Rating: 
Summary: Glory in the Flower
Review: Splendor in The Grass, Directed by the late Elis Kazan is undoubtly something most of us who look at love and life idealistically have all gone through. Based in rural Southeast Kansas in 1928, this passonate love story about two young lovers who are troubled by the sexual urges they have for one another and the sexual represson of this age. Warren Beatty makes his film debute as "Bud" Natalie Woods's character "Deanie" love interest. "Bud" is torn between his love and sexually desire toward "Deanie" and his father who is pressuring him into attending Yale to get his degree. "Deanie" as a young "good girl" is urged by her mother to not let a boy "spoil" her. Reluctantly, "Bud" agrees to his fathers wishes and breaks his relationship off with "Deanie" sending her into a "psychopathic" spin. The lesson to be learned is that life will go on no matter how much heart break you suffer, "What Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass." Absolutely a wonderful love story with a surprise ending. I found both Warren and Natalie's preformance at such a young age exciting, knowing what outstanding preformers they grew up to be. Bring your girlfriends and watch this movie!!!
Rating: 
Summary: tragic but redemptive film
Review: Superbly directed by Elia Kazan, and acted with consummate passion and depth by Natalie Wood [who earned an Oscar nomination for her performance] and Warren Beatty [who, though starring in his first major film, was near flawless], Splendor in the Grass is a powerfully moving film. The script, which garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Original Story and Screenplay, is a loosely-based modern interpretation of the Shakespearean classic Romeo and Juliet and takes its title from a poignant segment of one of the works from acclaimed English poet William Wordsworth. And indeed, the influences of Shakespeare and Wordsworth are strongly felt throughout this tragic but redemptive tale of young adults coming of age in 1930 Kansas. More specifically, Splendor in the Grass deals with themes of class struggle, sexual repression, parental control and unconditional love. In particular, I was struck by the strong Calvinist and authoritarian ethic of the father of Warren Beatty's character. Determined that his son fulfill his vision of "the successful life," he more or less forces his son to give up on his true longing, his love for Natalie's character, and pursue a Yale education. Not surprisingly, this leads to disillusionment while at Yale, and co-incidentally a mental break-down on the part of Natalie's character. Soon enough, the father of Beatty's character realizes the flaw of his heavy-handed and ultimately selfish actions, but it is too late at this point. There are many lessons one can draw from a movie of this degree of complexity and meaning, but I think the most meaningful and enduring lesson can be found in the voice-over heard near the end of the movie, which quotes from Wordsworth's poem: "We will grieve not, but find strength in what remains behind." It was trully compelling and inspiring to see the two characters, after the great emotional cost their longing for each other had inflicted on their lives, finally accept the practical futility of their love and summon the resolve to move on with their lives. I think this is a powerful lesson that can go a long way toward healing personal, and even societal, wounds after the onset of hardship or tragedy.
Rating:
Summary: I'm a 21 year old male and this was one of my favorites.
Review: That's right, you read correctly. I am no fan of average chick flicks and that's precisely why I LOVE THIS FILM! That and the fact that the plot is great, the acting is superb, and Natalie Wood is so gosh-darn cute! In this film, we see the lives of two high schoolers who are madly in love with each other. As circumstances turn out, however, the two are pushed away from each other, though seemingly unwillingly. Years later the two have formed new lives. Warren Beatty has found a new love and Natalie Wood, well I don't want to spoil it all for you. Take it from me. When I saw this movie I had no idea what I was getting into. It was a cold winters day in Illinois and I was bored rotten. I flipped on AMC, a seldom viewed channel for me back then, and I found myself quickly engrossed in this film. Now, a year later, it stands out as one of my top five films of all time. I LOVED IT. The ending is sooooo anti-classic-chick-flick that it made me stand up and applaud in delight, that and the fact that the film was outstandting. ENJOY!!
Rating:
Summary: The Forbidden Love
Review: The Forbidden Love
Splendor in the Grass is defiantly a romance tearjerker. The film is a little lengthy but, worth your time. Its like the "Romeo and Juliet" theme or West Side Story, which had blissful young lovers separated due to the peer pressures of friends and family.
The movie Splendor in the Grass is a Drama directed by Elia Kazan through Warner Brothers Studio. The film was released in 1961and received Academy Award: Best (Original) Story and Screenplay. The running time of this movie on DVD is 2:04. The star of the film is Natalie Wood, which plays Deanie, which was a Nominee for the Academy Awards Best Actress in 1961. Warren Beatty, also starred as Bud, for his screen debut.
