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SONG:
"A Very Precious Love"
Splendor in
the Grass
This Is One OF My Favorite Movies.
What though the radiance which was once
so bright,
be now forever taken from my sight,
though nothing can bring back the hour
of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.
Splendor in the
Grass (1961) [NR]
124 minutes; in Color
Genre(s): Roaring '20s, Sex & Sexuality, Teen Angst
Cast: Natalie Wood, Warren Beatty, Audrey Christie,
Barbara Loden, Zohra Lampert, Phyllis Diller, Sandy Dennis;
DIRECTED BY: Elia Kazan;
WRITTEN BY: William Inge;
CINEMATOGRAPHY BY: Charles Durnham;
MUSIC BY: David Amram.
Awards: Oscars 1961: Story & Screenplay.
Review: A drama set in rural Kansas in 1925,
concerning a teenage couple who try to keep their love on a strictly
intellectual plane and the sexual and family pressures that tear them apart.
After suffering a mental breakdown and being institutionalized, the girl returns
years later in order to settle her life. Film debuts of Beatty, Dennis, and
Diller. Inge wrote the screenplay specifically with Beatty in mind, after the
actor appeared in one of Inge's stage plays. Filmed not in Kansas, but on Staten
Island and in upstate New York.
  Splendor in the Grass (1961) is another of director Elia Kazan's
dramatic, hyperbolic films with daring and controversial content for its times
- sexual repression and neurosis. The intriguing, over-wrought film is a
tragic, coming-of-age melodrama from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright William
Inge's original screenplay - it was Inge's first story written directly for
the screen and he received a nomination (and the film's sole Oscar) for the
Best Original Story and Screenplay for his work (one of the film's two Academy
Award nominations).
The time period of the plot occurs
during the late 1920s and early 30s at the start of the disastrous Depression
in a rural, SE Kansas town, coinciding with the intensity of a first love and
the devastating consequences of repressed sexuality upon a pair of love-struck
teenagers. The film's tagline expressed this theme: "There is a miracle in
being young...and a fear." A poster also described the reality of a 'first
love' when feelings that are new and somewhat frightening are heightened by a
constricting society:
Whether you live in a small town
the way they do, or in a city, maybe this is happening to you right
now...maybe (if you're older), you remember...when suddenly the kissing
isn't a kid's game anymore, suddenly it's wide-eyed, scary and dangerous.
The film's title is taken from
English romantic William Wordsworth's 1807 Ode,
Intimations of Immortality from Reflections of Early Childhood,
some of which is quoted here:
Though nothing can
bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower
We will grieve not, but rather find
Strength in what remains behind.
The mood and story line of the stormy
relationship between two star-crossed, teenaged lovers parallels the poem as
the adolescents meet, fall obsessively in love and become sexually awakened,
face repressed sexual attitudes, parental pressures, turmoil, social
constraints and class differences, and ultimately break up and are traumatized
without consummating their love. The values of the business-oriented
civilization - at the time of its greatest crash - coincides with the collapse
of their tender romance.
In a quasi-Romeo
and Juliet script, Warren Beatty marked his screen debut (after
starring in the Broadway play A Loss of Roses), and co-star Natalie
Wood received a Best Actress nomination (her second of three career
nominations) for one of her finest (if not the best) screen roles.
Reportedly, the stars began an off-screen love affair while making this film -
a story of unconsummated passion between a rich midwestern boy and a
passionate young girl.
[The irony of Wood's film role here was that her
accidental drowning death in 1981, off of her yacht named the
Splendour, was pre-figured by the shocking bathtub scene and an
attempted suicidal drowning scene at the reservoir.]
Although it was an early 60s film, it
followed a number of films from the 50s (some of which were youth exploitation
films) that portrayed the problems of youth, such as
Picnic (1955)
(another filming of a William Inge play),
Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
(with Natalie Wood), Kazan's own
East of Eden (1955),
Peyton Place (1957), A Summer Place (1959),
and the same year's great musical West Side Story (1961).
After the credits sequence - red
lettering on a grayish background, a teenaged boy and girl are seated in the
front of an open, yellow roadster convertible after school in the early
evening - on a lover's lane a short distance in front of a raging waterfall.
