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The L-Shaped Room [1962]
by Lynne Reid Banks, Bryan Forbes
from Optimum Home Entertainment
starring Leslie Caron, Anthony Booth, Brock Peters, Tom Bell, Pat Phoenix
directed by Bryan Forbes

Features:

• PAL

Editorial Review:

The L-Shaped Room, adapted by writer-director Bryan Forbes from Lynne Reid Banks' novel, unfolds in a dank, depressing London boarding house. Leslie Caron plays Jane Fosset, a 27-year-old French woman, down on her luck, who takes a room. There are bugs in her mattress. The taps drip. The landlady ("the lovely Doris") is a drunken, malicious busybody. Forbes doesn't paint the English in a flattering light. They're covetous, eccentric and xenophobic. "I never close my door to the nigs," Doris tells Fosset, as if to prove that she is no racist. When Fosset reveals that she's pregnant and unmarried, everybody turns against her. The one real friend Fosset makes is Toby (Tom Bell), an impoverished would-be writer who lives in the room downstairs. She starts an affair with him, but for all his protestations to the contrary, he too turns out to be moralistic and conservative--he can't accept the idea that she is having another man's baby.

Forbes' dialogue sometimes grates, the film risks running into a dead end (Fosset is stuck with nowhere to go and no prospects), but this is compelling fare all the same. Cameraman Douglas Slocombe (who went on to shoot Raiders of the Lost Ark) makes the boarding house seem as gloomy and oppressive as a Gothic mansion. Forbes doesn't sentimentalise at all. The London he portrays is nothing like the swinging, hedonistic city shown in later British movies of the 60s. --Geoffrey Macnab

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0

• Was This Ever So?
  I have not read the book (though my wife has). We watched this rather long film (well it seems long) and came to the conclusion that it was a bit forced, though I liked the contrast between the attitudes of the two girl tenants at the end, the one seeing all the oddballs or outsiders in the rented out house as individuals worth knowing, the other seeing them as people to avoid! Worth seeing once for a view of London circa 1961 --film was released '62)-- which seemed long ago to me who lived there (and... more info

• classic British cinema
  Optimum Films has given us the great gift of a beautiful, widescreen transfer of this outstanding film. The photography is stunning, the acting first-rate, and the story compelling. Peter Katin's soulful rendition of Brahm's Piano Concerto in D Minor accompanies, and complements, the touching story throughout.
  Leslie Caron is perfect as 27-year-old Jane, a young French woman who finds lodgings in a seedy London rooming house. Next door to her L-shaped attic room is Johnny, a West Indian jazz musician.... more info

• A disappointing take on the book
  Adapted from the book of the same name, Brian Forbes changes the English Jane Graham into the French Jane Fosset in order to allow for the morals of the time - it was understandable that an unmarried French woman might fall pregnant but it was felt that the audience would not feel sympathy for an English woman who had had sex outside of marriage. By changing this one issue, Forbes has altered much of the story. The main point of the book was the fact that Jane had slept with one man her whole life and was... more info

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