Splendor in the Grass [VHS]
Elia Kazan's pedal-to-the-metal approach to psychosexual melodrama paid off handsomely when he had layered material by Tennessee Williams or John Steinbeck to work with. The very raw material here is an original by hot-blooded playwright William Inge, about a pair of teenagers in the American Midwest in the 1920s whose lives are ruined by the repressive sexual climate of the period. The girl, played by Natalie Wood, is literally driven batty by her pent-up adolescent lust and ends up in the bin---which admittedly plays better than sounds, because the hunk she yearns for is the young and almost impossibly handsome Warren Beatty. This is a very lush and beautiful movie, but also a deeply silly one. It's grade-A American cheese, with a pinch of dime-store Freud on top.--David Chute