Peyton Place
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Movie Reviews of Peyton Place
Movie Review: One of the very best of its kind!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Peyton Place was filmed in beautiful Camden, Maine and I remember the time when it was filmed there..I was a kid growing up in Portland , Maine. It is a great piece of melodrama, and the music of course makes it such. The score alone merits attention, and you can get it on CDs and Lp if you search. Well worth it. The film has many pluses: Lana Turner is in a new kind of role here, not so camp, but fun to witness her distress and those hands of hers moving in all directions. Also, check out her Maine accent. Where can she be from???
Diane Varsi is wonderful as Allison, and Hope Lange never better..this is one out of three or four good Hope Lange performances. All of Varsi should be seen, including Johnny Got His Gun and even Bloody Mama.When Varsi made Peyton Place she was 23 and had been married three times and had some children. Her Reveries on marriage and chastity have strange resonaces to them!
Betty Field is in this, and she oozes madness; her husband is Arthur Kennedy, who has rape written all over that face and body. And then there is David Nelson from the dreadful Ozzie and Harriet series of the 50's, acting his way out of a film career of any kind, very funny, and Barry Coe(whatever happened to him?) and the great Terry Moore, who gices a superb performance, and who has the best Maine accent ever heard in any film about Maine.
You get vetrans Leon Ames(Doris Day musicals) and the evr great and eerie Mildred Dunnock, with those cryptic lines to the class she teaches and to the alcoholic janitor, not to be forgotten. And LLoyd Nolan as Doc Swain, pontificating and gossiping about affairs and abortions.His laugh and sneer are classic here.
Then there is Lee Philips, who is the image of a small town principal; tweedy and sententious and civic-minded. Lana must be wooed by him and it is very funny to see. Lee never went anywhere at Fox or at any other studio, but he's servicable and could have done more, I think, with direction. Here, he is scary he's so authentic. Lana's interest in him is hard to belive, beciuse she always liked mobsters and he-men in real life.Good for her!
The score and the color and the CinemaScope are better served on the large screen, and DVD will help this film a great deal. Wait for its manifestation on DVD and relive the passions and power of Peyton Place.
Do not forget Return To Peyton Place: this is the bad sequel, but the real good part of this film are the performances of Mary Astor and Eleanor Parker, especially Mary Astor who steals the film and shows everyone how to act on screen. Carol Lynley's career at Fox eneded with this film. She plays Allison, and she is beyond comment, but, hilarious in every way, and she means to be serious. Jose Ferrer directs so badly I expect always to see him lynched at the end of the film, but, again, there are bonuses: you get Rosemary Clooney(then Jose's wife) signing the Peyton Place theme with lovely lyrics, and she is in splendid voice.
These two films are rare things, and they come out of the 50's and early 60's when naivete and experience were just touching bases with each other. These films are still trying to bypass James Dean, Brando, and Newman's talents and insights..a last gasp of Romanticism with those glittering musical themes sweeping across landscapes meant for lovers.
Get the DVD when they come out..Where are they???
Movie Review: All sorts of sudsy greatness...
Summary: 5 Stars
Yes, this film is not a lot of things when you consider the time period we live in today, but in the 50's this film was prime for saucy debate. As a film, I think that it holds up very well, even if that is not a popular opinion. A lot of people I talk to consider this outdated and overacted and overrated, but personally I relish in every minute of this big screen soap. From the acting to the screenplay to the films expert pacing, `Peyton Place' is a delicious treat for the movie lover.
It's scandalous, but in all the right ways.
The film follows the intersecting lives of members of a New England town as controversy and scandal pop their heads around every corner. Allison MacKenzie wants to be a writer, but she struggles to find her voice amidst many recognizable demons. Her best friend suffers at the hand of a drunk and oppressive step-father. Her mother struggles to find herself and love in a town almost too quiet and too close for its own good. Add to that turmoil within the school, with boys and with...murder, and you have a story that is almost too big for a mere movie but that unfolds with such delicacy and such control that it NEVER feels rushed and it NEVER feels like surface treatment.
I, for one, feel that the majority of the acting is spot on and still stands up even today. This movie BELONGS to Lana Turner, who just steams her way through each scene with such sultry conviction. I love the way she just dominates each and every emotion her character has, delivering such strength even in the midst of weakness. Hope Lange is also stunning here, and I don't mean her looks (although she was a very beautiful woman). She has a firm grasp on her characters vulnerable situation and manages to come alive in the most intimate and sincere of times. I also love Lloyd Nolan and Arthur Kennedy and Mildred Dunnock. I felt that they all really sunk into their supporting roles and just soared in this ensemble masterpiece.
The lead role, which undoubtedly goes to Diane Varsi, is a little stale to me. She easily gets swallowed up by the actors around her. She doesn't do a `bad' job, but she didn't have the strength to carry the film. It's no wonder to me that Turner was nominated as Best Lead Actress at the Oscars and NOT Varsi. The only other sour part came from Lee Philips who was just kind of one note and rather boring to me...but it's a small glitch in an outstanding film.
