The L-Shaped Room

Before he directed "The Stepford Wives," Bryan Forbes helmed the big screen adaptation of a tale with a very different view of women: That they have the right, if not the duty, to stand up for themselves and make their own choices in life.

That's more or less the message of "The L-Shaped Room," the 1962 movie based on the novel by Lynn Reid Banks. Leslie Caron stars as Jane Fosset, a young French woman living in London and facing the prospect of life as a single mother. (If her name sounds a little too British for her nationality, that's probably because in the book she was British; as essayist Julie Kirgo writes in her liner notes, "...there is one school of thought that [the character] was cast here with a French actress to make her 'sordid' story more tolerable -- those French, don't you know.")

The story is set just as the world is changing, with young people challenging straight-laced notions that give cover to gossips and sexist street harassers while shoving ordinary people with messy lives to the sidelines. In one scene, Jane and her new beau, a struggling writer and downstairs neighbor named Toby (Tom Bell), are simply snuggling on the grass of a public park when they are confronted by a policewoman who takes their ease with one another as a form of licentiousness. (In point of fact, their mating dance is a slow and decorous affair, at least by modern standards.) When the two of them finally do sleep together, they can't help but be overheard by Johnny (a fresh-faced Brock Peters, just off his role in "To Kill A Mockingbird"), who dwells on the other side of a thin partition from Jane. His jealous response catches Jane by surprise; after all, Jane tells him, she and Toby haven't morphed into different people because they had sex, which, by the bye, is a perfectly natural human thing to do.

Her reasonable response to Johnny's rage hardly makes a dent, at least in the heat of the moment, but then again (as audio track commentators Kirgo, Nick Redman, and Lem Dobbs -- film scholars all -- explain), Johnny is probably intended to be gay. (The novel featured a gay character who Forbes, who also wrote the screenplay, seems to have folded into his version of Johnny.)

Another gay character crops up in the person of Mavis (Cicely Courtneidge), a superannuated actor and cat lady who, though never married, had a long-term life partner years ago. Jane surveys a photo the unspecified partner -- we never see who it is -- with a slight smile; "It takes all kinds," is Mavis' last word on the subject. No doubt for 1962 this was all quite daring, but it's a testament to Forbes' writing and direction, and the skill of the actors, that the scene still possesses a palpable tension when by all rights it ought to feel flat and extremely outdated.

The boarding house's other inhabitants are equally marginal, and marginalized. The landlady is a good time girl; there's an aging bachelor in the mix; and the basement apartment is shared by a pair of prostitutes, one of whom speaks no English and the other of whom is played by Patricia Phoenix. (On the audio commentary track Nick Redman speaks fondly of a time, years ago, when he worked with Phoenix.)

The gay, the lonely, the sexually 'immoral,' the unsuccessful and dispossessed... what better setting for a Christian message of inclusion and hope? That's here, along with a strong pro-choice sentiment that, in this case, involves an unmarried woman keeping her baby. Again and again, Jane encounters people who assume -- or advise -- that abortion is the preferred solution. Jane, however, has other ideas, and that's exactly what freedom is all about.

Douglas Slocombe ("Rollerball," the original "Indiana Jones" trilogy) oversees luminous black and white cinematography, which is given its due here with a 1080 p hi-definition transfer. There's not a lot for composer John Barry to score, but his incidental music appears on the signature Twilight Time isolated score track.

This release will appeal to those with an interest in British movies, especially of the "kitchen sink" social realism genre; as a snapshot of a moment in time, the film is a reminder of where we've come from... and where, if we're not careful, we might yet backslide into.

"The L-Shaoped Room"
Blu-ray
$29.95
https://www.twilighttimemovies.com/l-shaped-room-the-blu-ray