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 Hotel in Amsterdam" (1968) won "Evening Standard" Best Play of the Year awards. The latter play features three showbiz couples in a hotel suite, having fled a tyrannical and unpleasant movie producer, referred to as "K.L". John Heilpern confirms the rumor that "K.L" was in fact a portrait of Tony Richardson, seen through Osborne's eyes. Laurie, a screenwriter, a role created by Paul Scofield, is a self-portrait: Osborne at mid-career. John Osborne's plays in the 1970s included "West of Suez" which starred Ralph Richardson, "A Sense of Detachment", first produced at the Royal Court in 1972, and the disappointing "Watch