SYNOPSICS
Splendor in the Grass (1961) is a English movie. Elia Kazan has directed this movie. Natalie Wood,Warren Beatty,Pat Hingle,Audrey Christie are the starring of this movie. It was released in 1961. Splendor in the Grass (1961) is considered one of the best Drama,Romance movie in India and around the world.
It's 1928 in oil rich southeast Kansas. High school seniors Bud Stamper and Deanie Loomis are in love with each other. Bud, the popular football captain, and Deanie, the sensitive soul, are "good" kids who have only gone as far as kissing. Unspoken to each other, they expect to get married to each other one day. But both face pressures within the relationship, Bud who has the urges to go farther despite knowing in his heart that if they do that Deanie will end up with a reputation like his own sister, Ginny Stamper, known as the loose, immoral party girl, and Deanie who will do anything to hold onto Bud regardless of the consequences. They also face pressures from their parents who have their own expectation for their offspring. Bud's overbearing father, Ace Stamper, the local oil baron, does not believe Bud can do wrong and expects him to go to Yale after graduation, which does not fit within Bud's own expectations for himself. And the money and image conscious Mrs. Loomis just wants...
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Splendor in the Grass (1961) Reviews
Splendor all around!
This is a beautiful and powerful film - flawlessly acted, directed and written. It is easily the best of the sexual awakening movies that were so popular in the late fifties, early sixties. And why wouldn't it be - with Kazan at the helm and an original screenplay by William Inge. The film begins with a similar theme to "Rebel Without a Cause" - that is why won't parents treat their children like human beings and really help them come to terms with becoming adults? But halfway through Inge does a clever turn-around and allows the kids to discover that their parents are human beings too, with all the weaknesses and frailties that go with being human. At the same time Inge portrays the coming of age of America as the joy of the roaring twenties moves into the gloom of the Depression. The story is about how prejudice and blind morality destroys a great love - sex shouldn't be such a huge issue between two people who love each other, but the enormous pressures from outside to either do it or refrain from doing it cause confusion, pain and hurt. Who will ever forget Natalie Wood leaping naked from a bath screaming at her mother that she is not "spoiled"? Wood gives the performance of her life here, convincingly portraying adolescent love, a nervous breakdown, and the blossoming into woman-hood. Beatty too is splendid as the confused Bud. And both are so achingly beautiful! The supporting cast is superb down to the smallest role. Barbara Loden is particularly memorable as Beatty's wild flapper sister, but Pat Hingle as his father, and Audrey Christie and Fred Stewart as Wood's parents are also unforgettable. This is a resonant film that I believe will be more and more appreciated with the passing of time.
Heartbreakingly beautiful performance by Natalie Wood...
For me, the greatest moments in "Splendor in the Grass" come with the emotional wallop you feel during the last ten minutes when Natalie Wood pays an unexpected visit to her old love (Warren Beatty) and finds that time has changed everything. She has those enormously expressive eyes--and wearing that wide-brimmed straw hat and lovely costume she looks so picture-book perfect you want to melt. And, of course, during the film she practically tears your heart out with a passionate portrayal of a girl awakening to love--only to have it all dissolve in the bittersweet ending. Touching, sensitive and beautifully played. William Inge's perceptive screen play is an exceptional piece of writing and has the same haunting mood as his "Picnic" in addition to being a slice of real Americana. He has a real feel for defining all of the minor characters as well. Pat Hingle is, as always, excellent as the father from hell, and others in the cast give earnest, realistic performances. Elia Kazan proves that he's one of the most brilliant directors we have. I'm not a Warren Beatty fan but he gives an exceptionally good performance here as the uncertain football hero. As for Natalie, it's the most tender and touching performance of her career. She was rightfully nominated for an Oscar as Best Actress but lost the award to Sophia Loren for "Two Women". Whatever, 1961 was quite a year for Natalie Wood. "West Side Story" was voted Best Picture and she made quite a good impression as Maria too.
a masterpiece about youth's pain and what you learn from it
There are movies, and then there are sensorial experiences like SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS. The sound of the water in the first scene, the color of Natalie Wood skin, the absolutely black of Warren Beaty's hair, the smell of champagne in the "crazy party"... SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS is not only a movie, it's an experience that anyone that was once young can understand and feel. The characters go through love, sexual arousing, separation, and pain... not because of a villain, but because of life, and ultimately, because of themselves. The splendor of the title is that rare moment in life where everything clicks, the moment that you will remember forever from your youth. See it. You won't forget.
