it remains one of the best British pictures in years...
...climber's position is not so much his own fault as that of society. And some of society's offenders appear more sharply in this light than they do in the book. The gruff nature of M. de Renal, for one, is brilliantly emphasized, providing a clear motive for Julien's well meditated social ascent. Then, too, the seduction scenes are fine stuff, exhibiting some well coordinated pussyfooting from bedroom to bedroom...
...Mole's admonition to his daughter and Julien, "Don't be so romantic, you are both fools," is all too apt. There is a limit to the number of sighs, passionate leers, and little boy looks that even the French can get by with. There is also a limit to an audience's toleration of the naturally objectionable Julien, made even more objectionable by 137 minutes of technicolor...
...movie's concentration on the tragedy of it all, its insistence on showing Julien to be a maligned martyr, takes all the sharpness from the story; the movie-made transformation of Julien into a hero of almost homeric proportion destroys Stendahl's original theme. Even Danielle Darrieux's fine acting cannot detract from the fact that The Red and The Black is not meant to be a colossal soap opera...
...cannot cast aspersions upon Gerard Phillipe's portrayal of Julien. Its lugubrious, studied quality is well in line with the movie's tone. The technicolor is, perhaps, the finest feature of the film, making quite clear that the movie is steeped in symbolism. Red and Black come off nicely in color, but, unfortunately, the director seems to think that such visual imagery can make up for more sophisticated dramatic devices...