The attractive couple are passionately kissing and breathing heavily - their
raging hormones are symbolized by the flow of churning water over the falls
behind them. The Commerce High School senior sweethearts are beautiful,
dark-haired Wilma Dean ("Deanie") Loomis
(Natalie Wood, 26 years old) and
hunky sports hero Arthur ("Bud") Stamper (Warren Beatty) - he begs her to go
further, but she resists expressing her physical needs:
Bud:
Deanie, please..
Deanie: Bud, I'm afraid. (They kiss and embrace more.) Don't, Bud.
Bud: Deanie...
Deanie: We mustn't, Bud.
Angry at her, sexually frustrated and
slightly humiliated, Bud leaves the car and stands by the waterfall, stating:
"I'd better take you home," as she slips on her boyfriend's striped letter
sweater.
A title card 1928, SOUTHEAST KANSAS -
is superimposed over a plain, wood-frame house (the Loomis residence) and
storefront for the family butcher business - Fancy Groceries. Bud pulls the
roadster up in front, as Deanie's mother Mrs.
Frieda Loomis (Audrey Christie)
notices their arrival on the porch and overhears Bud tell
Deanie: "We've had
enough kissing for tonight." Not wanting to be seen, she stealthily peers at
them through the front door window as they can't restrain themselves for a
goodbye kiss.
In the dark living room, Deanie's
body language exhibits tremendous sexual longing - she leans backward as she
strokes her hair and neck. She hugs a pillow as she reclines on a sofa with
her legs extended.
Her domineering mother, who forces
her daughter to drink a glass of milk, reveals that they are a from a poor
family that is struggling financially to afford her education, and there's
little possibility that their shares of rising stock in the Stamper oil
company may help ("If we sold those stocks, we'd make $15,000 and maybe we can
even send you away to college next year. Well, we're not going to sell.")
Deanie dreamily places her ear next to a giant shell - listening to the
far-away roar of the ocean elsewhere. She stutters her unconvincing excuse for
being with Bud: "We were studying together."
Upstairs, as Deanie
undresses for bed
and hides herself for privacy in the bathroom to brush her teeth, her mother
follows her and tries to instill her own sexual fears into her. Her rigid,
puritanical mother vows that boys never respect a girl who goes all the way -
love-struck Deanie is troubled by her own emerging, raw physical feelings:
Mrs.
Loomis:
Now Wilma Dean. Bud Stamper could get you into a whole lot of trouble. And
you know how I mean. Boys don't respect a girl they can go all the way with.
Boys want a nice girl for a wife. (She slightly cracks open the door.) Wilma
Dean, you and Bud haven't gone too far already, have you?
Deanie: (from inside) No, mother.
Mrs. Loomis: Tell me the truth, Wilma Dean!
Deanie: (opening the door all the way) No, Mom,
we haven't gone too far.
Mrs. Loomis: That's a relief.
Deanie: Mom...is it so terrible to have those
feelings about a boy?
Mrs. Loomis: No nice girl does.
Deanie: Doesn't she?
Mrs. Loomis: No, no nice girl.
A prudish Mrs. Loomis asserts that
women don't enjoy sex or have sexual urges, and that they dutifully have sex
with their husbands only to have children. She was always physically repelled
by her husband and men's aggressive tendencies. But a virginal Deanie is
already experiencing (and repressing) strong, out-of-control physical drives,
although she struggles with wanting to be 'a good girl' and worries about
staying pure until marriage. [Her bedroom's decorations - including a brown
bear on top of her pillow - project her childlike innocence that's on the
verge of breaking traditional bounds.]:
Deanie:
But Mom, didn't, didn't you ever - well, I mean, didn't you ever feel that
way about Dad? (She hugs and clutches onto her mother in a desperate
fashion)
Mrs. Loomis: Your father never laid a hand on
me until we were married. And then I-I just gave in because a wife has to. A
woman doesn't enjoy those things the way a man does. She just lets her
husband come near her in order to have children. (Deanie stands with her
back toward her mother.) Deanie, what's troubling you?
Deanie: Oh, nothing, Mom.
After her mother leaves, Deanie
throws herself onto her bed, casts away her brown bear in disgust, grabs her
pillow, and thrusts her chest into it. Her sexual longings burst forth as she
imagines hugging her sweetheart while glancing at Bud's many pictures
plastered above her dresser. Deanie caresses each one with a kiss, and then
kneels at her bedside to recite the Lord's Prayer. In the Loomis' master
bedroom where Mr. Del Loomis (Fred Stewart) snores noisily,
Mrs. Loomis
excitely tells him that Deanie is "in love" with the
Stamper boy: "He'd be the
catch of a lifetime, Del!" She is in favor of their romance, but expects
marriage before physical affection.
