It's ironic that Angela Lansbury complains about injustice in this John Frankenheimer family drama, complaining that when she learns that son Warren Beatty is in jail on Christmas that they don't live in Russia. It's the very same year that Lansbury played the equally domineering mother with an evil political agenda in "The Manchurian Candidate", a woman who ate injustice for all three meals.
Lansbury is equally as clinging here for sons Beatty and Brandon de Wilde, treating alcoholic husband Karl Malden as if he was one of the hobos he brings in off the street for a nightcap. Sure, she's charming on the surface, but that charm is only skin deep for in her soul is another damaged middle aged woman whose love is greatly damaging.
Seeing Lansbury here makes you understand son Berry-Berry (Beatty) all the way, a self-centered, violent young man whose mistreatment of women is obviously based on the smothering treatment that his mother has infected him with. It's not just your overly affectionate smothering. It hasgiving him a desperate need to breathe, and he can't do that when he's around women who try to get too close to him.
There's another former screen harridan of a mother here, Constance Ford from "A Summer Place", seen briefly as a wealthy married woman who recruits baby to join her on a quick trip to the Bahamas. She's sultry and funny in her brief scene, and it's a shame that that storyline wasn't further developed for even another few minutes. Barbara baxley gets two key scenes, picking baby up when he's working as a gas station attendant, and later nagging him to the point where he reacts violently to her, leading him to end up in jail for Christmas.
Beatty doesn't get to speak much, so he's more eye candy, but any type of sympathy for him disappears when he gets violent. Real love seems to grow between him and Eva Marie Saint, playing a wealthy young lady whom Lansbury introduces him to. But that love brings out the dangerous jealousy from Lansbury who is as equally self destructive as she is possessive. De Wilde offers fine support as the young brother whose devotion to Beatty is obviously misguided.
While this is very disturbing and depressing as far as it's portrait of a very troubled family is concerned, it is being in the tradition of similar films and plays that came out around this time, and thanks to the legendary William Inge, this makes for a brilliant look at why families often fall apart (or down as the title suggests), fascinating for its characterizations and especially for the performances by Lansbury and Malden.
Lansbury is equally as clinging here for sons Beatty and Brandon de Wilde, treating alcoholic husband Karl Malden as if he was one of the hobos he brings in off the street for a nightcap. Sure, she's charming on the surface, but that charm is only skin deep for in her soul is another damaged middle aged woman whose love is greatly damaging.
Seeing Lansbury here makes you understand son Berry-Berry (Beatty) all the way, a self-centered, violent young man whose mistreatment of women is obviously based on the smothering treatment that his mother has infected him with. It's not just your overly affectionate smothering. It hasgiving him a desperate need to breathe, and he can't do that when he's around women who try to get too close to him.
There's another former screen harridan of a mother here, Constance Ford from "A Summer Place", seen briefly as a wealthy married woman who recruits baby to join her on a quick trip to the Bahamas. She's sultry and funny in her brief scene, and it's a shame that that storyline wasn't further developed for even another few minutes. Barbara baxley gets two key scenes, picking baby up when he's working as a gas station attendant, and later nagging him to the point where he reacts violently to her, leading him to end up in jail for Christmas.
Beatty doesn't get to speak much, so he's more eye candy, but any type of sympathy for him disappears when he gets violent. Real love seems to grow between him and Eva Marie Saint, playing a wealthy young lady whom Lansbury introduces him to. But that love brings out the dangerous jealousy from Lansbury who is as equally self destructive as she is possessive. De Wilde offers fine support as the young brother whose devotion to Beatty is obviously misguided.
While this is very disturbing and depressing as far as it's portrait of a very troubled family is concerned, it is being in the tradition of similar films and plays that came out around this time, and thanks to the legendary William Inge, this makes for a brilliant look at why families often fall apart (or down as the title suggests), fascinating for its characterizations and especially for the performances by Lansbury and Malden.