Synopsis
A fragile Kansas girl's unrequited and forbidden love for a handsome young man from the town's most powerful family drives her to heartbreak and madness.
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Cast
- Natalie WoodWilma “Deanie” Loomis
- Pat HingleAce Stamper
- Audrey ChristieMrs. Loomis
- Barbara LodenGinny Stamper
- Zohra LampertAngelina
- Warren BeattyBud Stamper
- Fred StewartDel Loomis
- John McGovernDoc Smiley
- Jan NorrisJuanita Howard
- Martine BartlettMiss Metcalf
Recommendations
- 100
Chicago Tribune
Superb, vibrantly emotional drama. [27 Apr 2001, p.C1] - 80
The New York Times
Miss Wood has a beauty and radiance that carry her through a role of violent passions and depressions with unsullied purity and strength. There is poetry in her performance, and her eyes in the final scene bespeak the moral significance and emotional fulfillment of this film. - 80
Salon
Like nobody else, Kazan succeeded in capturing the overheated, self-pitying dramatization so near and dear to the teenage heart. - 75
Entertainment Weekly
With his ripe lips, flirty eyes, and pre-Calvin Klein-era androgynous appeal, the 24-year-old Warren is utterly believable as a boy who drives Natalie Wood plumb insane with sexual frustration in William Inge’s overheated melodrama. - 75
Slant Magazine
Inge’s scenario unravels alarmingly once the two would-be lovers start to drift apart thanks to Deanie’s nervous breakdown and the simultaneous (almost psychically connected) market crash of 1929, but the first half of the film is a tour de force of deferred urges, contortion acts of awkward intimacy, and the thrill of adolescence. - 75
LarsenOnFilm
Splendor in the Grass may seem quaint, even silly. But anyone who’s thrown – or endured – a teenager’s temper tantrum will recognize the anger and confusion on the screen as genuine. In that sense, Splendor will never be out of touch. - 60
TV Guide Magazine
Youth exploitation pictures were all the rage at the time, and while this is better than some in execution and intent, it's still exactly that. - 60
Empire
Natalie Wood is stunning and the drama is full of passion but this suffers a little from 60s hollywood style.