When Bud
arrives home, his limping
father Ace Stamper (Pat Hingle) is leading a celebration in the kitchen -
hired workhands from the Stamper oil fields are boisterously eating venison
and drinking "home brew" beer. The prosperous, self-made millionaire
Mr.
Stamper has just brought in a new well that is flowing with over a hundred
barrels an hour ("Them big Eastern companies - they begin to sit up and take
notice of us"). But with aspirations for his son to succeed him and follow in
his footsteps, he is concerned that Bud, the captain of the football team, is
keeping late hours with "that li'l Loomis girl" when he should be watching his
training or looking ambitiously into the future. He overwhelms his son with
advice about putting off thoughts of marriage (or not getting his girlfriend
pregnant and being forced to marry her) because there are other better
prospects in his life - an education at Yale University and a merging with the
oil business. Stamper warns about not disappointing him in sports and in other
life choices:
You're watchin' yourself with her
now, aren't ya, son? You-you're not doin' anything, boy, you're gonna be
ashamed of, are ya?...She's a nice kid, son. She's a good-looker. I've known
her folks ever since - well, old Del and I were boys together. I got nothin'
against 'em, Bud, 'cause they're poor. I'm not a snob or anything like that.
The only difference between me and Del is that I got ambition. But if
anything was to happen, you'd have to marry her! You'd have to marry her,
son! You realize that, don't ya? You get a girl in trouble, boy, and you
gotta take the consequences. (They engage in horseplay by punching each
other playfully in the arm.) We got a future, boy...The first thing we're
gonna do, we're gonna get you an education - the best. Four years at
Yale...My company is gonna merge with one of those big Eastern
companies. I'm gonna put you in there. I wanna put you in there, boy...I'm
linin' up a future for ya, boy...Bud, there is nothing in this world that I
wouldn't do for you, boy. There's nothing I wouldn't do if you do right. If
you do right, Bud. Now don't disappoint me, son.
As he states that he's "had one
disappointment already" [his daughter], his frail, soft-spoken wife Mrs.
Stamper (Joanna Roos) enters the room. In his own bedroom, Bud is also
frustrated by his father's words as Deanie was. He hurls a soccer ball at the
wall and also buries his head under his pillow on his bed.
The Stamper's "spoiled," willful, "headstrong," 20s flapper daughter
Ginny
("Sister" or Virginia) (Barbara Loden), with bleached hair and makeup, has
been something of an embarrassing disappointment for the family - at finishing
school, she broke all the rules and was expelled; then at a university, she
went "hog wild" and flunked all her courses; finally, in a Chicago art school,
she got "tied up with some cake-eater that gets her into trouble just so he
can marry her" - but Ace had it annulled by his lawyer.
Bud's older sister has
returned home a failure for the third time, causing Bud's father to pressure
him even more into being a successful flag-bearer for the family. Rebellious,
Ginny has gained a bad reputation and has no intention of reforming herself in
the backward, rural town:
If you think I'm going to stay here
in this god-forsaken town and have people laugh at me and gossip about me,
you've got another thing coming, 'cause I'll really give them something to
gossip about...I hate it here. I'm a freak in this town. Everybody stares at
me on the street like I was something out of a carnival...This is the
ugliest place in the whole world. Everywhere you look there's an oil well,
even on the front lawn.
Mrs. Stamper's comment about her
breakfast-deprived children is rich in emotional meaning: "Neither of my
children gets any real nourishment."
In the crowded high school hallway of
classmates, both Deanie and Bud walk together hand-in-hand - obviously a
radiant Deanie is pleased to be admired and possessed by the school's handsome
football hero. Chivalrously, he accompanies her to her English class and
carries her textbooks for her. She is tardy to her seat and reprimanded by her
prim, bespectacled teacher Miss Metcalf (Martine Bartlett). [A student is
writing on the chalkboard "still unravished."] Oblivious as her teacher
lectures about literature of the Middle Ages and stories of King Arthur and
the Knights of the Round Table, Deanie doodles in her notebook, scrawling
various versions of "Mrs. Arthur Stamper" and "Bud &
Deanie." Girlfriends June
(Marla Adams), Carolyn (Lynn Loring), and Kay (Sandy Dennis in her first film
appearance) whisper about Bud and who's taking whom to the football game:
Kay: Just because his father's got
money...
