Customer Reviews

Splendor in the Grass [VHS]

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4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The plot of Splendor in the Grass revolves around the fateful love between two teens, Bud and Deanie, in late 20s Kansas. Seemingly destined to be together, they are thwarted by repressive sexual mores and their overbearing parents. Deanie suffers a nervous breakdown over their separation and Bud winds up a failure at Yale, eventually becoming a dirt farmer. This occurs against a backdrop of 20s financial speculation, culminating in the stock market crash and depression. Beatty is adequate as Bud, while Natalie Wood gives a deeply sensitive portrayal as Deanie. However, both principals are upstaged by the actors portraying their dominant parents. Pat Hingle, always excellent, plays Bud's wealthy father, a crude oil man. Audrey Christie is Deanie's mother, constantly vigilant about her daughter's purity. Both manage the difficult task of portraying sincerely loving parents who nevertheless have a baneful influence on their children's lives. I'd also like to put in a good word for Fred Stewart playing Del Loomis, Deanie's father. His role as the small town grocer is small, but he does subtle wonders in a scene at the end of the movie where he overrules his wife's objection to Deanie's seeing Bud again. One wants to weep at his paternal love. If the film's diatribe against sexual repression is no longer fresh, its depiction of the banality of smalltown life remains so. This is skillfully shown in the second scene, where the Loomises' frame house is shown behind a large graphic reading "Southeast Kansas 1928." By vaguely mentioning the story's setting, rather than specifying a town, the director, Kazan, emphasizes the generic quality of the setting and makes it more insignificant and insipid. Snoopy, gossiping neighbors, drunken oil workers, and insensitive classmates all contribute to this mood. The one character who attempts to break free from this stifling atmosphere, Bud's wayward sister, Ginny, comes to grief, as if to emphasize the impossibility of escape. Despite the somewhat pedestrian plot, the film is redeemed by the performances. The final scene, where Deanie, home after being cured of her breakdown, visits Bud, now married and living on a dusty farm, is very poignant. It's a vivid depiction of lovers separated by destiny. I would also like to praise David Amram's evocative, bluesy theme music. Played over the opening credits, it mightily prepares the viewer for the story he's about to see. I can't close this review without complaining that I was unable to access the theatrical trailer promised on my DVD box. I've never had this problem with any other DVD special features, and can only guess this was the manufacturer's fault, not mine.

Ok, I'm only 25, I'm a Black Male who loves Hip Hop and all of that. Well, I saw this film by "accident" on AMC when I was flipping channels one night. The only reason I started watching it was because it had Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood, and I thought it would be "funny" to see them when they were young.
What I got instead was an AMAZING film about 2 high school sweethearts who are hopelessly in love during a time when society dictated who (and HOW) you were allowed to love someone.
In many ways this has not changed, as a Black man who has been in love with a white women, I can easily identify with this film.
During the 1920's in a small town in Kansas, Deanie (Natalie Wood) is in love with Bud (Beatty). He wants to go all the way, but she's been taught that only "bad" girls do that, and no real man would ever respect if she did. So she holds off, and Bud eventually sleeps with the school "flapper girl". Deanie can not stand this, and eventually falls into depression, soon to be followed by Bud. Both of them have realized the mistake they made and need to get back together. Unfortunately the wheels of fortune are already in motion, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop them. Frankly, I was not prepared for how emotional this film would be, or for how amazing the performance were. Now I understand all the hype that Natalie Wood has received over the years, her performance in this movie is truly heart-breaking. Everyone should watch this movie and LEARN from it - when you fall in love with someone, there is a reason for it, and you should NEVER let others dictate your feelings or emotions for you. The classic line in the movie is from a book of poetry:
"Though we can never bring back the hour of Splendor In The Grass, of glory in the flower, we will grieve not, rather find strenght in what remains behind"
These words are seen by me as a warning to all of us: Act now and set your path, or you will spend the rest of your life with nothing but memories. They may be good memories, but they are only that - just memories. And wouldn't it be better to spend your days with your one true love, then only have memories of what might have been ??

Simply put, Natalie Wood provides one of the most poignant depictions of tortured adolescence ever put to film. Wood is utterly mesmerizing as Deanie, a beautiful but insecure young girl who carefully constructs her entire existence around the love of her life--a brooding young high school hero named Bud--only to have her mental and emotional worlds simultaneously come crashing down when Bud suddenly pulls himself out of her life.

Looking back, it was apt that Wood first came to stardom playing opposite James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, for her performance in this film equals Dean's in terms of sheer emotional ferocity and raw vulnerability. While Splendor in the Grass is by no means one of director Elia Kazan's masterpieces, it is very much worth watching if only as a showcase for the heartbreaking Natalie Wood.

This is a deft directorial effort by Elia Kazan. The name of the film comes from some telling lines of poetry from Wordsworth that are thematic for what transpires in the film. It is a beautifully acted, well told, coming of age story. It is also a story about young love in all its innocence and hopefulness.

