Splendor in the Grass (1961)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Splendor in the Grass (1961) – E. Kazan

Elia Kazan (with playwright William Inge) brings us melodrama of an almost Sirkian kind – although Sirk typically took things much further, emotionally and sociologically.  True, Natalie Wood does allow sexual repression to drive her to hysteria (and the sanatorium).  And Warren Beatty can’t come to terms with his own impulses.  And Kazan does take aim at the late 1920’s Kansan context and the way that nice girls didn’t and bad girls go to hell (and what’s a poor boy to do).  But in comparison to a film like Written on the Wind, it feels as though Kazan is holding back.  Having watched this directly after Palo Alto (2013) with its depiction of kids running rampant and no urge really restrained suggests that there are both differences (actual behaviour) and similarities (pressures to “become” something) in the experience of high schoolers across films/generations.  The one exquisite emotion that Kazan’s film is able to achieve spawns directly from the title (and Wordsworth’s poem): a bittersweet nostalgia for previous episodes in our lives that used to mean so much but which have now faded gently away.