Having enjoyed a big hit with a wide-screen colourful adaptation of a melodramatic best seller in A Summer Place, Delmer Daves and Warner Bros went back to the well again with this sudser. Having turned Troy Donahue into a star with that first film, Daves used him again, putting him front and center this time, but ensuring he was surrounded by a very strong support cast.
This isn't as good as A Summer Place, which was no masterpiece but worked as a drama. It had integrity, if that's the right word - a solid concept around which you could construct a film. Parrish is far less focused or satisfactory.
Donahue just got over the line in the first film because he was a supporting actor, he was propped up by Sandra Dee, and had a simple character: not too bright boy, basically good, in love with Dee. Here he flounders a lot more; he has a good look, deep voice, and some presence (laugh, but he did) but doesn't have the chops to pull it off. Far too frequently he's awkward, dim, and in some big emoting scenes he's downright laughable.
He's not helped by a stupid character. Everyone pants over Parrish in this film: his mother adores him, step dad prefers him to the latter's biological children, women get the hots for him at the drop of a hat... but why? He's handsome, sure, but there are other handsome guys in this film. He's not particularly bright - Karl Malden (step dad) gives him a leg up and admittedly yells at him a lot but Donahue keeps making mistakes and looking like an idiot. His step brothers call his mother (Claudette Colbert) a lower class tramp and he doesn't thump them until the end of the film. He sticks up for a trampy girl (Connie Stevens) - who he's slept with incidentally - but blackmails the guy who impregnated her, not into helping out the girl or the kid, but to be nice to his mother. When he declares independence from Malden, he doesn't strike out on his own, he goes into the navy. And when he tries to make a go of it as a tobacco farmer, he only succeeds because he's bailed out by his girlfriend.
Delmer Daves handles it all in the incredibly serious method of A Summer Place although it lacks the universal appeal of thwarted love. Donahue's Parrish is basically a whiny brat who can't stick at a relationship - he's meant to fall in love with good girl Sharon Hugueny, but there's no real reason given other than she's a good girl (and Hugueny is far too inexperienced; she and Donahue collapse against each other). He lacks backbone and purpose.
The supporting characters are pure stereotypes: Malden's yelling, obnoxious tycoon; cat on a hot tin roof Connie Stevens, straight off the set of God's Little Acre (complete with yokel overacting family); trampy rich girl Diane McBain (a performance full of life and zest, the best one in the movie); virginal Hugueny; evil step brothers; kindly decent Dean Jagger. Claudette Colbert starts off with what seems to be a decent role but she's sidelined after the first act (like Dorothy McGuire was in A Summer Place come to think of it).
Dramatically the piece suffers from poor construction. Nothing seems to drive Parrish - he hooks up with Stevens, then with McBain... but doesn't seem to feel too bad when they break up, then goes for Hugueny. He doesn't seem to have a goal - he says he wants to be a tobacco farmer, but only after Malden offers to show him the business... then when they doesn't turn out he goes off to the Navy. Then comes back and farms. Also there doesn't seem to be an ending - he thumps his brother. Big deal. That should have happened in Act One - the climax should have been he beats up Karl Malden.
Visually it's handsome, Colbert and Malden are pros, and it does look visually interesting with all that tobacco farming.
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