The film takes the viewer to the bucolic Midwest of the nineteen twenties. There, the viewer meets small town, high school sweethearts, the lovely Wilma Dean Loomis (Natalie Wood) and the handsome and wealthy Bud Stamper (Warren Beatty). Wilma, "Deanie" to her friends, is head over heels in love with Bud, and he is head over heels in love with "Deanie". They want to get married right after graduation, and Bud wants to farm the family ranch.

The only problem is Bud's Father. He wants Bud to cool it with "Deanie" and to see other girls for the fun of it. He wants Bud to attend an Ivy League college and put off getting married. Bud tries to comply and cools it with "Deanie". The problem is that things had heated up between them before the breakup, and "Deanie" cannot adjust to being without Bud. Her heartbreak is palpable, and Natalie Wood's performance is so poignant, the viewer can just about hear her heart break, when she sees Bud with another girl. It is her yearning for what was that ultimately brings her to the bittersweet edge of despair. Likewise, it is Bud's yearning for "Deanie" that makes him behave in ways that are contrary to his own interests.

Well, the best laid plans often go awry, and things do not work out for Bud or "Deanie" the way they had originally planned. Their world is rent asunder by the vicissitudes of life and the impact of world events and others on their plans. What happens to "Deanie" and Bud when they come to a fork in the road, puts them on paths that may criss-cross, but will never again see them travel on the same road at the same time. This is a heartrending story of star crossed lovers that is sure to touch the viewer. It is at the conclusion of the film that the beauty of Wordsworth's words are driven home and take root in the viewer's heart.

In the same way he was able to extract a searing performance from Andy Griffith in 1957's "A Face in the Crowd", master director Elia Kazan gets similarly stellar results from Natalie Wood in this classic 1961 melodrama about youthful sexual repression in rural 1920's Kansas. In the same year as her Maria in "West Side Story", she has never been more affecting then she is here as Deanie Loomis, the local butcher's daughter deeply in love with Bud Stamper, the son of an oil scion and the high school football hero. They are the senior sweethearts everyone expects to marry, but both have to battle constantly with their sexual longing and their grasping parents.

The ruling moral code restricts Deanie more than Bud who ends up cavorting with a good-time girl named Juanita. The indiscretion overwhelms Deanie who attempts suicide and ends up in a sanitarium for her fragile mental state. A few years later with their lives on divergent paths, they meet again to come to terms with each other. While the whole film is beautifully executed thanks to Kazan's sure hand and William Inge's screenplay (his first directly for the screen), it's the last fifteen minutes that really resonate with the characters expressing their emotions with a minimum of dialogue. Otherwise, there are plenty of heated moments of melodrama along with soap opera elements familiar to anyone who has seen 1955's "Picnic" based on Inge's successful Broadway play.

At her most beautiful, Wood is wondrous as she moves fluidly from innocently infatuated to obsessive to resigned. As the none-too-bright Bud, Warren Beatty is charismatic in his film debut and makes Deanie's powerful fixation completely understandable. There are several standout performances among the supporting cast with Audrey Christie pitch-perfect as Deanie's unsympathetic mother, Pat Hingle in blowhard mode as Bud's power-hungry father, and Zohra Lampert as Angie, the self-effacing waitress Bud meets at Yale. The classic Wordsworth poem from which the film's title is derived makes a fitting coda for this movie, and I still feel the intractable sense of longing in the two lead characters every time I see this movie. The 2001 DVD unfortunately has no extras.

I hope no one in Hollywood will attempt to remake this movie because it can't be done. I don't think any actors can duplicate the emotional realism and "connection" to the audience that Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood so effectively conveyed. I think this movie is far superior to any film adaptations of "Romeo and Juliet."

I mean, I'm the straight guy raised on Sci-Fi, and I practically wept when this movie ended. It's that real. In a way it's not possible to remake this film given the, er, "relaxed" social norms of today. Most young people watching this film will probably just shrug and say, "so what's the big deal?"

SITG is a snapshot of another era, yet all (or most) of us can relate to the question: "what if?" or "what might have been" when we look back at growing up and our love lives, no matter what era you grew up in. This film is not representative of my generation, neither with regard to the era in which it was filmed nor the era it depicts, yet I was transfixed by it. If you can relate to that kind of experience then this film will touch you like no other film.

SITG helped launch Warren Beatty's career. Natalie Wood was, of course, already a star but this was arguably one of her most sensational performances. I always felt she sort of overdid her performances a bit--eye and facial movements seemed over exaggerated, etc., but physically and emotionally she still owns the screen. Many have already pointed out that her tragic death was foreshadowed in the scene in the bathtub and at the waterfall (and the boat on/from which she died was named, yep, you guessed it).

I actually like Pat Hingle's (Commissioner Gordon from the Batman films) over the top performance as Ace Stamper: "You want that? You got it boy! I'll get it for you! This world is your oyster!" He's not so much a character as a characature--in this case he's the emotional polar opposite of Jim Backus as the father in "Rebel Without A Cause."

