Adapted from the novel Room at the Top by John Braine
Ambitious, young Joe Lampton moves from his small, poor hometown to a more affluent place, where he hopes to rise to a higher class. It looks like his dreams might come true when he meets beautiful Susan Brown, the 19-year-old daughter of an extremely wealthy business owner. True, she has a boyfriend, but Joe sees that as only a minor setback. Then Joe falls for older, sexy, married Alice Aisgill, which becomes more of a major setback.
I was not looking forward to revisiting this story, since when I watched it before during my Best Actress project, I did not particularly enjoy the film. After reading the book and re-watching the movie, I must say that I think the book is significantly better, which is odd because on the whole it's a relatively faithful adaptation. However, some of the seemingly minor changes end up altering the characters and story in surprisingly drastic ways, at least in my interpretation.
One of the biggest differences is in the way the story is told. The book is written in first person, from the perspective of Joe Lampton ten years later. The story depicts a crucial turning point in his life, and several times throughout the book he remarks on the way he could have done things differently. He sounds as though he's ultimately happy with the decisions he made and where he ended up in life, but with a touch of nostalgia, and even perhaps a hint of regret. The film, on the other hand, gives us nothing from future Joe: no scenes of his later life, no voice-over narration, nothing. The film adds a scene at the end that was merely implied in the book, but it gives a more bleak picture of his future than the book does. I think the story greatly benefits from reflections made by a Joe who has distanced himself from its events. The first time I watched the movie I couldn't fathom how Joe could live with himself; the book makes that a lot clearer.
Partly because of the narration, the book version of Joe is significantly more understandable and likable than the film version. It helps that he's justifying his own actions, but there's also something else that may seem small but makes all the difference: in the book he loves Susan; in the movie he doesn't. Of course, in both versions it's clear he loves Alice more, but even in that they differ because the movie makes his preference more about sex than love. Skip the rest of this paragraph if you don't want spoilers. Basically, in both versions, Joe has a passionate affair with Alice, which starts as a friends with benefits arrangement, but turns into love. They get to the point where, after a beautiful vacation together, Alice is about to ask her husband for a divorce, when Joe changes his mind and marries Susan instead. This decision is influenced by the fact that Susan is pregnant with his child, after they slept together once. Here's the difference: in the book, Joe only sleeps with Susan after he's determined that he's not going to marry Alice. At first he stops seeing Susan for awhile, then has his vacation with Alice, and then his friend is like, "Dude, you don't want to marry someone who cheats on her husband, oh and btw she had an affair with that guy Susan was dating, and probably lots of other people." So he decides to go back to Susan, and only after that is their relationship consummated. True, he could have handled the situation better (he doesn't officially break up with Alice right away), but it's understandable. Compare that to the movie, in which he sleeps with Susan before his vacation with Alice. And then, I mean, it's not super explicit, but he's basically like, "Wow, she's terrible at sex compared to Alice," and that's when he sets up the vacation. And then he decides he wants to be rich so he's going to marry Susan instead, especially once he finds out she's pregnant. To me, this makes him way more of a jerk in the movie than in the book.
Naturally there are several other changes. Joe has a close friend named Charles, who in the book is from his hometown and mainly shows up in flashbacks, but in the movie is a new friend from the new town. The movie adds a whole section about Susan's father trying to get Joe a job back in his hometown so he'll leave Susan alone; in the book he doesn't put in that much effort to thwart Joe. But none of these other changes bothered me as much as switching the order of his affairs to make him more of a jerk. Maybe the movie was trying to show that cold ambition can't make you happy? Or maybe the screen writer got a different picture of Joe from the novel than I did? Either way, I'm kind of glad I read the book, since it gave me an entirely different perspective on the story.
Whew, the 1950s sure took me a long time to get through! The 1960s will begin with Elmer Gantry, based on the novel by Sinclair Lewis, so stay tuned.
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