This easily could have been a much better film version of John O'Hara's 1955 novel, but the film has been given the sense of being just a preview of what could have been. It's been shelled of its soul, and the characters never seem to be fully alive even with some great performances. The three standouts are Gary Cooper, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Ray Stricklyn while Diane Varsi and Suzy Parker seem to float in and out with the proper direction or spirit.
The film focuses on Gary Cooper's aging political influencer, stuck with an ambitious and nagging wife (Geraldine Fitzgerald), more in love with the idea of what her husband could be to benefit her then with the man who fathered her two children. Stricklyn and Varsi are the victims of the unhappy marriage, an alcoholic son with music ambitions stifled by his mother, and a daughter who becomes pregnant without marriage and victimized by her parents desire not to have a scandal. Cooper discovers his wife's infidelity, and ends up in an affair of his own with Parker, his daughter's beautiful but shy roommate.
This is the type of stuff that good soap opera is made out of, but the film required another half hour to really divulge into the emotions of this saga. Cooper, as always, creates a character that you root for in spite of his weaknesses. Fitzgerald's character, as nasty as she is, is perhaps the most interesting, and she was definitely award-worthy. Stricklyn also scores as the embittered son who lashes out in alcoholic stupors that in spite of their bluntness and inappropriate timing actually make sense. The film is the perfect ideal of the missed opportunity that could have been so much greater but suffers in the translation due to nervous filmmakers who were too insecure to go with their best sense of what it should have been.
The film focuses on Gary Cooper's aging political influencer, stuck with an ambitious and nagging wife (Geraldine Fitzgerald), more in love with the idea of what her husband could be to benefit her then with the man who fathered her two children. Stricklyn and Varsi are the victims of the unhappy marriage, an alcoholic son with music ambitions stifled by his mother, and a daughter who becomes pregnant without marriage and victimized by her parents desire not to have a scandal. Cooper discovers his wife's infidelity, and ends up in an affair of his own with Parker, his daughter's beautiful but shy roommate.
This is the type of stuff that good soap opera is made out of, but the film required another half hour to really divulge into the emotions of this saga. Cooper, as always, creates a character that you root for in spite of his weaknesses. Fitzgerald's character, as nasty as she is, is perhaps the most interesting, and she was definitely award-worthy. Stricklyn also scores as the embittered son who lashes out in alcoholic stupors that in spite of their bluntness and inappropriate timing actually make sense. The film is the perfect ideal of the missed opportunity that could have been so much greater but suffers in the translation due to nervous filmmakers who were too insecure to go with their best sense of what it should have been.