Login
Sudsy melodramas need some juice in order to work and be entertaining, and in both of these regards From the Terrace stumbles forward in awkward gasps. No one could possibly mistake Butterfield 8, the other John O’Hara adaptation of 1960, for a great movie, but it is a gloriously entertaining piece of trash, in large part thanks to the ridiculous performance Elizabeth Taylor gives it. It comes roaring out the gate acting like it’s going to be another variation of the idle rich behaving badly, but then it starts moralizing and the whole thing deflates.
Maybe it’s that the opening act has Leon Ames and Myrna Loy tearing into the material with scenery chewing élan. I mean, Loy’s drunken matriarch is a blast of much needed energy any time she’s on-screen. She brings a neurotic quality that allows her scenes to breathe, and she’s one of the few characters that we actually care about. Ames is a more serious-minded variation of his authoritarian patriarch from Meet Me in St. Louis. There’s no adorable tots and teenager daughters to knock the wind out of him here, and he’s allowed to bellow and rage unchecked. He’s an ornery bastard, but he makes the most of his cloistering father figure.
Shame that we’re sacked with a limp love triangle, or is it really more of a square? No matter, Paul Newman is dependably solid as the upwardly mobile rich boy trying to make good on his own. It’s not one of his better performances, he’s always best when playing rascals or outright amoral types and his character is too square here. I mean, all he really wants is a warm family home with a dependable wife and some kids. He doesn’t find it in Joanne Woodward’s hellraising society girl. Woodward gets the showy part, and she comes damn close to finding the appropriate tone for this bordering on camp material. Of course, she and Newman were a great love affair and those sparks come across here, ironically their scenes of strife and sparring are the best between the pair.
The two of them are left a bit saddled with their other romantic interests. Patrick O’Neal is just an oily asshole throughout, and it’s hard to see what exactly the attraction is between him and Woodward that keeps them running back to each other. Ina Balin is fine, but she plays the material so damn earnestly you’d be mistaken for a second for thinking that it deserved this kind of tone and commitment. Aside from Loy and Ames, the best supporting performance is from a one-scene wonder in Barbara Eden. She’s horny, manic, and clearly enjoying the chance to go big. She finds the right balance in the material to make it snap, and I wonder what the rest of the film would have been like with her replacing one of the other female leads.
Films like this were stock-and-trade for the era, but you notice the things that separate the good ones from the bad, or in this case, the mediocre. The major problem here is director Mark Robson, a man who was permanently attached to trashy material while alternately seemingly afraid to fully embrace its camp potential (see: Valley of the Dolls). His direction is one big weight around the film’s neck, but you’ve got plenty of handsome costumes, interiors, and glamorous movie stars behaving badly to stare at for two-and-a-half hours.