Yes, I love `Peyton Place'. It's so utterly palpable in all its audaciousness and I just can't get enough of it. Mark Robson's direction was key to making this film as easily digestible as it was, for he could have easily fallen into making this campy (ala' `The Valley of the Dolls') but instead he manages to create and control a tense atmosphere that adds weight to the films authenticity. John Michael Hayes screenplay may play down some of the scandal in Grace Metalious's novel, but it never takes away from the story's intrigue...
...in fact, it may even add to it.
Movie Review: Without Compare
Summary: 5 Stars
Mark Robson is definitely one of Hollywood's least respected directors but I could watch his films over and over again. It's a scandal that he is not better known or loved. He could take trash, like PEYTON PLACE or VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, and whip it up into something with emotional resonance, and he could direct actors easily as well as Sidney Lumet (for example). All of his pictures are worthy, but it is PEYTON PLACE which has lasted longest in our imaginations. For many it has replaced the earlier KINGS ROW (also a good film) as "the" sexpose of small town American life, its seamy side and its hidden scandals behind the lace curtains.
The casting is pretty great, even where it's fairly ludicrous, like asking Lana Turner to play a woman afraid of sex. Lana should have won the Oscar for this part, that is clear, and her handling of the deeply neurotic Constance McKenzie is always spot on. I think she might actually have won if she had been playing opposite someone other than Fox discovery Lee Philips, fine here but without the spark of a true star. Lana's especially good in the one scene where she comes home unexpectedly and Alison is having a hot spin the bottle party with lovers pairing off together in the shadows of the living room, while the LPs spin and the couples are slow dancing and drinking booze.
The young people are terrific, especially Hope Lange playing against type as Selina, and Russ Tamblyn also playing against type as the neurotic (gay?) mama's boy. Terry Moore may be a bit old to be playing teenage Betty Anderson, but she throws her sexuality all over the place and has a ball doing so. She's also interesting on the commentary, with a lot of stories and still very much an exotic, like someone from the day of Lili St. Cyr or Tempest Storm. Diane Varsi is appropriately twisted playing Alison Mackenzie. Among the adult characters, no one in the movies of the 1950s was as scary as Arthur Kennedy playing the man who rapes his own stepdaughter, ugh, how repulsive is that.
The movie is beautiful on every level; the photography is dreamy and resonant, like Franz Waxman's haunting music. And with all its flaws, PEYTON PLACE has some of the virtues of the old fashioned Victorian three-decker novel: it tells a cross stitched quilt of sin, memory and ultimately, the forgiveness without which none of us can learn to live.
Movie Review: The commentaries make this DVD a must-have
Summary: 5 Stars
I already had a beautiful copy of this movie--the outrageously priced ($49.95) laserdisc set put out by Fox Home Video sometime in the 90s--but the selling point for me this time around was the promised audio commentaries by Russ Tamblyn and Terry Moore. I wasn't disappointed! I've always considered Tamblyn one of the unsung heroes of moviedom (his credits read like a list of the best films ever made--"Gun Crazy," "Father of the Bride," "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," "West Side Story," and this gem among others) and I'm certain that those viewers only familiar with his remarkable dancing and acrobatics in musicals would be surprised by his sure handling of a complex character in this film. The performance earned him a well-deserved Oscar nomination--a feat not shared by the majority of his musical colleagues. Tamblyn comes off as a very likable, unassuming guy in his audio commentary, and his memory of the long-ago events is pretty sharp--even to the point of remembering that a double for Lana Turner did a couple of the shots in the last scene rather than the actress herself. Along the way he has plenty of interesting stories about the other actors, the location shoot, and what was going on in his life at the time. Terry Moore is also very engaging in her commentary, although she's clearly less familiar with the movie itself--e.g., she registers surprise at the fate of Betty Field's character the same way a first-time viewer would. But Ms. Moore also has some intersting recollections, such as roasting in her winter coat while surrounded by fake snow in the blazing California sunshine. And her obvious respect for the story's themes and its characters (as significantly altered and arguably improved for the film adaptation) is very endearing, particularly if you're as enamored of the film as this viewer.Movie Review: A magnitude 9.0 earth mover and classic
Summary: 5 Stars
No, Virginia, this is not a sleazy B-grade small town melodrama. Rather, it is a visionary, provocative, exceptionally well produced and well acted story that forever blew away Victorian mores that predominated in America through the 1950's and ushered in the social and sexual revolution of the 1960's. No more were the emotional and sexual sides of humanity strictly taboo. No more was abuse of any kind to be forever hidden so that it would remain forever unresolved. It required highly professional and thoughtful portrayal to make these points in a way that would influence the world, and this movie has all of that and more. Its use of parallel story threads that move fast and come together as appropriate likely also forever changed the concept of cinematic art. An excellent DVD reproduction with a separate 20-minute presentation on its social context enhance the pleasure. Anyone who has interest in America's social history, or in classic theater, or in exceptional acting, would be well advised to pick up this one.