Complex, raw, brilliantly acted. Leaves you with many questions. When Deanie hugs Bud Jr you almost know that she's thinking "what if?" while projecting her love to a pure and innocent child. I just can't believe that encounter was the end and the two of them said goodbye forever. The film begs for a sequel yet no sequel can do it justice. It can and should stand alone.

That's right, you read correctly. I am no fan of average chick flicks and that's precisely why I LOVE THIS FILM! That and the fact that the plot is great, the acting is superb, and Natalie Wood is so gosh-darn cute!

In this film, we see the lives of two high schoolers who are madly in love with each other. As circumstances turn out, however, the two are pushed away from each other, though seemingly unwillingly.

Years later the two have formed new lives. Warren Beatty has found a new love and Natalie Wood, well I don't want to spoil it all for you.

Take it from me. When I saw this movie I had no idea what I was getting into. It was a cold winters day in Illinois and I was bored rotten. I flipped on AMC, a seldom viewed channel for me back then, and I found myself quickly engrossed in this film. Now, a year later, it stands out as one of my top five films of all time. I LOVED IT. The ending is sooooo anti-classic-chick-flick that it made me stand up and applaud in delight, that and the fact that the film was outstandting. ENJOY!!

I know it sounds corny, but that is what this film reminds me of. Two young people positively destined for each other are systematically torn apart by the social morals of the time (1920's rural Kansas) and by their parents who actually believe they are doing what is best for them. Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty (in his screen debut) have never been better. As with Romeo and Juliet (or West Side Story) you keep wanting to leep inside your TV and knock some sense into these people, but you are unable to help them and must watch as the inevitable unfolds before you.
I first watched this film late at night when I could not sleep and was mesmerized by the story and by the performances. There was no holding back in this script, it hits much harder than you would expect from a love story filmed in 1961. Three scenes with Natalie Wood (reading the quote of the movie title in her classroom, in the bathtub confronting her mother, and at the waterfall) are 3 of the most amazing scenes I've encountered in film.
If you've ever been in love with the "wrong" person this film will bring all of those feelings back the surface with honesty, heartache, and passion.
If Romeo and Juliet is the standard against which all love stories are measured, then "Splendor In The Grass" has passed the test with flying colors.

Deenie is another inspired creation by Natalie Wood, and the one in which she shows off her acting skills with a newfound confidence. Anyone who's read anything about Wood knows she had a profoundly controlling mother, and some of this tangled relationship seems to have seeped into Wood's portrait of a young girl with real issues around her mom. Few of us who have seen the film will ever entirely forget the scene in which she stands up, dripping wet, in the bathtub to defy her mother, and to send the mother the message that she is no longer a little girl but a woman with a grown woman's needs. In its days this was shocking and some thought Natalie had lost her mind along with the rest of her wardrobe, for nudity was still a very rare thing in the straitlaced Hollywood cinema of the 1950s. Director Elia Kazan was perhaps the only man who could have elicited such a strong performance out of her. Kazan himself saw this film as the culmination of a long line of movies he himself had shepherded through to success, a group of films which did much to put the "adult" back into movies, everything from BABY DOLL to WILD RIVER. Indeed, SPLENDOR was his last real success, either on the screen or stage, for the 1960s left him behind in more ways than one, even though he lived another forty years his best days were long behind him (though surprisingly in recent years there has been a burst of acclaim for the garish ARRANGEMENT, the film he thought his most personal but which was his biggest flop. As for Warren Beatty, with whom Wood was in real life "involved" as they say, this film showed him off at his best and might have been written especially for him, by a smitten William Inge, the Broadway playwright who had had four great hits on the stage, but who had never before attempted a screen original. This too was Inge's last success, but for Beatty it was only the beginning to a fine career. And for Wordsworth? SPLENDOR did for the 91th century Romantic poet what FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL did for W.H. Auden--put him, however briefly, on the best seller list, after a scene in which poor Deenie is forced to recite in class a section from Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality," and halfway through she realizes that its implications have hit home in a devastating way, and she breaks down, crying, in front of her teacher and fellow students. It is one of the great moments in screen acting, and should have won Natalie Wood the Oscar that year.

Phyllis Diller is also pretty good in the movie, but her part is so strange you wonder why it was even included.

Who hasn't had an unrequited love, or a young love that was mutual, but somehow, someway, you wind up with other people and wonder how that happened. Anyone who has been in either situation knows what Deanie is feeling at the end of the movie when she visits Bud.

And speaking of Bud, I got so angry with him for letting his Father lead him around by the nose ring. Bud may have loved Deanie, but he was cruel too. I wanted to strangle him. People have talked about this movie as if not having sex is what drives Deanie crazy. I don't see it that way. Bud suddenly giving her the cold shoulder is what drove her out of her mind. How can you love someone one minute, then suddenly give them the deep freeze? Its unbelievably cruel.