Room at the Top - Opening Scene & Plot

Ruthless young working-class Englishman Joe Lampton takes a job in a North Country village controlled by millionaire Mr Brown. Lampton resents Brown's class consciousness and vows to rise to the top by wooing the millionaire's daughter, Susan. Meanwhile he has an affair with Frenchwoman Alice Asgil. Though he regards Asgill as a mere self-gratifying conquest, she takes their romance seriously enough to kill herself when Harvey impregnates Field. When he leaves the chapel after marrying the millionaire's daughter Lampton sees that his "smart" marriage, coupled with the guarantee of a fabulous business career, has been attained at the cost of his soul. Based on the novel by John Braine, Room at the Top was one of the most successful films of the British angry-young-man school.