Look Back in Anger (1959 film) difference between Jimmy and Alison. The film and play are classic examples of the British cultural movement known as kitchen sink realism. The black-and-white film opens with a close-up on Jimmy Porter performing on trumpet in a crowded, smoky jazz club (titles over). Having finished to a round of applause, he goes over to his friend Cliff, sitting at a front row table but his friend waves him off in dumb-show, being more intent on winning the affections of a woman. (The real Chris Barber jazz band is visible in the background). Scenes of Jimmy walking home through the depressing
Look Back in Anger best remembered for, though, are Jimmy's tirades. Some of these are directed against generalised British middle-class smugness in the post-atomic world. Many are directed against the female characters, a very distinct echo of Osborne's uneasiness with women, including his mother, Nellie Beatrice, whom he describes in his autobiography "A Better Class of Person" as "hypocritical, self-absorbed, calculating and indifferent". Madeline, the lost love Jimmy pines for, is based on Stella Linden, the older rep-company actress who first encouraged Osborne to write. After the first production in London, Osborne began a relationship with Mary Ure, who played Alison; he divorced his