This film made AFI's 100 Passions list and I caught it on Turner Classic Movies. This 1950s drama is a classic melodrama, rooted into believable characters and emotions. The short time frame and the hot Southern summer setting heat up the emotions, which makes for great drama as well as great entertainment.
Hal Carter (William Holden, NETWORK) is a drifter, who was once an all-star college athlete. He rolls into a small Mid-West town to see if his college friend Alan Benson's (Cliff Robertson, SPIDER-MAN) father can get him a job at the family's grain factory. As Hal tries to find out where Benson lives, he meets the Owens women. Flo Owens (Betty Field, BUS STOP) is the protective mother, who wants her girls to have a better life than she has had. Millie (Susan Strasberg, ROLLERCOASTER) is the 17-year-old tomboy who has won a scholarship to college. Madge (Kim Novak, VERTIGO) is the town beauty, who is unhappily dating Alan.
Helen Potts (Verna Felton, voice of Fairy Godmother in CINDERELLA) is the nice old lady that lives next to the Owens, who keeps positive even though you can tell by things she says has seen a lot of pain in her long life. Rosemary (Rosalind Russell, AUNTIE MAME) is the bitter schoolteacher who rents a room at the Owens'. Howard Bevans (Arthur O'Connell, POSEIDON ADVENTURE) is Rosemary's boyfriend, a shopkeeper who likes to take a sip on the weekend and doesn't really think much about settling down. This cast of characters heads out to a day at a Labor Day picnic.
Hal is the kind of muscular stranger who swaggers into town and enflames the passions of the town's women who are bored with the limited crop of fellas they see day in and day out. Hal is a bit of a bragger, but he's harmless and desperately wants to turn his luck around. He lives his life fully and embraces all the potential that a new day can bring. He might not be the smartest man in the world, but he doesn't give up hope for a better life. Where most men look at Madge as a trophy to win, he looks at her like a woman to love.
The film is straight out drama. This is the stuff of Tennessee Williams. However, it's smart and all the characters are really well developed. A lesser film would have Rosemary just an evil force working against the main characters, but this film develops her complex behavior and motivations. Russell's performance is stellar and O'Connell solidly supports her. There's a scene on the Owens' porch late in the film where Russell stands under a "Room for Rent" sign that I think really sums up the status of a lot of women in the 1950s.
If you can look past the melodrama seeping from every frame, you will find a film that understands male and female and the relationships between them.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
