The camera follows a well-dressed attractive young woman through the down-at-heel back streets of west London.It is almost a ghetto,although the word is not currently in use.She is clearly out-of-place amongst the peeling paintwork and scruffy pavements.She is referring to a piece of paper and it soon becomes clear that she is flat-hunting.As she crosses the street into brilliant sunshine there is a huge poster on the wall advertising "The News of the World"."All human life is here" it says. It is 1963,dogs outnumber cars in the street,the CND is on the march,two shillings will buy you lunch(called dinner) at the corner cafe,Kennedy and MacMillan are the Bush and Blair of the day.It is the sixties but no one has realised it yet. Tony Blair's future father-in-law has the first lines of dialogue in "The L-shaped room".Perhaps rather old for a "youth",he tries to engage the girl in conversation but fails to hold her attention and throws down his cigarette in annoyance(an extravagant gesture in 1963),blithely unaware of his destiny. The girl is French and pregnant,she has come to England to have her baby in secret then return home.She finds a room in a run-down house owned by Miss Avis Bunnage-no stranger to playing landladies.Her fellow lodgers are Mr Tom Bell'an unpublished writer,Mr Brock Peters a jazz trumpeter and a "little bit bent" according to Mr Bell,the wonderful Miss Cicely Courtneidge as a former Music Hall entertainer and Miss Pat Pheonix,a working girl."All human life is here"indeed.And all the ingredients for a cornucopia of clichés which,marvellously,the writer and director Mr Bryan Forbes manages to avoid by coaxing performances far beyond the call of duty from everyone concerned.In the case of Miss Leslie Caron a performance that was rightfully nominated for an Oscar. Her strength and inner beauty push the film through its occasional longeurs and she is obviously far too good for Mr Tom Bell's hypocritical bitter and twisted would-be novelist. There is a lovely turn from Mr Emlyn Williams as a slimy doctor and Miss Nanette Newman makes her presence felt as the girl who takes over Miss Caron's L-shaped room right at the end. Back in the day...I was 22 years old the last time I saw this film and as cynical and world -weary as only a know-nothing 22 year old can be. Mistaking sentiment for sentimentality I disliked it.43 years on ,rather ashamed at my folie de jeunesse I applaud "The L-shaped Room" as a film made with a love for humanity,its strengths,weaknesses and contradictions,diversities and small tragedies.Thank you Mr Forbes.

This gritty little film is the victim of it's star's glitz. Leslie Caron has been identified with many classic films, but they tend to be musicals ("An American in Paris", "Lili, "Gigi"). Occasionally she is recalled for a dramatic performance - but it is usually "Fanny" which is pointed to, because the cast there is full of named stars (Boyer, Chevalier, and Buchholz). But her second Oscar nomination (after one for "Lili") was for the role of Jane Fossett in "The L-Shaped Room". While "Fanny" is set in a colorfully shot Marseilles and environs, "The L-Shaped Room" is set in the mean streets and rooming houses of grimy London districts. It is shot too in black and white. This makes the sadness of the story all the more intense, and helped make Caron's performance here possibly the best she ever gave in an English speaking film. As for the cast here, only two (Cecile Courtneidge as "Mavis" and Emlyn Williams as "Dr. Weaver") had reputations on par with Cevalier and Boyer in stage and screen work, and a third (Brock Peters as "Johnny", the Anglo - Caribbean who is the neighbor of Jane) is better recalled for his smaller part of the defendant that Gregory Peck tries to save in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.

"The L-Shaped Room" is about Jane, a Frenchwoman who comes to England to get away from her puritanical and harsh parents in France, in order to have a child she got from a one night stand with an actor she met on one occasion. She checks into a boarding house (on the top floor - attic rooms) run by Doris (Avis Brunnage). Initially Jane plans to have the baby aborted - and she got the name and address of a Harley Street specialist Dr. Weaver. But the self-satisfied Weaver is so sure of himself (he knows all the answers from his patients, and he knows how to steer the patient to the story facts he needs to know to protect himself from prosecution for giving abortions, that he turns off Jane even before she realizes his price (100 guineas in 1962 - about two thousand dollars today with inflation rates). Caron tells off the amazed Weaver (Williams just can't believe this one is not behaving like the other unwed mothers and taking orders), and tells him she is now convinced to have the child.

The film follows Caron's interaction with the other people in the boarding house, including Doris, Mavis (a one time West End headliner), Sonia (Patricia Phoenix) and Jane II (Verity Edmet) - two prostitutes, Toby (Tom Bell) - a struggling writer, and Johnny. In the course of her pregnancy she gets to see the secrets in most of their lives, in particular Mavis (a decent woman, who had a secret lover who died), and Toby, with whom Jane falls in love. But the pregnancy becomes a major factor in Jane's sexual/emotional tie to Toby. Will it derail their love or not?

Caron is intense in the film, whether telling off Williams, or trying to come to an understanding with Bell. Without over-acting she does make one see a woman who has been deserted by everyone in a moment of need, but determined not to destroy what can be the best thing in her life up until now. The film observes her decision and how it pans out, and how the rest of the world accepts it, or rejects it, or just passes it by.

"The L-Shaped Room" has never been a very popular film. My suspicion is that in a world where the issue of who has the right to have an abortion, and the right of the woman to choose, is so touchy to so many people, the fact that the abortion method is thrown away just not really popular with many modern audiences. Like it's contemporary film, LOVE WITH A PROPER STRANGER, despite the well produced movie results, the message against abortion (even if thoroughly understandable) is just not acceptable in many quarters as a solution to the problem. It so, the movie audiences at revival houses are missing one fine film and a grade-"A" performance by Caron here.

A very unusual but also very compelling and fascinating film, there is little given plot to it, with events occurring without any warning, and this actually makes it rather exciting as one never knows exactly what to expect from it. The directing work by Forbes is simply beautiful, with attention to shadows, lighting and camera angles, plus some effective close-ups. The extent of the unpredictability is a little over-the-top, and it is not the most satisfying film out there, especially at a rather generous two-hour length. However, for something different for a change, this is top quality film-making, helped out also by an Oscar nominated performance by Leslie Caron, who is dazzlingly believable in the main role.