The Last Refuge: "Room at the Top" (1959) and "Billy Liar" (1963)

"Ambition is the last refuge of the failure."

-Oscar Wilde

I have just watched back to back, without premeditation, two English films released within four years of each other about very similar characters who confront vastly different outcomes in life. The first, "Room at the Top" crept onto British screens with an "X" rating in 1959 when films by and about "Angry Young Men" were flooding into theaters, and the second "Billy Liar," was a whimsical reaction against those same type of films that took a hard look at socioeconomic differences through the prism of working-class characters.

Both films left me thinking (as all great films should). Which is worst: to want something for the wrong reasons, get it, and live to regret it or to want something for the right reasons and never get it?

It's a tough call. What do you think?


"Room at the Top" (1959, 118 min.) FULL