Page and Newman are fantastic.
Sweet Bird of Youth (1962)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:16
Fresh:12
Rotten:4
Average Rating:6.7/10
Runtime: 2 hrs
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Paul Newman and Geraldine Page re-created their Broadway roles in Tennessee Williams's SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH for this stylish film adaptation. Newman stars as Chance Wayne, a Hollywood gigolo... Paul Newman and Geraldine Page re-created their Broadway roles in Tennessee Williams's SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH for this stylish film adaptation. Newman stars as Chance Wayne, a Hollywood gigolo determined to become a star, who teams up with Alexandra Del Lago (Geraldine Page), a washed-up Hollywood actress, on his way back to his small-town home. The town clamors at the reappearance of the charismatic Chance, who claims to have found fame and fortune in Hollywood, while the mysterious Alexandra lies in a drunken stupor in their hotel room. Alexandra convinces Chance she can make him a star, so he protects her reputation while rediscovering his love for his hometown sweetheart, Heavenly (Shirley Knight), whose heart he broke when he disappeared to find fame. Chance's attempts to reignite his passion for the naive Heavenly deeply angers her vengeful father, the cruel town "boss" (Ed Begley) who will stop at nothing to see his daughter's lost innocence avenged. Williams's hard-hitting themes of betrayal, mob violence, and deceit are fully examined in this fine adaptation. Geraldine Page ignites the screen as she seductively manipulates Chance and languishes alone in her prisonlike hotel room, terrified of losing her star status. [More]
Starring: Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, Shirley Knight, Ed Begley
Starring: Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, Shirley Knight, Ed Begley, Rip Torn, Mildred Dunnock, Madeleine Sherwood, Philip Abbott, Corey Allen
Director: Richard Brooks
Director: Richard Brooks
Producer: Pandro S. Berman
Composer: Robert Armbruster
Reviews for Sweet Bird of Youth
Brooks' direction seems a little too stolid for all the sleazy, flaming passions. These are, however, given full measure by an excellent cast.
Newman began his splendid career on stage and returned triumphantly to Broadway to star in Williams' play about a gigolo with acting ambitions who attaches himself to an aging movie star.
It's a glossy, engrossing hunk of motion picture entertainment, slickly produced by Berman.
All of Williams's Southern Gothic themes are intermingled here: violence, familial conflict, sexual neurosis, the mentality of the mob. Most of it comes across as overheated nonsense.
Offers little indication of what made the original play interesting (especially in Elia Kazan's stage production), despite the fact that Paul Newman and Geraldine Page are called on to reprise their original roles.
There is no clearer face for the conflict and despondency of the decade of the sixties than Newman's magnificent bastards.
When approaching 1962's Sweet Bird of Youth, go for the parts rather than the whole.... [T]he film is a long drive through swampy melodrama.
The film gets a little bogged down in minutiae and irrelevant side plots, but on the whole it's solid and searing.
In 1962, the film was deemed audacious due to its straighforward handling of such taboo issues as drugs, v.d., abortion, and degeneracy, but it's a comromised work that due to mores and censorship deviates substantially from Tennessee Williams' play.
This cynical, coruscating drama has a strong look of being contrived, and Mr. Brooks' happy ending for it is implausible and absurd.
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