Ah, the Buddy Alder regime at 20th Century Fox. CinemaScope. Best selling novel source material. Lush photography. Young players under contract of various quality.
This was written and directed by Phil Dunne, who had many major successes when working just as a writer, but none as a director, not really - and he directed ten films. This is perhaps his best known.
Its part of that genre of 50s novels about angsty middle aged men - often their wives were bitches and they had affairs and were unhappy at work and had a lot of money: The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, Executive Suite, Patterns, From the Terrace.
In this one Gary Cooper is a successful lawyer whose wife Geraldine Fitzgerald is a bitch who wants him to go into politics, whose daughter Diane Varsi marries a musician (Stuart Whitman), whose son Ray Stricklyn wants to be a musician, and who has an affair with his daughter's flatmate, Suzy Parker.
Spencer Tracy was originally cast in the lead but Cooper is far more appropriate. Cooper specialised in playing weak, impotent neurotics so he's totally at home here - he punches out someone but it's not very convincing. He's more handsome than Tracy and was a noted cocksman so its more believable that Parker goes for him.
This actually was the best bit of the film - Cooper comes alive in these scenes, he's charming and decent. Parker is a bit wooden but I liked them as a couple. At least Cooper is active in these scenes - he's weak and passive for the rest... which I've got to say is what the role requires. I normally loathe Cooper and can't say I'm a massive fan even after this but he is, as I've said, well cast.
Fitzgerald does what she can. In fairness the character is given some depth because Cooper and her daughter have thrown away his political career - so she suffers and because the times are what they are she can't go and get a career.
I'm not a big Diane Varsi fan - her hysterical performance is okay, but I kept wishing, say, Hope Lange (also under contract to Fox at the time) had the role. Ray Stricklyn is terrible - what did they see in that guy? Did they imagine he was a sort of junior Jack Lemmon? He has this awful drunk acting scene where he tells everyone off.
In a weird way this film feels British - Parker and Cooper do act on their feelings but then pull back. There's no confrontation with the mother, with the sister while dad is alive, with the brother, with the girl's boyfriend or father.
It's a star vehicle - it needed someone like Cooper. It also needed better actors to play the kids. After a slow start where Cooper's character was really pathetic this got better, and I found the end where he drank himself to death quite touching.
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