A film that has much in common with Hud - Brandon de Wilde hero worshipping a no good womaniser pants man played by an Actors Studio superstar (Warren Beatty here instead of Paul Newman), a woman who's been around but is still attracted to the lout (Eva Marie Saint instead of Patricia Neal), small town setting (mid west as opposed to Texas), director who came up via TV (John Frankenheimer rather than Martin Ritt), black and white photography, gruff paterfamilias (Karl Malden rather than Melvyn Douglas).
There are key differences. This was mostly shot in studio not location so doesn't have Hud's excellent sense of place, which it needs (it was Frankenheimer's one big regret for making the movie and he was right). There's a mother here, Angela Lansbury. It also feels more, well, gay, as written by William Inge, with everyone panting heavily over Beatty - not one but two middle aged women meet him and go off with him after a few minutes, and so does Eva Marie Saint. Does that actually happen in the straight world? Maybe it does. There's also the domineering mother, a weak drunk father, a beautiful young boy.
Warren Beatty is very charismatic and pretty. He didn't often play such cads - helpless man children were more his stock in trade. Maybe he should've played more cads.
Brandon de Wilde is bland. He was in a lot of good movies for a bland actor - I think the eyes were useful.
The film doesn't really get going until Beatty arrives and it's one hour in. The story is simple - basically he knocks up Saint and flips out, she flips out and crashes and that's it. The film doesn't quite nail de Wilde's love for Beatty of fix its point of view.
No comments:
Post a Comment