Splendor in the Grass is set in rural Kansas 1928; it tells the tragically romantic tale of teenagers Deanie and Bud who restrain their desires because of their families' disapproval. They both come from entirely different backgrounds, Bud 's family being wealthy - with a very controlling father, and Deanie middle to low class with a mother that is ashamed of sex - they allow class differences to prevent any possible union. Their passions exist purely in their hearts and minds, but the couple never physically expressed this forbidden love. However, this was during the late 20's and 'nice girls' didn't "do it" before they got married. Deanie is definitely a nice girl, with moral values. Bud, however, is torn, he wants to secure his love with Deanie but doesn't want to ruin her reputation or should I say spoil her. Bud is aching for sexual gratification, so Bud decides to drop Deanie, although he says he loves her. He then finds sexual satisfaction with others. Deanie goes into a state of severe depression, and a breakdown. She has to be institutionalized. Deanie finally recovers after 2 ½ years and returns home. She faces her feelings with Bud and closes that chapter in her life. Deanie is finally free to start her new life.
I have given this movie a rating of 5 stars. Although the movie was long, it was very entertaining. I think it would be a great movie to show young teens of today.
Rating:
Summary: Middle-aged stars outshine glamorous leads
Review: The plot of Splendor in the Grass revolves around the fateful love between two teens, Bud and Deanie, in late 20s Kansas. Seemingly destined to be together, they are thwarted by repressive sexual mores and their overbearing parents. Deanie suffers a nervous breakdown over their separation and Bud winds up a failure at Yale, eventually becoming a dirt farmer. This occurs against a backdrop of 20s financial speculation, culminating in the stock market crash and depression. Beatty is adequate as Bud, while Natalie Wood gives a deeply sensitive portrayal as Deanie. However, both principals are upstaged by the actors portraying their dominant parents. Pat Hingle, always excellent, plays Bud's wealthy father, a crude oil man. Audrey Christie is Deanie's mother, constantly vigilant about her daughter's purity. Both manage the difficult task of portraying sincerely loving parents who nevertheless have a baneful influence on their children's lives. I'd also like to put in a good word for Fred Stewart playing Del Loomis, Deanie's father. His role as the small town grocer is small, but he does subtle wonders in a scene at the end of the movie where he overrules his wife's objection to Deanie's seeing Bud again. One wants to weep at his paternal love. If the film's diatribe against sexual repression is no longer fresh, its depiction of the banality of smalltown life remains so. This is skillfully shown in the second scene, where the Loomises' frame house is shown behind a large graphic reading "Southeast Kansas 1928." By vaguely mentioning the story's setting, rather than specifying a town, the director, Kazan, emphasizes the generic quality of the setting and makes it more insignificant and insipid. Snoopy, gossiping neighbors, drunken oil workers, and insensitive classmates all contribute to this mood. The one character who attempts to break free from this stifling atmosphere, Bud's wayward sister, Ginny, comes to grief, as if to emphasize the impossibility of escape. Despite the somewhat pedestrian plot, the film is redeemed by the performances. The final scene, where Deanie, home after being cured of her breakdown, visits Bud, now married and living on a dusty farm, is very poignant. It's a vivid depiction of lovers separated by destiny. I would also like to praise David Amram's evocative, bluesy theme music. Played over the opening credits, it mightily prepares the viewer for the story he's about to see. I can't close this review without complaining that I was unable to access the theatrical trailer promised on my DVD box. I've never had this problem with any other DVD special features, and can only guess this was the manufacturer's fault, not mine.
Rating: 
Summary: The Perils of Puberty
Review: The quotation from Wordsworth's poem from which William Inge derived the title of his screenplay (for which he received an Academy Award) offers an insight into the tendency of young people to ignore or minimize the importance of certain decisions they make which can have significant long-term impact on their adult lives. This is essentially a sad movie in several respects as Wilma Dean Loomis (Natalie Wood) and Bud Stamper (Warren Beatty) struggle without much success to establish a stable relationship while in high school. Both are goaded (driven?) by parents who set ambitious goals for them which frustrate and confuse them. By nature, most adolescents live day-to-day, measuring their happiness in terms of immediate and sustainable social acceptance. For them, tomorrow will somehow take care of itself. Bud seems to live an unexamined life whereas, early on, Wilma seems emotionally vulnerable to self-doubt. Bud is content to get along by going along whereas Wilma becomes increasingly more dependent on carefree Bud. As directed by Elia Kazan, most of the main characters in this film are (to varying degrees) dysfunctional. As a result, communication between and among them is seldom successful. This is especially true of the relationship between Bud and his father (Pat Hingle), perhaps most evident while Bud struggles with his life at Yale. While seeing Splendor in the Grass again recently, I was much less sympathetic with Wilma and Bud than when I first saw it decades ago. Oh sure, that is partly explained by my current age and all of my life experiences as a father and (now) a grandfather. But I also now think that the film (because of Inge's script and Kazan's use of it) too often substitutes melodrama for drama. There is almost no personal development by Bud throughout the film. Wilma recognizes that after seeing him for probably the last time. In contrast, she seems to have learned a number of important life lessons (albeit at a substantial cost) and now possesses -- as the film ends -- a worldly wisdom which Bud will never obtain. This is a brilliantly crafted soap opera. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, it was immensely popular because the emotional world it explores was then so accessible and because that world was presented so simplistically. My guess (only a guess) is that most of today's teenagers will find this film to be quaint. A few may find it endearing. For me, it retains some of its charm but not much else.
