Later adapted by TV as a long-running soap opera-type drama, you can see why in this lengthy film, adapted from a best-selling novel with enough characters and plot strands for a whole TV series. Made around 1957 but ostensibly set in idyllic New Engand just before America's entry into the Second World War, it seemed obvious to me that the production was almost indistinguishable between the two years, at least until the War Draft occurs late in the film, which besides broadening popular appeal, enables director Robson to thus obliquely critique contemporary society and its mores on attitudes to sex, snobbery and that most popular social subject of the 50's, the so-called "generation gap". Beautifully shot in luminous colour and with a handsome cast, the film would would have worked better if it had a bit less happening - one poor family experiences alcoholism, incest, domestic violence, suicide and murder over the course of a couple of years. It's all a bit unreal and unbelievable but perversely remains gripping viewing even as I realised I shouldn't have been at all. The narrative framing device is one of the goody-goody young characters Alison MacKenzie's reminiscences of her childhood there before the War started and changed all the young folk forever. It does seem a bit Waltons-ish and sentiment does make not entirely unexpected if infrequent appearances along the way. However the last half hour settles down to a terse courtroom scene, the culmination of the incest/suicide/murder elements, with "Bonanza's" Lorne Green impressing as the prosecution counsel, well- written right up until the local doctor takes it on himself to deliver an improbable sermon attacking the town's hypocrisy which of course carries the day. It's a fairly ugly "big message" to the movie viewers as they leave the cinema but also helps to tie up other loose plot ends so that the main characters still standing all get a form of redemption for the future. The acting is good throughout if not exactly deeply felt. Lana Turner gets to look pained throughout as the frigid matriarch Constance McKenzie with her own dark secret but does so with aplomb, Arthur Kennedy tears into his part as the reprobate villain of the piece and Diane Varsi is good as Alison, the town's awakening conscience. I feel guilty for getting so hooked on such an obviously contrived and melodramatic confection, but guilty pleasures are pleasures all the same.
Review of Peyton Place
