From the Terrace

Director Mark Robson adapts the potboiling John O'Hara novel from 1958, and Leo Tover provides lush, richly colorful cinematography for a 1960 film about the post-war boom and its discontents.

Paul Newman stars as David Eaton, scion of a family made wealthy by its steel mill; Joanne Woodward plays Mary St. John, whom Eaton marries despite her blue-blooded family's skepticism. The young Eaton is newly returned from service in the Navy during World War II, and as America rapidly becomes a powerful economic force he plans to get a share of the wealth for himself by going into business with his best friend, the womanizing Lex Porter (George Gizzard). When the aeronautics company Eaton and Porter found takes longer than Eaton wants to generate real money, Eaton takes an opportunity to join the firm of a prestigious Wall Street financier. The two jobs are very different, but they have one thing in common: They keep Eaton away from Mary for long stretches of time, during which their ardor for one another cools. Extramarital affairs ensue, on both their parts, but corporate America has its own rigid standards, and divorce is out of the question.

Unhappy marriages lie at the film's heart from the very beginning, so it's no wonder a movie examining the domestic sacrifices of the upwardly mobile company man had to wait until 1960 to be produced (even though, the human conditioning eternal, the story's themes were no doubt very much in force immediately after World War II... though, the Hayes Code being what it was, the movies could never have been so overt about such things in the 1940s). Myrna Loy has a small role as Eaton's love-starved mother, a woman so neglected and unhappy that she turns to booze, and the attentions of a philandering lout. (Leon Ames plays Eaton's father; he has a more substantive role, which is hardly surprising given the film's unconsciously sexist assumptions.) "From the Terrace" is all about wanting it all, striving for it all, and yet being incapable of grasping everything that lies within reach; it's a melodrama that only a Douglas Sirk could have elevated to capital-A Art, but Robson does a credible job, especially given the film's ending -- a surprise that all but anticipates the sexual revolution and individual self-empowerment that would define the latter part of the 1960s.

The Blu-ray release is thin on extras, but one of them is an isolated score that allows Elmer Bernstein's music to play independent of the film's dialogue and sound track. The other special feature is a short Fox Movietone newsreel -- interesting as a curio, but otherwise forgettable.

The main appeal here is the film itself, which showcases two intense performances from real-life husband and wife Newman and Woodward -- a brave and complex pair of performances, especially considering Newman's role required him to romance the beautiful Ina Balin.

"From the Terrace"
Blu-ray
$29.95
http://www1.screenarchives.com/title_detail.cfm/ID/30726/FROM-THE-TERRACE-1960