It will break your heart
Warren Beatty made his screen debut in Hollywood with this treasure of a film. One of the best ever made. For me, I can barely make it through without shedding a tear. It's probably the most emotionally devastating film I've seen and somehow struck a chord with me like few other films have. The Shootist and The Bridges of Madison County are two other movies that bring out the Kleenex, but not the way Kazan's film can. The setting is a dim rural Kansas farming community in the days just prior to the Great Depression. Yet things are good in the beginning. The Stamper family is making a fortune off their stocks and the Loomis family has recently invested and stands to make money as well. Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood play two of the children of the families who go together in high school and are desperately in love. Beatty is Bud Stamper and Wood is Deannie Loomis. Both are in their teenage years and their hormones are raging. Sexual repression and it's consequences are examined in the film and why such conservatism and restraint exists. Bud and Deannie do not have sex, though both feel extremely uncomfortable from the tension that arises when they mutually suppress their instincts. Deannie is told by her mother that good girls don't do things like that, nor should they enjoy it. Bud on the otherhand is told by his freewheeling father, played excellently by Pat Hingle, that there's two kinds of girls in the world. Those that put out and those that don't. His only advice for his son is to not get into trouble, by which he means get a girl pregnant. Bud knows all too well about the "other" kind of girl, as his sister has become one of them. Bud fights pressures on all sides of his life including sports, his relationship with Deannie, finding a college, and sexual repression. Yet he is emotionally stable enough to take it. Deannie on the otherhand makes an altar to Bud and her entire existence seems to revolve around him. What makes the film so compelling is watching these wonderful characters who are not cliché' even if their problems sometimes are. Warren Beatty plays his role naturally sensitive but conflicted with his father and peer's advice that he "man-up." Deannie is quiet, shy, beautiful, and sensitive. When Bud's need can no longer remain in check he sleeps with another girl. This news sends Deannie into complete shock. Natalie Wood brings so much depth to the character. I can vision a thousand places where her scenes could have gone wrong, but somehow it works. Even the most difficult and infamous scene in the movie where Wood is soaking in the tub and then stands up screaming at her mother before running out of the bathroom. Deannie's mother only wants the best for her, but it's the old fashioned values, restraint, and the pain of Bud with another girl, which eventually snowball into Deannie being sent to a mental institution after a nervous breakdown and suicide attempt (ironically Wood attempts suicide by drowning in the movie, years later the real life Wood died from drowning. She carried a fear of water with her through her entire life). From this point in the movie the stock market crashes and Bud moves past Deannie but fails college before continuing his personal dream of becoming a farmer. William Wordsworth wrote the poem from which the film takes its name. The film deals with first love in a way few other films have. Certainly a movie of today examining the issue would not be so foreboding. One might think the film is unrealistic because of the outbursts and almost too fragile teens. It is easy to laugh and say how stupid and ignorant love is at that age, but for those who've lived and felt it, I think it'd be difficult to see this movie as far fetched in anyway. Or even scoff at the characters and their desperate behavior. Afterall, we're dealing with an age and time where suicide is among the leading causes of death for teenagers and 20-year olds and one of the major factors are breakups with first loves. Natalie Wood gives one of the finest, most powerful performances in all of cinema. She'll break your heart and make you feel as much for her character as possible with the medium. Warren Beatty is also good as Bud, the confused and repressed young man who just wants things to make sense. There are few films as fine as Elia Kazan's 1961 picture that tackles these subjects and can deal with them in such a sincere and emotional way.
Splendor In The Grass, Glory In The Flower, Nothing Can Bring Back The Hour
Opening on a glorious shot of a waterfall and a passionate lip-lock between raven-haired beauty Natalie Wood and boyishly handsome Warren Beatty in an old-fashioned car, the ambivalent need to succumb to temptation but wanting to be good - "Don't Bud - no!" Elia Kazan's masterpiece of adolescent longing, self-discovery and suppression is a fabulous experience. The hypocritical society that stifles young Deanie Loomis (Wood), drilling that no nice girl indulges or thinks about natural sexual desires and impulses, while young men are free to pursue their lust, but not with any virtuous girls. Deanie, daughter of a working-class family, is madly in love with Bud Stamper (Beatty, in his debut), the son of the wealthiest clan in town, and star of the school's athletic teams. Their romance is doomed by their parents' interference and control. Bud can't continue the relationship with all the pressure placed on him by his domineering father, Ace (Pat Hingle), not to mention the presence of his nymphomaniac, flapper sister, Ginny (Barbara Loden, who, at this time, was Mrs. Elia Kazan). Deanie's mother (Audrey Christie) constantly shadows her daughter, discouraging her from any impure thoughts or actions. After their breakup, Bud gets his release from the most promiscuous girl in school, and this devastates Deanie, who feels that she has to go bad to regain his love and attention. At a school dance, she copies Ginny's seductive style, and attempts to seduce Bud to get him back. He turns her down, leading Deanie to the reservoir where her nervous breakdown explodes, and she is sent to a sanitarium to recuperate. Bud then has to find himself, while Deanie must heal to regain her sanity and sense of self-worth. Each of their journeys are poignant, as is the revelation that Ginny, on a self-destructive path, dies in an automobile crash. She obviously desperately wanted her father's unconditional love and attention, which he refused to give her, never ceasing to remind her that she was an embarrassment and a disappointment. Her drunken argument with Bud says it all - "If you weren't my brother, you wouldn't even come near me! You're a nice boy, you're nice, I know what you nice boys are like - you only talk to me in the dark!" Bud's meeting with his future wife, Angelina (Zohra Lampert) and Deanie's relationship with fellow patient Johnny, beautifully presents the inner peace and healing that each of the protagonists have sought. The climax is a wonderfully touching end - a reunion of sorts, to make peace with the past. "Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower, we will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind." Wood was Oscar-nominated for Best Actress, and she certainly was deserving of that accolade. She and Beatty began an relationship after shooting was completed that was sadly short-lived, kind of a painful echo of their on-screen relationship. Another sad parallel is Deanie's breakdown as she swims in the reservoir, since Wood's tragic demise would be as a result of the element that she feared most - water. The film also features the debuts of Gary Lockwood, Sandy Dennis and Phyllis Diller, as well as Splendor's playwright author, William Inge, in a cameo as the church reverend. A beautiful piece of movie-making, deserving of its status as a classic.