Look Back in Anger (1980 film) Look Back in Anger (1980 film) Look Back in Anger is a 1980 British film starring Malcolm McDowell, Lisa Banes and Fran Brill, and directed by Lindsay Anderson and David Hugh Jones. The film is based on John Osborne's play "Look Back in Anger". "Look Back in Anger" is about a love triangle involving an intelligent but disaffected young man Jimmy Porter (Malcolm McDowell), his upper-middle-class, impassive wife Alison Porter (Lisa Banes), and her snooty best friend Helena Charles (Fran Brill). Cliff (Raymond Hardie), an amiable Welsh lodger, attempts to keep the peace. Lindsay Anderson, who had previously worked with
John Osborne he wrote, "It is the best young play of its decade". Harold Hobson of "The Sunday Times" called Osborne "a writer of outstanding promise". During production, the married Osborne began a relationship with Mary Ure, and would divorce his wife, Pamela Lane, to marry Ure in 1957. The play became an enormous commercial success, transferring to the West End and to Broadway, touring to Moscow and a film version was released in May 1959 with Richard Burton and Mary Ure in the leading roles. The play turned Osborne from a struggling playwright into a wealthy and famous angry young man