Splendor in the Grass

Middle-aged stars outshine glamorous leads
The plot of Splendor in the Grass revolves around the fateful love between two teens, Bud and Deanie, in late 20s Kansas. Seemingly destined to be together, they are thwarted by repressive sexual mores and their overbearing parents. Deanie suffers a nervous breakdown over their separation and Bud winds up a failure at Yale, eventually becoming a dirt farmer. This occurs against a backdrop of 20s financial speculation, culminating in the stock market crash and depression. Beatty is adequate as Bud, while Natalie Wood gives a deeply sensitive portrayal as Deanie. However, both principals are upstaged by the actors portraying their dominant parents. Pat Hingle, always excellent, plays Bud's wealthy father, a crude oil man. Audrey Christie is Deanie's mother, constantly vigilant about her daughter's purity. Both manage the difficult task of portraying sincerely loving parents who nevertheless have a baneful influence on their children's lives. I'd also like to put in a good word...

WOW !!!
Ok, I'm only 25, I'm a Black Male who loves Hip Hop and all of that. Well, I saw this film by "accident" on AMC when I was flipping channels one night. The only reason I started watching it was because it had Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood, and I thought it would be "funny" to see them when they were young.
What I got instead was an AMAZING film about 2 high school sweethearts who are hopelessly in love during a time when society dictated who (and HOW) you were allowed to love someone.
In many ways this has not changed, as a Black man who has been in love with a white women, I can easily identify with this film.
During the 1920's in a small town in Kansas, Deanie (Natalie Wood) is in love with Bud (Beatty). He wants to go all the way, but she's been taught that only "bad" girls do that, and no real man would ever respect if she did. So she holds off, and Bud eventually sleeps with the school "flapper girl". Deanie can not stand this, and eventually falls into...

Teenaged Sexual Repression Captured Vividly by Kazan's Sure Hand and Wood's Best Work
In the same way he was able to extract a searing performance from Andy Griffith in 1957's A Face in the Crowd, master director Elia Kazan gets similarly stellar results from Natalie Wood in this classic 1961 melodrama about youthful sexual repression in rural 1920's Kansas. In the same year as her Maria in West Side Story, she has never been more affecting then she is here as Deanie Loomis, the local butcher's daughter deeply in love with Bud Stamper, the son of an oil scion and the high school football hero. They are the senior sweethearts everyone expects to marry, but both have to battle constantly with their sexual longing and their grasping parents.

The ruling moral code restricts Deanie more than Bud who ends up cavorting with a good-time girl named Juanita. The indiscretion overwhelms Deanie who attempts suicide and ends up...

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