Dir: Ted Kotcheff | Cast: Laurence Harvey, Jean Simmons, Honor Blackman, Michael Craig | Drama 117’
Reviewed by Richard Chatten
Jack Clayton’s original film of John Braine’s novel took a lofty and censorious view of Laurence Harvey’s subordination of his nobler emotions in his desire to achieve success at any price.
By 1965 in John Schlesinger’s ‘Darling’ Harvey himself was now himself a member of the decadent society whose status Joe Lampton had simultaneously despised and aspired to; and still played by Harvey inevitably his victory had plainly been a pyrrhic one.
A cynical Donald Wolfit reappears from the original, while the charming and radiant Jean Simmons is a more than satisfactory substitute for Heather Sears as the personification of sacred love to Honor Blackman’s profane. @RichardChatten