Since the mid 1950s, Hollywood stood at the forefront of changing the public opinion and controversy that his movies brought were meant to appeal to the average viewer and make him/her think and/or question the deeply rooted conservative attitudes. Elia Kazan's mastered the subject of forbidden love, social prejudices and tragic romance in his movies, while simultaneously managing to create some of the most famous male and female couplings in the history of western cinema. "Splendor in the grass" has turned the public's eye to a young and handsome Warren Beatty and also enthroned Natalie Wood as the tragic heroine of love stories in that era. The two actors perfectly clicked both on and off the screen and managed to guide the viewers all the way through one love story that started as a beautiful thing but resulted in one of the most heartbreaking ending scenes of all times. "Splendor in the grass" is a true, real life, tough, beautiful and tragic love story for all times.

From visionary director Elia Kazan came this haunting tale of a young woman's struggle with mental illness in the face of her faltering relationship with a local wealthy youth.Kazan does not shy away from the raw portrayal of a character's deterioration into irrationality while others around her try to aid her. He sends on the heroine's roller-coaster and allows us to be connected to her and feel her pain, joy, heartbreak and newfound independence by the film's end.Natalie Wood is the film's strongest asset as young Wilma 'Deanie' Loomis, the heroine of the film. Wood has been acting for several years by the time she took on this heartbreaking drama, but the role of Deanie is by far the actress' finest hour. Wood brings out every emotion in her performance ranging from hopelessly romantic within the Depression-era setting without being a cliché to her utter fall into an unstable girl who is ready to throw her life away because she is rejected by male lead Warren Beatty (in his first leading role)'s Bud Stamper, but at the film's end Deanie looks back on all her struggles with a new light and finds herself stronger than the film's opening setup. Wood earned a well deserved Best Actress nomination for her raw performance.Speaking of her leading man, newcomer Warren Beatty perfectly plays into the image that the actor himself eventually earned: a playboy type. While Bud Stamper doesn't quite cheat on Deanie in the beginning, the rich boy is virtually spineless in asserting himself and being his own man. While he loves Wood's Deanie, Bud's lack of assertion allows him to cave to his father (Pat Hingle)'s demand that he dump the poor girl; setting Deanie's downward spiral in motion. Stringing her along acting like he wants to rekindle the flames only makes Bud's action more despicable as he exploits Deanie's fragility. By the film's end, Bud is the one who is now unhappy in his life while his former flame is the strong and fearless woman, able to move on with her life."Splendor in the Grass" has no shortage of tear-jerking moments as it is billed in the 'drama' category, but the near realism of the acting makes the moments even sadder. Probably one of the saddest scenes is Deanie's attempt to drown herself (Natalie Wood was known to be afraid of water due to an accident early in her child star days) after Bud rejects her affection again and Deanie's loving mother is faced with a catatonic daughter who refuses to look at or acknowledge her. The film's conclusion though does provide a happier mood after all the turmoil of Deanie's struggles as we watch her go off to start anew with someone she does love and can leave her old life behind in her small town.

While a modest hit and the bringer of a career Oscar for Inge, "Splendor In The Gas" in fifties social relevance drama running on fumes; a picture that labors mightily to be a little moving. Beatty is fine in his first film, it was probably enough to make him a star. Natalie Wood is caught straining, too little is given her wild mood swings in the way motivation. Pat Hingle is method hammy in the most one dimensional of the film's characters. The films last quarter, where the cliche's are given some balance (though we learn the two worst have predictably perished by their own folly) and the pain is reconciled, is probably it's best. The poetic coda is too trite but does not offend. Kazan would never find his way into the sixties, and while some misbegotten projects would follow, he was finished as a creative force. His capitulation with HUAC left him something of a pariah in Hollywood, but he never found a real handle on the medium beyond brilliantly executing the written word, and the medium was going beyond that.

When I first saw this movie during the 1960's, I thought it was something special; more than fifty years later, I still do.The intensity of Deanie Loomis' emotions for Bud Stamper, clashes with the strictures and inhibitions of her emotionally burnt-out parents. Natalie Wood as Deanie was never more luminous than in this film and never better. Warren Beatty in his first film plays Bud with a hesitant intensity that became his trademark. His character yearns for something he can't define and this brings him into conflict with his father, Ace (Pat Hingle), who only seems to want a replica of himself. All this is played out in Kansas in the late 1920's where youthful passion, hormones and zest for life seem thwarted at every turn. And what an ending this film has; one that leaves you sitting in your theater seat long after the curtains close.The critics weren't too kind to "Splendor" when first released. It occasioned much sarcasm. The New Republican's Stanley Kaufman thought it, "an Andy Hardy story with glands". He also added, "a Martian who saw this film might infer that all adolescents deprived of sexual intercourse go crazy." Well maybe not, but doesn't unrequited love and unfulfilled passion drive people a little crazy, or at the least make them very unhappy? The power of William Inge's screenplay, and Elia Kazan's direction, expresses those feelings through the heightened actions of the characters - Inge rarely resorts to narration or voice-over to reveal their thoughts, it all plays out in their interactions with one another. Anyway, the public certainly got it; the film was a huge success. This film made me want to know more about William Inge. He's in the movie and plays the thoughtful, sad-looking minister. However, he was a troubled man, after early success: "Picnic", "Come Back Little Sheba" etc., there was a slow decline complicated by alcoholism and depression. Finally, he went to his garage, closed the door, got in his car and turned on the ignition. But he wasn't going anywhere - or maybe he was taking the greatest journey of all - for William Inge had finished with this life. You often read that the screenplay for "Splendor in the Grass" was written for the most part by director Elia Kazan, based on a novella by William Inge, Kazan states as much in his autobiography. However he also reveals that the key themes and that powerful ending are indeed William Inge's. "What I liked about this ending", he says, "is its bittersweet ambivalence, full of what Bill had learned from his own life: that you have to accept limited happiness, because all happiness is limited, and to expect perfection is the most neurotic thing of all; you must live with the sadness as well as the joy." Kazan also said, "It is not my favorite of my films, but the last reel is my favorite last reel, at once the saddest and the happiest".The performances of Natalie Wood, Warren Beatty and all the others, are locked forever in this moving film. Like many movies that are set decades before they were made, "Splendor in the Grass" is rather timeless - it will probably stay that way now.