Customer Reviews

From the Terrace

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A view FROM THE TERRACE is what Paul Newman's character David Alfred Eaton has of his future wife Mary (JoAnne Woodward). The screen play was based on a best-selling novel of the same name by John O'Hara. Given it was released in the 1950s when sex on the screen was verboten and not much more explicit in novels (ban a book in Boston), one must appreciate the work it took for Newman and Woodward to give these performances.

Like many other teenagers of my generation, I was "in love" with Paul Newman. Newman could make female hearts flutter by simply looking at the camera with his big blue eyes. Many other teens preferred Marlon Brando, his peer and rival for female affection. I believe these two actors were the Leonardo de Caprio and Brad Pitt of their day, although in the long run, Newman (like de Caprio) has had more staying power and gracefully made the transition to mature roles.

In the 1950s, to see a film one had to attend a theater, where the screen was usually covered with a huge velvet curtain. FTT played at the Center theater in my small town, and I saw the film six times after it was released. I was able to get into the theater for a quarter, and as my allowance was $3, this was no small sacrifice. So, you might say this film was one of my all time favorites.

Watching it again almost 50 years later, I wondered how I would react, and of course the passage of time and arrival of many other actors and vast changes in filmmaking have affected the way I view the film and Newman, but I still like him enormously, and this film holds it's own, though the storyline may seem archaic.

This film is about infidelity and divorce and the price of success, a story line that may be lost on generations raised in an age of no-fault divorces and dual earner households. Once upon a time, divorce and infidelity were considered absolutely scandalous, and financially disastrous. In fact, if you divorced, your life was ruined. Many couples stayed together and suffered the ignominy of a cheating spouse. FTT was a ground-breaking film because it tackled these issues head-on.

The DVD version of the film is well done, and the price reasonable (technicolor and cinemascope production). Do your self a favorite, buy this DVD and add it to the shelf where you keep CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF and other 50's favorites.

Every few years, I sit back and enjoy "From the Terrace" for what it is. As good old fashioned "potboiler", John O Hara's screen adaptation is not quite as sprawling as say....Edna Ferber's works, but nonetheless is a decent potboiler in its own right. Alfred (Paul Newman), discharged from the Navy after WW II is the ambitious, disaffected son of nouveau riche steel mill owner Samuel Eaton, (Leon Ames). Seeking to make his own unique mark in the world he spurns his father's hopes of joining the business and decides his fortune is to be made elsewhere. Along the way, he meets his future blue-blooded trophy wife Mary St. John (Joanne Woodward) and soon discovers her appetites are far in excess even to his own ambitions. Landing a job at a prestigious Wall Street firm in an oblique way that is a potboiler's trademark, Alfred comes under the watchful eye of old money and traditional expectations by J.D. MacHardie (masterfully portrayed by Felix Aylmer). I very much enjoyed all the scenes in which Aylmer's MacHardie was highlighted and I can almost smell the stodginess of old money, ritual table manners, wood paneled walls, cigars, and brandy that were part of his ultra-conservative environment. Soon enough, while on a trip to scout business opportunities, Alfred meets Natalie (Ina Balin), the unattached daughter of a wealthy coal mine owner. Knowing full well of his marital status, she consents, even encourages his attention and unfaithfulness. Balin manages to pull this off with a naive sweetness without ever seeming cheap or trashy. Infidelity is a major theme in this work and I'm sure its frank discussion must have sparked many a controversy when this film was released very early in 1960. Veteran actress Myrna Loy was given near top billing as Alfred's alcoholic and unfaithful mother, yet her on-screen performance was limited to the first reel of this nearly 2 1/2 hour film. I enjoyed the brief on screen appearance of young Barbara Eden as a flirtatious socialite. Patrick O'Neal was perfectly cast as the smarmy Dr. Jim Roper, the illicit lover of Mary St. John. Over his long acting career, Paul Newman has delivered solid performances again and again. This is one of his lesser known works but serves as a fine example of why he was so popular with the audience as a silver screen heartthrob. Watching this film today and being mindful of his lasting marriage to Joanne Woodward just serves to make this movie all the more compelling to me. I hope you will agree.

