Splendor in the Grass
2011 05 03
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I really enjoy the film Splendor in the Grass, but so many parts of it are about as frustrating as parts of Rebel Without A Cause, and sometimes about as painful as A Taste of Honey (a movie I'll never watch again, because it's just too painful. It's so good, and so painful, I just can't put myself through watching it again).
These poor, frustrated teens trying so desperately to figure themselves out, and deal with the emerging storm of hormones in an era when women weren't even supposed to admit (or even know) they had them. "No nice girl has those feelings," and a girl who lost her virginity before marriage was considered "spoiled".
They struggle to communicate to their parents, to get answers, to talk to them about what they want and what they feel (about love, sex, future plans, current feelings, education, work, et cetera), and their parents cut them off, brush them off, treat their concerns lightly or not at all, talk over them, talk at them. These unfortunate kids come of age with no information except the consequences of actions they don't truly understand because of the simple fact that their parents didn't parent. They came looking for answers, got none, and ended up getting into all sorts of mad trouble that they get blamed for, when the fault is truly with the people who failed to give them a foundation.
But this was an era of girls didn't, boys did, and you didn't talk about it (any of the "its") with anyone at all. As sad as I am to see the eroding childhood now, the flapper era must have been a horror to the parents of the time - the first real era of open sexuality, alcohol consumption, and female liberation. This emerging culture must have been unbalancing in the extreme, with personal questions coming to the fore in an era that barely had any answers.
Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood are fabulous in this film, and Elia Kazan got some very realistic emotion out of them - particularly Wood. Mind you, the trick he played on her during the filming wasn't funny then, and sure as hell wasn't funny given the circumstances of her death. There's a scene where Natalie's character tries to commit suicide by walking out into the water. Natalie was terrified of the water, terrified of drowning. Kazan told her that as she was walking out on the platform that was not visible under the surface of the water, there'd be someone there holding her hand so she wouldn't fall. He lied. There was no one there, so that utter look of terror on her face during that part of the film is quite real.
If I'd been her, I'd have kicked Kazan in the yarbles for that one.