Look Back in Anger

Look Back in Anger (1956) is a John Osborne play and 1959 movie about a love triangle involving a jazz trumpet player, his frigid wife and her best friend.

Movie synopsis

The black and white film opens with a close up on Burton (as Jimmy Porter) playing an awesome lead trumpet in a crowded, smoky jazz club. Finishing to a vigourous round applause, the impoverished musician walks home alone. It is not until seven minutes into the film that the first lines of dialogue begin. He tried to talk with his friend Gary, sitting at a front row table, but his friend waved him off, being more intent on scoring with a blonde.

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Arriving home, he peeks in his sleeping wife's pocketbook and tries to interest her in making love, but she refuses to open her eyes. The next morning, with a train rattling by the open window, Jimmy wakes up walks into Gary's room. He complains of his wife's letters to mummy. After everyone's up, Jimmy tries to pick an argument with his wife. Gary tries to jolly him out of it, but horseplay leads to his wife's ironing board being knocked over, and she burns her arm.

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Jimmy and Gary go off to run their sweets stall in the market place, while the wife visits the doctor. She tells him her own carelessness caused her burn. The doctor asks whether her husband knows that she's pregnant. She asks if it's "too late to do anything about it" (clearly a reference to abortion), and the doctor indignantly rebuffs her question.

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