Wordiezett So much average

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

HeadlinesExotic Boring

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

mark.waltz You can't go home again, as life goes on without you and the small minded people, once your friends, secretly resent you or envy you angrily for having the strength and courage to move on. That's what reckless bad boy Paul Newman finds out as he stops through with his alcoholic movie star benefactor (Geraldine Page), finding that nothing has changed but the date and the decrease in the size of the small minds. Town boss Ed Begley may act all cordial at first meeting, but he has a score to settle with Newman in regards to his daughter Shirley Knight. This outstanding film version of Tennessee Williams' great play is fraught with drama, sexual violence and power struggles, and one of the greatest ensembles ever assembled. It's a reunion for Williams, Newman, Madeline Sherwood (as you've never seen him before!), producer Pandro S. Berman and director Richard Brooks from "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". This isn't polished family drama, but a soap opera epic of how one man in control (Begley) of a small community can be a dangerous thing, and how all the yes men around him obviously long for his downfall.In one of the greatest years for leading ladies, Geraldine Page is simply outstanding and her faded movie star shows her off to be a versatile and glamorous actress, combining character actress in her characterization in playing someone obviously older than she was at the time. It is said she was based on various faded movie stars (particularly Joan Crawford) but Page makes her very multi-faceted in spite of the character being a destructive lush. Newman is sexy as always, and instills his bad boy with subtle heart. Knight, who could have gone onto play the type of roles Page was excelling in, and makes her ingenue quite more interesting than the namby pamby bubblehead she could have been.Sweet Mildred Dunnock, the original Big Mama in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", takes a small part and adds a halo around it as Knight's spinster aunt. Sherwood, as Begley's abused mistress, is simply divine: gorgeous, sultry and tragic. You won't see any of "Sister Woman" or "Reverand Mother" here, making me want to see more of her. Begley, outwardly boisterous and charming, is a truly evil character, and his Oscar for this part was deeply deserved. I absolutely despised on every level his arrogant character, but if I were to have seen him in the play, I would have given him a standing ovation. Flashbacks to previous incidents don't distract from the current material, and a few fantasy sequences add interesting elements in the dreams of the disillusioned characters who seemingly have no hope. Great drama keeps you involved. Great theater will have you overjoyed. Outstanding theater and film may have you weep.

Ross622 Richard Brooks' "Sweet Bird of Youth" is an excellent movie based on Tennessee Williams's play of the same name. The movie stars Paul Newman as a drifter named Chance Wayne (who is the central character to this movie) who is trying to get back into his relationship with a girl named Heavenly Finley (played by Shirley Knight in an Oscar nominated performance)but he knows that she wants the same thing to happen but both have a complication that won't let it happen which is Heavenly's father who is a corrupt politician named "Boss" Finley (played by Ed Begley in an Oscar winning performance). Brooks directed this movie the best way he possibly could which is what a director is supposed to do with a movie but what I wanted to know more about the movie was why did the separation happen otherwise there was other excellent qualities to the film, for example Milton Krasner's great cinematography, the art direction was fabulous especially for Florida weather, and costumes were top notch, and especially the acting was excellent, and while Wayne is going through this tough time he has a total stranger to him keeping him company which is an obscure film star named Alexandra Del Lago (played by Geraldine Page in an Oscar nominated performance).But in the end watching this movie was worth my time just by watching even though it isn't in my list for 1962's best movies but to me it is an honorable mention. I'm totally looking forward to seeing more of Richard Brooks's movies within the foreseeable future.

SnoopyStyle Wannabe actor Chance Wayne (Paul Newman) returns to his hometown St. Cloud with drunken former film star Alexandra Del Lago (Geraldine Page). Dr. George Scudder tells him his mother died recently and that he's marrying his ex-girlfriend Heavenly (Shirley Knight). Corrupt political boss "Boss" Finley (Ed Begley), father of Heavenly, forced him out of town years earlier. Tom Finley Jr. (Rip Torn) is the tough violent muscle.It's based on a Tennessee Williams play and has that sweaty old south feel. The dialog crackles. There are some great lines. The language is tough. There is some interesting stuff with Newman and Page. However early scenes struggle with their relationship. It does get more and more interesting as it goes on. However there is a good chunk in the middle that needs to be cut back. The power is elevated every time Ed Begley and Rip Torn push their way around. Rip is electric threatening Del Lago. Geraldine Page is acting very close to the edge but she's a great diva. This is a fine southern melodrama.

jzappa While setting about Sweet Bird of Youth, be fond of the good fragments before the sum total. There are charming notions in which to take pleasure here: The superior pages of a screenplay modified from Tennessee Williams's play, Ed Begley's crooked village official, and above all Geraldine Page's boozy, embittered, failed movie star. Nonetheless, other than those, the film is a damp melodrama. Richard Brooks tailored and directed this pulpy adaptation of Tennessee Williams's dystopian sensationalist script that's told by and large in sporadic flashbacks that fill the mysterious blanks of the present-day battle of molds.Williams's story, and this is essentially Williams's movie, has the central character, a blonde, blue-eyed, hunky ladies' man played by Paul Newman, in a hotel room in a sweaty, humid, miserable town in Florida, while aging actress Geraldine Page sleeps in the bed. She settles on giving the manly man a leg up for a career in acting. Later on, we determine that he has returned to patch things up with a girlfriend whom he gave a venereal disease, much to the passionate fury and embarrassment of Boss Finley, her father and a commanding political official.This decent but forgettable filmed reading inelegantly adjoins Williams's reflections on the potentially unbearable certainty of our past with affected and glaringly scripted dialogue that is meant for stage and not screen. Williams's lyrical tinges and involvedness are stabilized, and the damaged characters firmed to caricatured fonts, however eloquent and articulate ones.Via alterations and amendments, Knight's dilemma is unquestionably implied as an abortion, the sensational shock of Newman and Page's "contract" are minimized, and when Rip Torn's character alerts powerless Newman that he's about to take away "lover boy's meal ticket," what ensues is nearly laughably construed as misleading.Then again, each person we see visibly acting all the way through the words does a pleasant chore of it. Newman's stage-sharpened buoyancy in the role is subdued but by no means staggers. Begley's hamming does intensify the vigor in a gloomy exercise whose gloom could have been stronger. Additionally of note are Madeleine Sherwood as Boss' vindictive mistress.