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The L-Shaped Room More at IMDbPro »

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22 reviews in total

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29 out of 30 people found the following review useful:
Odd, life-like characters--rich, textured script, 14 July 2005

Author: garlinda-1 from United States

The characters in the oddly appealing drama are so deliciously flawed and the texture is so utterly British art. Leslie Caron is underrated as a dramatic actor--having made a name for herself in musicals--but she shines in this one. Her performance is reminiscent of the character she played in "The Subterraneans." She is perfect as the tortured free-spirit who stumbles. Another standout is Brock Peters. You feel the closeness of his room when he is lying in bed, talking to Jane through the wall. In fact, the whole boarding house feels real, seedy and full of dashed hopes. You ache for the pain and loneliness each person on the

house endures--I felt myself like a resident in this menagerie. The direction is taut, spare and real. I would have liked to have learned more about Toby's background, what drove him to this place. But I suppose a good film is supposed to leave a place for the viewers imagination.

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27 out of 30 people found the following review useful:
A truly touching performance by Leslie Caron, 8 October 2004

Author: snoozer1 from Sydney, Australia

I first saw this film when I was I'm my early teens and for some reason it always stuck with me. Some 30yrs later, I watched it again last night and was awestruck by the performances in this fine fine film.

Leslie Caron was nominated for an Oscar for her role and won the Golden Globe and BAFTA for her performance .. and rightly so. Such a touching, understated delivery that will have you too fall in love with her character Jane.

It's hard to believe I am only the 2nd user to comment on this forgotten gem. Films like this really illustrate the dire state of motion picture making these days. They sure don't make em like they used to folks.

Available on DVD, unfortunately not in it's original aspect ratio. Perhaps one day someone will release it in wide screen to truly appreciate the gritty black & white photography.

Highly recommended .. a flawless film throughout !

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22 out of 22 people found the following review useful:
Avoids every pitfall..., 9 February 2005

Author: Michael Open from Belfast, NI

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This was the first 'grown-up' (guess these days you can't use the word 'adult' as you should be able to) film I remember seeing. I put the profoundly moving effect it had on me down to my tender (15) years. So after around 42 years, I saw it again this week - I had reason to screen it for my Film Studies class... and it's still quite wonderful.

At the centre is an earthy and moving story of the central character, Jane's, single pregnancy. But Jane is not a scatter-brained bimbo who stumbled into pregnancy, she is a sophisticated 27-year-old French woman, whose virginity was becoming burdensome. But this is the late-50s and social attitudes to single pregnancy are wholly different from those of today.

The film details Jane's 'go it alone' strategy, as she moves into a grotty boarding house occupied by a bunch of unremarkable misfits. Though this 'kitchen sink' drama seems, for much of its length like an 'issue' film, it is, ultimately, triumphantly not. There is a black trumpeter (Brock Peters) who doesn't experience racism, and nearly destroys Jane's budding relationship through his judgemental moral attitudes. There is an ageing lesbian music hall artist (Cicely Courtneige) who isn't ostracised. There is a prostitute (Patricia Phoenix) who doesn't have a heart of gold, or an exploitative pimp.

In other words, this is a moral tale that refuses to preach. And at the centre of this is the curious and heart-warming theme of all of the well-meaning people (well, some of them are well-meaning) who Jane meets who want to help her abort her baby.

Our interest is, for much of the film centred on the relationship between Toby (penniless writer) and Jane, a relationship that we will to succeed. But in the end, it (probably, as the ending is to some extent inconclusive) is not this relationship that we treasure from this film, but the sense, made, oh so movingly, in the final scene, that Jane has, through her hardship and the friendship of people whom she would previously have dismissed, become a much fuller person living in this hovel than she could ever have become in the cosy bourgeois bosom of her parents.

For this reason, and others, this is a truly subversive work. No wonder it left so great an impression on me, at the tender age of fifteen, living in my council flat with my very respectable parents in leafy Sevenoaks...

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17 out of 18 people found the following review useful:
Viva Brahms!, 31 August 2006

Author: piktor7778 from Santa Monica, California

I was a tender 14 years old in 1962, when I accompanied my mentor (my high school Spanish teacher) to an art house movie theater in Greenwich Village to see this film. My only previous encounter with Leslie Caron had been in the wonderfully entertaining film "Gigi". I must say, this two hour spectacle of unrelieved misery came as quite a shock to me. I left the theater thinking I had just seen the most depressing film I had ever seen in my life. And yet...I loved it! In fact, I felt very grown up at having survived it. This would not have been possible without the aid of the movie's soundtrack, Brahm's Piano Concerto No.1, which my astonished ears heard for the first time that evening. I've been in love with that piece--and with Brahms--ever since.

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19 out of 22 people found the following review useful:
Forgotten, but marvelous, 21 June 1999
Author: Patsy-9 from Calgary, AB

It's a shame this film has been all but forgotten. It's an excellent drama and character study, and features a career best performance from Leslie Caron, as an unwed pregnant French woman at a London boarding house. Though they all want her to get an abortion for various reasons, she refuses, and this forces them all to emerge from their shells and become a framework of friendship and love. The ending is sad, and just about perfect. The fact that time has neglected it is a true shame.

