Matcollis
This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.
Married Baby
Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?
Brenda
The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one
khartoum-39722
Screenplay based on a novel by John O'Hara in 1958. One of a dozen films Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward did as husband and wife. They stayed married until Newman died in 2008. The film cost $3 million and grossed $5 million. So it was major deal in those days but was not a runaway success. There was quite a lot of adult content for the time which was surprising. It was certainly apt for the time but all the concern about divorce makes it a period piece but an accurate period piece. I find all the filming on sets restrictive as I am spoiled by modern location and outdoor shooting. Although it is certainly not a great work. Will give it a solid 7. RECOMMEND
calvinnme
I didn't see what others apparently saw in this film. I did not see the moral of the film so much concerning the price of success as it being that despite your best efforts, you are often doomed to become your parents.At the beginning of the film, Alfred (Paul Newman) returns home after the second World War to renounce his father because he has, in Alfred's opinion, ignored his mother while strictly attending to business to the point where his mother has become an adulterous lush. Ten or fifteen years later, Alfred has ignored his own wife Mary (played by Joanne Woodward) while climbing the corporate ladder until his own lonely wife has become an adulterous lush. The only crime of his father's he does not commit is to produce offspring that can be dragged into the mess his life has become. One person with a more warped moral code than either Alfred or Mary seems to be Alfred's boss. While eating lunch he casually informs Alfred of Mary's affair with an old flame. When Alfred reacts by saying that he intends to divorce Mary, his boss warns him against such an action. To Alfred's boss, Mary's behavior isn't a moral failing or a cry for attention - it is an unforgivable breach of etiquette, and this is the same way he feels about divorce.Overall, the main characters in this film lack redeeming characteristics to the point where the movie almost becomes a film noir soap opera. There are still solid performances by both Newman and Woodward, and it is still worth seeing 50 years after it was made. After all, the idle rich and the mistakes they keep making over and over have not changed that much after half a century.
peter masters
The filmed version of John O'Hara's From The Terrace leaves out the real view of the novel: how a man's monomania for commercial success destroys his ethics and finally, leaves him a rich, but unhappy man. The film covers only first part of the novel. Joanne Woodward's performance (thank God for all the O'Hara dialog left in the script), totally unbalances the film, but emerges as the most interesting part of the film: a woman's frank discussion of her need for sexual fulfillment. Woodward is so good as the adulterous wife, that the viewer should root for her instead of the Newman character whose own affair is condoned because the woman he sleeps with is the nice girl type. It's bitterly ironic that this film was released the same year as Billy Wilder's The Apartment which dealt a little more honestly with business success bought with sexual favors.The film qualifies as 2nd rate Douoglas Sirk melodrama, but looks really great in cinemascope and technicolor and has received a great transfer to DVD.
MARIO GAUCI
This is another film which, though a staple on Italian TV over the years, I somehow never bothered with until now (obviously included in my Paul Newman tribute) – mainly because it’s a glorified soap opera of a kind (accentuated by garish color and the Widescreen format) that was prevalent in Hollywood for about a decade, beginning from the mid-1950s.It’s based on a John O’Hara best-seller which, if the trailer is to be believed, was a “sensation” when it emerged; its impact, however, has been heavily diluted in the screen adaptation – not to mention by the passage of time since the film’s release! Still, the result is reasonably entertaining (often unintentionally so in view of the ongoing histrionics) and, thankfully, its hefty 144-minute duration isn’t an excessive burden. Besides, no expense has been spared with respect to production values (director Robson, screenwriter Ernest Lehman – both of whom would memorably reteam with Newman on the delightful Hitchcock pastiche THE PRIZE [1963; still bafflingly M.I.A. on DVD], cinematographer Leo Tover and composer Elmer Bernstein).On the other hand, casting is variable yet surprisingly adequate – this was Newman’s third teaming with wife Joanne Woodward: interestingly, she plays an unsympathetic role (whereas he’s typically brooding), so that the couple’s initially blissful relationship (compromised by his ambitious drive and her own faithlessness with ex-beau Patrick O’Neal) deteriorates and sends Newman into the arms of decent girl Ina Balin…all of which leads to an idealistic ending in which the disillusioned hero gives up his career in favor of true love. Myrna Loy, then, appears briefly at the start in the role of Newman’s perennially soused and whorish(!) mother; ditto Leon Ames as his steel-mill owner father (which Newman abandons after the old man’s death) – fixated on his other, dead son!; Felix Aylmer is an elderly tycoon whose grandson the hero saved from drowning – which wins Newman a position in his firm and later, satisfied by the former’s over-achieving performance, he even goads with a partnership…but the hero turns him down flat!; and Ted de Corsia is atypically featured as Balin’s modest businessman father, whom Newman had been sent by Aylmer to check on.