A classic film adaptation from one of John O'Hara's massive tomes, Mark Robeson's "From the Terrace" hold it's age well and is lots of fun to boot.
Producer Director Mark Robson presents to us in the glossy grandeur of 20th Century-Fox the postwar portrait of a young man on the rise who sacrifices love for money, to a point that is.
Paul Newman turns in an expertly colored performance as Alfred Newman. His brooding good looks and hard angles are the perfect reflection of young corporate America of the late 40's and 50's. Yet under that cool hard as coal exterior he hides a desire that only emerges toward the end of the film, yet it is there from the first frame of the film fueling his performance.
Joanne Woodward as Mary St.John is no less brilliant. Her icy cool old money Mary is just the perfect fortress to entice Newman. She plays the part as if she were born to it and in the end she is left hard, jaded and desperate. She proves once again why she is still one of our best film actresses from the fifties who is still working today.
Studio costume designer Travilla should be noted for his wonderful costumes. He was most famous for his designs in the 50's for Marilyn Monroe. Here he presents a stunningly elegant collection of the best looks of the late 50's and early 60's. His designs are rich and restrained and a feast for the eye.
The score by the late great Elmer Bernstein is another masterpiece by this musical genius who's work spanned the from "The Ten Commandments" to "Vanilla Sky". It is a perfect score. Of particular note is the scene between Mary and her old lover at the ice-skating shed and the scene where Alfred rescues a drowning boy. These cues are magnificent and moving.
"From The Terrace" is both trashy fun and a thought provoking view of money, power and sexual politics of mid century America.

Based on John O'Hara's novel, Alfred Eaton wants success in his own right but also seeks happiness for himself. He ventures out to New York leaving behind his cold, unloving father and alcoholic mother. As he is settled, he meets Mary St. John at a party in Southhampton. She is engaged to a psychiatrist Jim Roper. She rebuffs him at first but laters falls in love with him, calling off her engagement to her fiance. The two marry. However, their marriage is on the rocks. As Alfred gains success and social status, Mary feels isolated from his affection and has sexual affairs outside of the marriage. A business venture in rural Pennsylvania force him to confront his past and his future. Having dinner at the Benzinger home, he falls in love with the daughter Natalie. Strikingly beautiful and raven-haired, she is the one who understands him and is affectionate towards him.
Alfred Eaton, is relatively like most men. They want to gain recognition and respect from the social and economical community and at the same time, be happy with themselves. However, success doesn't always bring happiness. Happiness comes from within. Eaton's lack of affection from his father caused him to seek happiness elsewhere but he was forced to make hard decisions that would not only affect his career, but himself.

Paul Newman has many more famous roles...but for some reason, this is one of my all time favorite movies of his. It comes on the Love Stories, AMC, or TCM cable channels every here and now...or you could just buy it like I did.

He's nice, determined, well-meaning Alfred Eaton, who starts off with lofty, wealthy ideas about what is important in life...the right woman, the right career, the right friends...and showing them all how important he can be when he has them. Ultimately, he learns that what is important is only what feels right to him alone.

I love his story of personal discovery as much as his love affair story with Natalie. Alfred and Natalie have this beautiful scene where they are saying goodbye, they're barely touching, but it's the most painfully romantic thing to see.

Paul Newman and his wife Joanne Woodward have some excellent scenes in this movie also with real good comeback dialogue. He's the hardworking, decent man and she's the desperate-to-impress and just plain desperate society wife. She self-righteously and hurtfully accuses him of adultery with a girl with no guts when she's been sleeping with her ex-fiancee all along. She actually calls her lover and arranges a tryst while her husband is in the room!!!! She has guts!!!! (if little else) Unbeknownst to her, Alfred has exhaustingly if unaffectedly (if you can look unaffected and disgusted at the same time, that is) done his best to makes her invisible in the room, but she probably just becomes invisible without any real effort on his part to make her so by that point. Their voices just have the most impactful tones...especially when they get to play off of each other. I can play their final scene over and over again where she says she won't give him a divorce and he says,"Any further communication between you and me will be through legal channels." He has the most genuine smile on that handsome face in that moment than through the entire movie!!!!!

This movie is actually pretty long, but not a moment is wasted. It all comes together in the end when Alfred finally chooses what he actually wants instead of what he's supposed to want.