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12 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
All human life is here, 27 June 2006

Author: ianlouisiana from United Kingdom

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

The camera follows a well-dressed attractive young woman through the down-at-heel back streets of west London.It is almost a ghetto,although the word is not currently in use.She is clearly out-of-place amongst the peeling paintwork and scruffy pavements.She is referring to a piece of paper and it soon becomes clear that she is flat-hunting.As she crosses the street into brilliant sunshine there is a huge poster on the wall advertising "The News of the World"."All human life is here" it says. It is 1963,dogs outnumber cars in the street,the CND is on the march,two shillings will buy you lunch(called dinner) at the corner cafe,Kennedy and MacMillan are the Bush and Blair of the day.It is the sixties but no one has realised it yet. Tony Blair's future father-in-law has the first lines of dialogue in "The L-shaped room".Perhaps rather old for a "youth",he tries to engage the girl in conversation but fails to hold her attention and throws down his cigarette in annoyance(an extravagant gesture in 1963),blithely unaware of his destiny. The girl is French and pregnant,she has come to England to have her baby in secret then return home.She finds a room in a run-down house owned by Miss Avis Bunnage-no stranger to playing landladies.Her fellow lodgers are Mr Tom Bell'an unpublished writer,Mr Brock Peters a jazz trumpeter and a "little bit bent" according to Mr Bell,the wonderful Miss Cicely Courtneidge as a former Music Hall entertainer and Miss Pat Pheonix,a working girl."All human life is here"indeed.And all the ingredients for a cornucopia of clichés which,marvellously,the writer and director Mr Bryan Forbes manages to avoid by coaxing performances far beyond the call of duty from everyone concerned.In the case of Miss Leslie Caron a performance that was rightfully nominated for an Oscar. Her strength and inner beauty push the film through its occasional longeurs and she is obviously far too good for Mr Tom Bell's hypocritical bitter and twisted would-be novelist. There is a lovely turn from Mr Emlyn Williams as a slimy doctor and Miss Nanette Newman makes her presence felt as the girl who takes over Miss Caron's L-shaped room right at the end. Back in the day...I was 22 years old the last time I saw this film and as cynical and world -weary as only a know-nothing 22 year old can be. Mistaking sentiment for sentimentality I disliked it.43 years on ,rather ashamed at my folie de jeunesse I applaud "The L-shaped Room" as a film made with a love for humanity,its strengths,weaknesses and contradictions,diversities and small tragedies.Thank you Mr Forbes.

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12 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
My brief review of the film, 27 September 2005
Author: sol- from Perth, Australia

A very unusual but also very compelling and fascinating film, there is little given plot to it, with events occurring without any warning, and this actually makes it rather exciting as one never knows exactly what to expect from it. The directing work by Forbes is simply beautiful, with attention to shadows, lighting and camera angles, plus some effective close-ups. The extent of the unpredictability is a little over-the-top, and it is not the most satisfying film out there, especially at a rather generous two-hour length. However, for something different for a change, this is top quality film-making, helped out also by an Oscar nominated performance by Leslie Caron, who is dazzlingly believable in the main role.

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14 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
Long-lasting impressions, 25 February 2006
Author: Snowbird121969 from United States

I first saw this movie when I was eleven years old, and have never been able to get it out of my mind. I'm glad to see that it hasn't been completely forgotten. I've just ordered the DVD, and I'm anxious to see if it is as poignant to me at fifty-four as it was when I was eleven. There are only one or two scenes that I can actually vividly remember, but I'd say that's pretty impressive after forty-three years! I do remember how I felt when I left the movie-house... life is not easy, some decisions are forever, the way can be rife with disappointments, but if you are honest and open with yourself and others, there will be a firm foundation of strength in your relationships that can support you through anything.

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11 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
A gem—the movie that plays most often in my mind, 17 October 2006

Author: allin2 from Canada

If I were asked to name my second favourite film I would have to consider many; my favourite is an easy choice—The L-Shaped Room. As a teenager I saw it on its first release, then four times soon after. Bryan Forbes has crafted this film from a rather maudlin novel by Lynne Reid Banks; it becomes, in his hands, quite a different story—a work of art. Leslie Caron, although uniformly fine in all her films, has never been better than she is here. The supporting actors (and there are many) all give sensitive, human performances. The evocative score (parts of the first movement of the First Piano Concerto by Brahms) is a consummate fit with the narrative. The result of this collaboration of sources and talents is a restrained, perfect tapestry that depicts the human condition. The L-Shaped Room has no flaws—none.

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10 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
The effect of the incidental music, 27 July 2006
Author: gill_shave from United Kingdom

I saw this film first when I was twenty and, for me, it summed up all the anguish of being young, female and alone in London. The performances are magnificent, and at the time, I found Tom Bell to be quite attractive. I later went off him when he was successively portrayed as a seedy villainous type. The thing which completely mesmerised me at the time was the music (Brahms First Piano Concerto). I haven't read any other comments about the music and I am interested to know if anyone else was as affected by it as I was. It is, of course, a fabulous piece but this was my first introduction to it. I was a music student in 1962 but in common with many other music students of the time, not very knowledgeable. I immediately became very passionate about this piece.

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