Splendor in the Grass

This may be the only movie I know that is about blue balls. Written originally for the screen by playwright William Inge (he won an Oscar for it) and directed by Elia Kazan, Splendor in the Grass takes place in Kansas in the late 1920s. Deanie (Natalie Wood) and Bud (Warren Beatty, in his big screen debut) are hot and heavy sweethearts, but she won't put out, listening to her mother's advice that nice girls wait for marriage. She gives her one of those speeches that sends shivers down the spine of feminists--men like sex more than women do, so wives just have to lay back and do their duty to have children.

Beatty goes to his father, a rough-and-tumble oil man (Pat Hingle). He discreetly indicates that Beatty might find himself another kind of girl to satisfy that particular itch. Beatty ends up having a fling with the high school slut, Wood finds about it, and ends up having a nervous breakdown.

Maybe things were like that in small-town America in those days, but I just couldn't get behind this movie. There seems to be no middle ground. Although I think Inge and Kazan are not saying that nice girls should remain virgins until marriage, it sure comes across that way. Consider the character of Beatty's older sister (Barbara Loden), a flapper who has run off to Chicago to get married, had an abortion, and then was brought kicking and screaming back home, where she runs loose and promiscuous, destined to die in an car accident. The film takes such a hard line view on the small-mindedness of middle America that it comes off as didactic, and I don't believe all small towns were so limited in their imagination.

A few subplots hold interest--the relationship between Beatty and his father is complex. Hingle, a self-made man, wants Beatty to go to Yale, but the son just wants to ranch. When the stock market crash occurs (savvy viewers will be waiting for it too happen), Hingle is ruined, so it's interesting to see what he does.

But on the whole I found this film overacted, lugubrious, and heavy-handed. Wood was nominated for an Oscar, probably because she got some key "crazy" scenes, but I don't think the film has anything interesting or insightful to say about mental illness. It was a star-making role for Beatty, who in just a few short years would be one of the biggest stars in Hollywood.