Room at the Top

Room at the Top is an award-winning 1959 British film. Wikipedia says, "The film was critically acclaimed and marked the beginning of Jack Clayton's career as an important director." It stars Laurence Harvey as an ambitious young accountant whose social climbing has him aiming at wedding Heather Sears, the daughter of the richest man around, while he's falling in love with Simone Signoret, the unhappy wife of a philanderer. Donald Wolfit, Donald Houston and Hermione Baddeley are also in the movie.

This is a tragic story of people trapped by what they thought they wanted most.

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BFI ScreenOnline says, "No other new wave film takes on the class system as boldly. It offers a complex analysis of class warfare that challenges the accepted state of things in Britain at the time." FilmReference.com says,

The success of Room at the Top set in motion a new genre of British cinema, the "kitchen sink drama" with its emphasis on social realism. Over the next five years such strong examples as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and This Sporting Life won international acclaim.

The Guardian has a bit of information. TCM has an overview. Rotten Tomatoes gives it 100%.