Jack Clayton

Room at the Top, Clayton's first feature, is often counted as the start of the British New Wave: an ambitious young man in a dreary factory town sets his sights on his boss's daughter. After it he turned to literary adaptation. The Innocents has a governess in an Essex country house who becomes convinced the children in her care are possessed. The Pumpkin Eater follows a London screenwriter and his wife, a mother of eight.

Signature

• Class ambition in a northern town (Room at the Top).
• Adaptations of Henry James, Penelope Mortimer and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
• A ghost story kept ambiguous (The Innocents).
• A marriage under strain (The Pumpkin Eater).