Pretty Good

Better Late Then Never

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Director: Arthur Hiller. Original screenplay: Edward Lewis. Photographed in black-and-white by Sam Leavitt. Film editor: Leon Barsha. Art director: McClure Capps. Set decorator: Rudy Butler. Music: Leith Stevens. Songs: "The Careless Years", "Butterfingers Baby" by Joe Lubin. Songs sung by Sue Rancy. Assistant director: John Birch. Producer: Edward Lewis. In charge of production: Barney Briskin. Executive producer: Kirk Douglas. A Bryna-Michael Production, released through United Artists.Copyright 1957 by Bryna-Michael Productions. New York opening as a support to April Love at some New York neighbour-hood theatres: 27 November 1957. U.S. release: September 1957. U.K. release: floating from January 1958. Australian release: 16 January 1958. 6,540 feet. 72 minutes.SYNOPSIS: When a youth proposes marriage to a young girl, she accepts, but both of their parents oppose the wedding.COMMENT: A well-intentioned but mediocre offering. Acting is especially poor. Dean Stockwell turns Jon into a whining pipsqueak, whilst Natalie Trundy -- a self-conscious amateur if ever there was one - is burdened with a grating accent akin to fingernails scratching a blackboard. The rest of the players stand around in stiff attitudes, making producer Edward Lewis' dialogue sound like a daytime radio serial. The director is not much help either. About all he does is to let the camera whirr away in long, monotonous, static takes. Sam Leavitt's attractive camera-work deserves a better vehicle than this. The audience at our Film Index screening did manage to suffer the film right through to the end -- but only just! It has been reported that Lewis himself appears on camera briefly as the anthropology professor.

The girls are all blonde and the boys all clean-cut. It is 1957, the peak of those ten years of innocence between the end of the Korean war and the Kennedy assassination. The biggest concern of middle-class white youth is getting a job and "settling down". Jobs are plentiful, Ike's in the White House, and marriage takes care of the sex problem. This earnest little movie rivets on that last element. It's like a one-note laser. The kids are in heat and only marriage is acceptable. But are they responsible enough, adult enough. Stockwell and Trundy say they are, but their parents being certifiably respectable and responsible say they're not. The conflict, I'm sure, resonated from malt shops to drive-ins all over America. Sure, bigger budget films like "A Summer Place" (1959) dealt with the same angst in lavish Technicolor and to much bigger crowds. Still, this minor production presents no distractions to teen mores of the time.Unfortunately Director Hiller paces events like he's got 10 minutes of script and 60 minutes to fill. Nodding off seems the natural reaction to much of the stretched-out dialogue and Leave It to Beaver action. Stockwell may look like the second coming of James Dean but wisely avoids the temptation, while Trundy makes for a convincing version of Doris Day's younger sister. Even the normally competent John Larch takes the idea of "working stiff" to some lengths. Yet the movie is astonishing in one regard-- it was co-written by Hollywood's top communist of the blacklist period, John Howard Lawson under a pseudonym. I guess Lawson was picking up paying gigs where he could, even drive-in teen movies. Likely he was responsible for Larch's blue-collar status in what is otherwise a strictly white-collar movie. Still and all, the script could easily have come from Dick Clark between sets on American Bandstand. Oh well, as they say, life is stranger than fiction, or something like that.Anyway, for those interested in what teen concerns were like before Vietnam and an assassin's bullet ushered in a new era, this little Ozzie-and-Harriet artifact is a good place to start.

**SPOILERS** 1940's child star Dean Stockwell in his first adult role as the crazy mixed up and madly in love 18 year-old Santa Monica high school student Jerry Vernon does a commendable job without the usual schmaltz you would expect in a 1950's growing up to adulthood Hollywood movie.Crashing a party with his friend Bob, Alan Dinehart III, just to be rebellious Jerry meets 17 year-old Emily Meredith, Natalie Trundy, and by the time the evening is over the two somehow connect without at first realizing it. It's later when, with her parents out for the evening, Emily invites Jerry over to the house that what at first was just a chance encounter, at the crashed party, not only becomes a beautiful friendship but blooms into a full fledged love affair.As Jerry gets serious about Emily his studies in school start to suffer and that gets his old man Mr. Sam Vernon, John Larch, as well as his mom Mathilda, Virginia Christine, very concerned about their son's future. Papa Sam has been breaking his back working all kinds of overtime, as well as days off, at the machine plant where he saved up $400,00 to pay for Jerry collage education. Now Jerry wan't to squander not only his education but the $400.00 to buy Emily and himself a pair of wedding rings and go on a honeymoon where they'll be hitched up, or married, in Mexico.Emily's parents Charles & Helen Meredith, John Stephenson & Barbara Billingsley, are just as determined as Jerry's are in not letting their daughter ruin her life by marrying so early before she can make something of herself by going to and finishing college.The final straw is when Jerry with his kid brothers Biff's, Bobby Hyatt, knowledge plans to elope with Emily. This is to be accomplished by Jerry forging his old mans name on a bank withdrawal slip in order to grab the $400.00, that's exclusively for Jerry's education, and take off with Emily across the border into Mexico. Biff not being able to keep his mouth shut blurts out, at the breakfast table, what Jerry & Emily are about to do! That leads Papa Sam to storm into the two's lovers hotel-room and have it out with his love-sick and at the same time ungrateful, for everything he did for him, son Jerry. Things get even more stressful for the confused and immature Jerry when his girl Emily, even though younger is far more grown up then he is, decides to call the whole thing, dash across the border and marriage, off. Left all alone and feeling like a real first class jerk with the hotel owner Mrs. Belosi, Elizabert Shifer, giving him 72 hours to clear out Jerry meekly comes back home to live with his parents and ask for their forgiveness for all the trouble he caused them.***SPOILER ALERT*** In the end things turn out for the better for both Jerry and Emily in that they not only learned the hard facts of life but also that being in love is one thing but being married is quite another. Especially if you've never experienced life beyond that of attending party's and making out on then back seat of your, which our parents paid for, Chevy Convertible.P.S By the way Emily, like his parents, in the end forgives Jerry for his compulsive actions and not only agrees to give him her new address, at her parents summer retreat in Connecticut, but promises to write him every day that she's away.

Careless Years, The (1957) ** 1/2 (out of 4)Dean Stockwell and Natalie Trundy play a poor boy and a rich girl who find themselves in love but they're starting to feel sexual desires so in order to do things right they want to get married but all of the parents involved thinks that's a bad idea. I was pleasantly shocked to see how well made and at times emotion this film was. The story is told in a very serious manor and outside the title song the film comes off pretty well without any of the camp factor that usually attaches itself to a film like this. What really makes the film worth viewing are the performances, all of which are very good. Stockwell steals the show as the poor boy who finds himself falling apart as he tries to do things the right way. He does a great job at building this character up into someone we can care about. Trundy is also very good as the good girl who wants to do things the right way. John Lynch is terrific as the boys father and Barbara Billingsley from Leave it to Beaver plays the girl's over cautious mother. There's a terrific scene towards the end where the boy steals some of his father's money and how this plays out is very brutal, realistic and quite emotional. The one thing that hampers the film is the fact that we've seen this type of movie countless times before.