(1962)
2.5
Michael Costello
John Frankenheimer's version of the James Leo Herlihy novel, adapted for the screen by playwright William Inge, comes off as a bad Tennessee Williams pastiche. Brandon de Wilde plays a naïve teenager who worships his callous, womanizing older brother, played by Warren Beatty. Tensions arise when they both fall in love with the same woman (Eva Marie Saint). In its evocation of the tribulations of non-marital sex in a puritanical era, this shrill, sour, overwrought melodrama has more in common with another Inge-scripted film, Splendor in the Grass, than with the coming-of-age story it's ostensibly telling. Amidst the landscape of creaky Freudian stereotypes, the de Wilde character at least comes across as a real human being. The rest of the uniformly splendid cast includes Karl Malden, Angela Lansbury, and Barbara Baxley. Lionel Lindon's black-and-white photography is stunning.
All Fall Down on AllMovie
All Fall Down (1962)
