Even the best soap operas on daytime know that too many characters in one episode can spoil the audience's concentration and ultimately week in the story. That is the case in this lush but emotionally flat Peyton case like Gathering of all sorts of neurotic characters close love lives and personal secrets are so out in the open that they don't even need a therapist to go to. They can discuss it with their neighbor because that neighbors already aware of everything going on in the community. A huge cast gathers together but there is not enough time to really get to know all of them, and sometimes you need to refer back to the cast list to see who is who and how are they are all interrelated.
Headlining the film of course is the still beautiful but dowdily made up Lana Turner, featuring a mannish haircut that makes her look like a prison warden. When first seen, she is sauntering extremely drunk into an attorney's office to demand an divorce from husband Jason Robards Jr., whom she despises. I didn't even think it was Lana Turner at first, watching this back to back with "Imitation of Life", just made two years prior where she is absolutely gorgeous. Somehow she ends up in an affair with Efrem Zimbalist jr. who is married to Barbara Bel Geddes but showing no passion at all to her. Their union has produced a son, George Hamilton, who is accused of rape by the alleged town trollop, Yvonne Craig, what about your father and Turner tries to reunite the estranged father and son who can't seem to get along.
There are other characters mixed into this messy convoluted tale of how communities destroy each other from within. Town patriarch Thomas Mitchell, playing Barbara Bel Geddes father, is accused of stealing valuable bonds, okay, but seems to be the only character with any amount of wisdom. Susan kohner, who played the troubled light skin black girl in "Imitation of Life", plays Hamilton's innocent girlfriend, and is essentially the equivalent of Mia farrow's character on the "Peyton Place" TV series.
Housewives of the time, doing their ironing during "Love of Life" or "As the World Turns", could escape on occasion to matinees of these elaborate colorful soap operas on the big screen, and I'm sure they had a better knowledge of how to keep track of who was whom. it took well over an hour before I was able to keep all the faces and different people straight, and did not really feel a passion or interest in really getting to know any of them. They seem more like paper dolls uncut from the book and thus not real people, but just types without real motivations or souls. The Elmer Bernstein musical score and the color photography in the pretty settings is really the best thing about this.
Headlining the film of course is the still beautiful but dowdily made up Lana Turner, featuring a mannish haircut that makes her look like a prison warden. When first seen, she is sauntering extremely drunk into an attorney's office to demand an divorce from husband Jason Robards Jr., whom she despises. I didn't even think it was Lana Turner at first, watching this back to back with "Imitation of Life", just made two years prior where she is absolutely gorgeous. Somehow she ends up in an affair with Efrem Zimbalist jr. who is married to Barbara Bel Geddes but showing no passion at all to her. Their union has produced a son, George Hamilton, who is accused of rape by the alleged town trollop, Yvonne Craig, what about your father and Turner tries to reunite the estranged father and son who can't seem to get along.
There are other characters mixed into this messy convoluted tale of how communities destroy each other from within. Town patriarch Thomas Mitchell, playing Barbara Bel Geddes father, is accused of stealing valuable bonds, okay, but seems to be the only character with any amount of wisdom. Susan kohner, who played the troubled light skin black girl in "Imitation of Life", plays Hamilton's innocent girlfriend, and is essentially the equivalent of Mia farrow's character on the "Peyton Place" TV series.
Housewives of the time, doing their ironing during "Love of Life" or "As the World Turns", could escape on occasion to matinees of these elaborate colorful soap operas on the big screen, and I'm sure they had a better knowledge of how to keep track of who was whom. it took well over an hour before I was able to keep all the faces and different people straight, and did not really feel a passion or interest in really getting to know any of them. They seem more like paper dolls uncut from the book and thus not real people, but just types without real motivations or souls. The Elmer Bernstein musical score and the color photography in the pretty settings is really the best thing about this.