OVP: Sweet Bird of Youth (1962)

Film: Sweet Bird of Youth (1962)

Stars: Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, Shirley Knight, Ed Begley, Rip Torn, Mildred Dunnock, Madeleine Sherwood

Director: Richard Brooks

Oscar History: 3 nominations/1 win (Best Actress-Geraldine Page, Supporting Actor-Ed Begley*, Supporting Actress-Shirley Knight)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

We live in a world where remakes fall like rain onto our cinemas.  It's near impossible to find a property that isn't being redone, remade, & updated for a new generation.  Even pictures once considered hallowed, impossible ground like West Side Story are getting a new look.  But for some reason, one of the more obvious choices for remakes has not been happening on the big-screen: the plays of Tennessee Williams.  These are well-known properties (certainly in the same way that A Star is Born is), ones that are regularly brought back to Broadway, but they aren't getting a new generation of considerations from modern directors.  This is a pity, because the works of Tennessee Williams are not just timeless, they're also stories that weren't able to be as shocking as the original source material (which dealt frankly with sex & sexuality) due to the Hays Code in the 1950's & 60's.  A perfect example of this is Sweet Bird of Youth.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie follows Chance Wayne (Newman), a once golden boy of St. Cloud, Mississippi, who shows up in town in a fancy car with flashy money alongside an aging film star Alexandra del Lago (Page...who true to form for Hollywood is just one year older than Newman in real life).  Chance is trying to trick Alexandra into giving him a film contract, but she's on the run from a failed comeback bid, and doesn't feel she has anything to lose in associating with a clear gigolo.  Meanwhile, Chance is also trying to connect with Heavenly (Knight), his childhood sweetheart whom he's still in love with, much to the chagrin of her father Boss Finley (Begley), a local powerbroker who puts a hit out on Chance.  It turns out when Chance left town last searching for fame & fortune, he left behind a knocked-up Heavenly, who then had an abortion which left her infertile.  Boss Finley wants revenge, so Chance is trying to leave town again with Alexandra...but then she gets a call that tells her her comeback was a triumph, giving her her career back.  Now with something to lose, Alexandra refuses to honor her contract with Chance, insisting that she'll take him on but only as her assistant & lover.  Chance, despite facing likely death, refuses, and goes to meet Heavenly, who forgives him for leaving her & they run off together, with Boss Finley left agog at losing his only daughter to such a man.

Like all of Williams' films, this is a highly-stylized form of acting, the kind you need to have a high tolerance for if you're going to muscle through it (if you aren't a fan of melodramas, this is going to be where you tap out).  But I generally love Williams' plays, and this is no exception.  I think few authors have done a better job of not only talking about loss, but about the things we all lose-love, sex, youth.  There's something haunting about watching beautiful Paul Newman being read by everyone in town.  He bet hard on himself, and it cost him-he is never going to be the golden boy again, and he has squandered that status.  If you're past the age of 28, you've had that moment-where you think about things that not only you didn't do, but the unfairness of regret in that you know now how you'd handle it in retrospect.

The film won three Oscar nominations, each with varying degrees of success.  Page, who is not my favorite as a general rule, owns the screen here.  This is the best thing I've ever seen from her, and it's wonderful because she's so out of place compared to everyone around her.  For starters, she's actually gotten the brass ring, and squandered it-that's something Chance never got the opportunity to have, and in a true moment of unfairness that plays marvelously, she gets a second chance when her comeback attempt is a smash success while he never has one.  Based off of Tallulah Bankhead (who was friends with Williams in real life), Page nails this sort of "life cannot touch me" part with real gusto.  The only bummer about this part is that she barely shares the screen with her-then lover Rip Torn, who is far sexier than I realized he'd be circa 1962 (he did not age like Paul Newman, let's put it that way).

The same can be said for both the winning Begley and the not-nominated Newman.  Begley is fascinating in a side part, taking on the type of role that Burl Ives played in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof of someone who, like Alexandra, has had a gifted life, and who therefore doesn't think the world can truly touch him.  He owns every scene, and not only does he own it, but he also imbues it with a sense of history-we know that he's been torturing this town for years, and running it with a tyrannical fist.  Why Newman, a year after his second Oscar nomination, couldn't get a citation for a fully-fledged, totally real Chance is beyond me...perhaps jealousy over his beauty (or perhaps homophobia since reading-between-the-lines you get the strong sense that Chance is more Tab Hunter than Robert Redford in terms of golden boys).

The only nomination I don't understand is Shirley Knight's.  Knight is a good actress, perhaps one that leans into theatrical more than necessary in her later work, but a good actress nonetheless.  But as written, her Heavenly is a bore, and inconsistent from scene-to-scene, never really knowing what she wants.  This might read correctly in theory (a rich young woman who has never had to make a decision before will struggle with a big one against her father's wishes), but it doesn't play that way in the film.  She's not even the best supporting actress in the film-Madeleine Sherwood as Boss Finlay's battered lover is far more knowing than Knight is to her part.