Maybe it's because it's so subtle and not at all like a "movie" that it seems to be largely overlooked by everyone except me and 20 other people. Paul Newman is one fine, naturally classy actor, I say.

It's not "The Long, Hot Summer" (which is a towering achievement in cinematic trash, and one of my favorite movies), but "From the Terrace" is fun. As with every other 50's organization man novel adapted to the screen, it bears only a tenuous relationship to the original book, but in that case this is a good thing. First, O'Hara's writing is turgid, self-important pulp, and second, the story is about a total loser. No one goes to a Paul Newman movie to see the story of a pathetic dweeb, and they won't see one here, either. He's flawed but heroic, and he and Woodward look like a million bucks. The movie ends a little less than halfway through the book, but you can't tell.

This film was produced in 1960 and set in the same time period. And this is the REAL 1960, not the idealized version in shows like Mad Men. The theme is real, not influenced by the woman's movement for equality and the makeup feels right, not a caricature. Yes, it was only men in the boardrooms of power with the lust for financial success dominant. The story and the actors were reflective of their life and times.

That said, all the actors do outstanding acting jobs, being true to their time and place in history. Paul Newman is just back from WWII. His mother, played by Myrna Loy" is an alcoholic. His father is unfeeling towards Newman and has only loved his other son who had died at the age of 12. Newman is angry, lonely and determined to do well in life. As a young man about town in New York, he romances Joanne Woodward, a society girl with hair bleached so blonde that it looks silver. She has a boyfriend at the time but Newman beats him out to win Woodward's hand. However, through the years, she keeps an affair going with this former boyfriend. Supposedly this is because Newman is working so hard in his Wall Street business that he has no time for her. Seen through modern eyes, however, Woodward has no other choices in life - no job, no children, no appreciation for her husband. She's also been sheltered all her life and brought up with money, beautiful clothes and no feelings except enjoying herself. Naturally, Newman falls in love with another woman played by Ina Balin a virginal type from a small town in West Virginia who is completely smitten by him. Naturally there is conflict and how this all turns out is a satisfactory conclusion.

I enjoyed the film, thought the acting was good, the script fast paced and interesting. But most of all I liked the period details of all those cigarettes, alcohol, a drive-in theater, lots of parties. Naturally, in their world everybody was white and the valued partnership in the big corporation came with strings attached. This is a fine film and the fact that it is dated makes it all that much more interesting.

From the Terrace
Paul Newman is a the top of his career, and with his looks. Joanne Woodward, his real wife and his wife in the movie, is a nasty, possessive, run around, wife. Newman climbs to the top by saving a corporate CEO's grandson from drowning and as a reward, gets a corporate job. But Newman is caught between his corporate job and his unfaithful wife because its against corporate policy, no matter the reason, to get a divorce.
Newman, on one of his assignments, meets a daughter of a mining CEO in Pennslyvania who is nice, humble, and just perfect for Newman. They fall in love with each other, but, his scheming wife, does not want to give him a divorce because she has the best of both worlds; i.e., a lover and her husband who provides her all the luxuaries she wants.
Although this movie is a real soap opera type of flick, I recommend it as a great acting, ane enjoyable story line that anyone would enjoy.

Though I'm sure this was Quite racy in its day, the ideas and ideals expressed are just as relative to today's world and people. What priorties do we set in our own lives? Who suffers from our failures? And are we prepared to accept the consequences of our actions and desicions?

Good stuff!

This is John O'Hara's classic novel in an excellent screen version.Mark Robson's film here benefits enormously from a
strong Ernest Lehman script,solid drection,a lush production,
Elmer Bernstein's terrific score,and excellent performances by a fine cast.Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward are brilliant in the leads,but it's Ina Balin who steals the film in a beautiful performance as Natalie.But this DVD has two major problems,
and that's why I only gave it four stars.One,the movie itself is much too long at two hours and twenty-four minutes(Robson should have cut twenty-five minutes).Two,for some reason Fox really skimped on the special features.There's only scene selection,a few Newman-Fox trailers,and one brief newsreel.But overall,"From The Terrace" is a typical glossy,big budget 1960s drama that still provides an evening of good entertainment.