This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

This is How Movies Should Be Made

Brilliant and touching

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

I was 10 the year this came out; I remember seeing the trailer (on TV?) and thinking it must be wonderfully salacious. Seeing it for the first time today, I can say it is wonderfully sexy, even erotic in a restrained way. The Code was weaker by the late 50's, but you still couldn't show sexual positions--Norman and Allison are vertical on that rock, not horizontal.The excitement is verbal more than physical: Cross haranguing his stepdaughter Selena, before raping her. Rossi berating Constance for her coldness to him, just after she delivers the memorable line about men always being the same at heart, even if the situation changes. Norman and Allison circle around each other coolly, as do Rodney and Betty, not wishing to commit themselves for fear of parental disapproval, which comes anyway.Lana Turner and Diane Varsi are excellent as mother and daughter. Russ Tamblyn outshines the rest of the young actors easily. I guess they couldn't get Rock Hudson for Rossi and had to settle for a nobody--it's a shame. Lloyd Nolan gives it all he's got in the courtroom scene. This is one of my favourite films from the 50's.

Interesting, but overwrought, look at 1940s society.Peyton Place is an effective snapshot of life in the early-1940s: the morals, mores and conventions of the time, and how some of these were made to be broken. Has some engaging characters and interesting commentary on old vs young, women's rights, morality.However, there are too many threads, too many characters with parallel stories, and these stories don't seem to know when to end. There are plenty of climatic moments in the movie, where usually a movie would have ended. Here, it is just a temporary peak in a long rambling story. Then we have some unnecessary drama - drama for drama sake. After a while it starts to feel like a soap opera.Ultimately, an interesting and engaging movie, but much more conciseness and focus were required.

Based on a controversial (at the time, at least) novel, PEYTON PLACE is a story about the lives and secrets of people who live in a small New England town. Also having seen a few melodramas recently, including both versions of IMITATION OF LIFE, I've noticed what does and doesn't work about these films, at least for me. Whereas IMITATION OF LIFE goes for a more sappy dramatic angle, PEYTON PLACE is more tawdry and salacious (by 50's standards), and therefore a little more interesting. The characters in this film were also better written and the performances were more restrained, so that the drama was a little more believable. The only major issues with the film are that it begins to lose steam about two hours in and concludes in a rather stuffy, dramatically inert fashion. However, it does pretty much everything else quite well. The performances were all excellent and the various plot threads were all deftly handled and given due attention, as well as being interconnected enough to drive the story without seeming episodic. And even though the score was a little overblown at times, it fit the material well. The cinematography was also great to look at, and there were some beautiful on-location shots. Overall, while it was a little overstuffed and a little too long, PEYTON PLACE is a good example of how to make melodrama compelling without resorting to least common denominator emotions.

Episodic, overlong soaper is a compendium of small town clichés and stereotypical characters tastefully done, but also stodgy and overly long. It's episodic nature was ideally suited to a TV series which this material became. The most shocking thing about Peyton Place is that it was nominated for 9 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, the same year Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory failed to receive a single nomination in any major category! Mark Robson who gave us enjoyable trash like Valley of the Dolls and Daddy's Gone A-Hunting takes a reverential tone towards the material, and despite the pretty postcard exteriors it plays like a TV series with the whole thing becoming a courtroom drama. There's hardly a genuine emotion anywhere in the film, nor is there any sense of real life going on. The film exists somewhere between Imitation of Life(1959) and The Last Picture Show(1971)without the deliberate heightening of the former and the realism of the latter. And despite an impressive 5 Oscar nominations for acting, the performances are just adequate, and Lee Phillips is the dullest leading man this side of Efram Zimbalist Jr.