Rating:
Summary: Coming of age and the stock market crash
Review: The topic of young people reaching adulthood has seemingly been dealt with over the years in as many ways as there are young people reaching adulthood. In "Splendor In the Grass," however, the passion of the teen years contrasts more eloquently with the wistful practicality of young adulthood than any such story I've seen in quite some time.
This is the latest in a series of reviews I've written on older films that I'd not seen before but have been spurred to seek out because of their inclusion in the NY Times list of "1000 best movies ever." It's the film debut of Warren Beatty, who stars opposite Natalie Wood in a role that earned her one of her "Best Actress" Oscar nominations. The film won an Oscar for best screenplay.
Beatty (Bud) & Wood (Deannie) are teen lovers in southeastern Kansas in 1928. Bud is the rich favorite son of the town, heir to an oil fortune, captain of the football team, the All-American boy. Deannie is daughter in a much less upscale family, and her mama refers to Bud as "the catch of a lifetime" while Bud's daddy runs his life and won't hear any alternatives to the life he has chosen for his boy: Sow your wild oats, get a Yale education, then marry Deannie if you still want to, and take over the family oil business.
His boy just wants to be a rancher.
Some of the themes covered in "Splendor In the Grass" are well-worn by now, but even in a film nearly a half-century old they are mostly presented with a fresh take. Bud is a deeply honorable boy who feels compelled to follow his father's wishes, but simply cannot bear to be parted from Deannie; however, since his father won't let him marry Deannie before college, Bud feels it's best to stop seeing Deannie for awhile. The sexual tension up to that point in the film is remarkably palpable for a film of this era, showing again that modern Hollywood rings false when it thinks nudity and promiscuity are the only ways to get this feeling across.
The tragedies set in motion by Bud's father, both in his business decisions and in the way he strong-arms his family, permanently alter everyone in the film, with some lovely twists of fate along the way, before the characters reach a satisfactory and bittersweet resolution that leaves the viewer thinking, "Why, of course. I can identify with that." It's a happy ending, kind of, but one that leaves the future open-ended for a more happy ending down the road.
The dynamics of family have often been presented with more insight in the years since films like "Splendor In the Grass" helped shape the current consciousness of today's filmgoer, but at the time this was one of the stories that helped young people attain a voice in the modern world that they didn't used to have. It deserves a place along such other family conflict classics as "East of Eden" and "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof."
Rating: 
Summary: kind of strange
Review: theres this chick who gets wasted at her prom and gang raped by like the whole class or something.it was pretty thorough.she starts going all batty and her horrible mother ignores her and tells her to pretend nothings wrong lest the neighbors would think ill of them.back in 61 i guess people still cared about stuff like that.its better than any lifetime movie ive ever seen.there was a second place one with a pinball machine involved..........................its for a pretty mature audience.her parents treat her like an embarresment and a problem as opposed to a person.this is the worst way to go about helping a mentaly ill person.its very emotional.its a bit long.
Rating:
Summary: Natalie Wood's Best Work
Review: This heart wrenching story of young maturing girl into womanhood is one of my favorite movies. I love Natalie Wood's performance and believe it's her best work. (only slightly above "Rebel Without A Cause") Her portrayal of Deanie is young, innocent, and ultimately, maddening. You're heart breaks for her pain and you just can't help but blame those around her for not helping and reaching out to her. I thought her work in this movie was breathtaking and certainly worthy of much acclaim. Warren Beatty's Bud, is strong and with the help of Wood, she brings many wonderful qualities out in him. I wanted to strangle him on many occasions, so that must mean he did something right. His cold-hearted turn on Deanie and her downward spiral into self-destruction is painful to watch but, deeply moving. I really recommend this movie. I love it.
Rating:
Summary: Natalie Wood's Best Work
Review: This heart wrenching story of young maturing girl into womanhood is one of my favorite movies. I love Natalie Wood's performance and believe it's her best work. (only slightly above "Rebel Without A Cause") Her portrayal of Deanie is young, innocent, and ultimately, maddening. You're heart breaks for her pain and you just can't help but blame those around her for not helping and reaching out to her. I thought her work in this movie was breathtaking and certainly worthy of much acclaim. Warren Beatty's Bud, is strong and with the help of Wood, she brings many wonderful qualities out in him. I wanted to strangle him on many occasions, so that must mean he did something right. His cold-hearted turn on Deanie and her downward spiral into self-destruction is painful to watch but, deeply moving. I really recommend this movie. I love it.
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