Carolyn: That's not true, Kay...
June: Bud Stamper isn't stuck on himself at all.
A flapper-styled, not-so-innocent,
slutty Juanita Howard (Jan Norris) answers the teacher's question about a
characteristic of the Age of Chivalry: "The Knights of the Round Table had a
very high regard for women...They looked on women as very pure." Kay
snidely
utters an aside: "They wouldn't look on her as very pure." Deanie
appears dreamy-eyed when Miss Metcalf rhetorically asks whether chivalry is
dead: "Well, how about it, girls? Do any of you feel that you are on a
pedestal?"
During the school's football game,
Bud is thrown out by the referee for unsportsmanlike conduct. In the shower
room after the game, Bud (with his face under a steady shower stream)
overhears his teammates joke with Alan Tuttle ("Toots") (Gary Lockwood) about
taking out the sexually-experienced Juanita. According to him, "Juanita's the
only girl in school who knows what it's all about...I never look twice at
those other girls anymore. Ya take them out and spend good money on 'em, and
they expect you to feel satisfied if they even kiss you good night."
Outside the school gym, Deanie
jealously reprimands Bud after he flirts with red-headed
Juanita on his way to
the car - and he is furious: "I'm not even supposed to know girls like that
exist, huh?" When they reach her house, she is still repeatedly apologizing
for her possessiveness and they affectionately make up:
Deanie: (with her head on his
shoulder) I just can't stand it when you're mad at me...
Bud: I don't know what's the matter with me lately. I'm always losing my
temper. You're the only girl in the world for me. Don't you know that, Deanie?
Deanie: I want to be.
Bud: If it weren't for you...if it weren't for you,
Deanie - I don't know.
(He smashes a fist into his hand)
Deanie: (She caresses his cheek gently and kisses him. He kisses her back
and pulls her toward him.) Oh, Bud, Bud, it's broad daylight. Stop it. Stop
it. Come on now. Bud! People can see us.
Bud: I don't care!
They enter the empty house and check
to insure their privacy in the parlor. Being head-over-heels in love with him,
Deanie begins to show her sacrificial devotion after he has shown interest in
someone else. She peppers him with kisses all over his face - and then when
they hear voices, they retreat into the side dining room. Through a framed
doorway, the camera eavesdrops on their overheated love scene. Deanie presses
her groin into his as they lean against a door. Bud forcefully grabs her
shoulders and presses her down to her knees to make her confess her utter
obedience to his will:
Bud: You're nuts about me, aren't
you? You're nuts about me....(After making out a while, he begins to touch
her below the waist.)
Deanie: No, Bud...
Bud: (He pushes her down to her knees in front of him.) At my feet, slave.
Deanie: Bud, don't.
Bud: Tell me you love me.
Deanie: Bud, you're hurting me.
Bud: Tell me you can't live without me. Say it.
Deanie: I do.
Bud: You do what?
Deanie: I do love you.
Bud: And you can't live without me...And you'd do anything I'd ever ask you,
anything.
Deanie: (fearfully) I-I'd do anything for you.
Bud: Deanie, I didn't mean to hurt you. (She lies on the floor, curled up
protectively.) Deanie, Deanie! Deanie, I was just kidding. Look, I'm the one
who should go down on his knees to you, Deanie. Deanie, I was just kidding.
I thought you knew that.
Deanie: (sincerely) I can't kid about these things. Because I am nuts about
you, and I would go down on my knees to worship you if you really wanted me
to. Bud, I can't get along without you. And I would do anything you'd ask me
to. I would! I would! Anything!
After her confession of complete
submission, she rolls over onto her back in a sublime, vulnerable state of
passionate surrender, moaning orgasmically and begging for "anything" to
happen: "Oh Bud. - Bud! - Bud." When they hear the intrusive Mrs. Loomis
returning to the house, Deanie hurriedly straightens herself and they begin
playing a regimented duet of Chopsticks on the piano. With lines
dripping with sexual innuendo, Deanie is prepared to give into her passions
now that Bud has increased his sexual demands and they can't ignore their
emotions - the two make plans for an eventful evening:
Deanie: Are we going to the Victory
Dance?
Bud: I can think of things I'd rather do.
Deanie: (after warily looking around) I'll be ready.
Once Bud has left and promised to
return to pick her up for the dance after dinner, Deanie learns from her
mother that Bud's sister Ginny has a bad reputation. She was put "in the
family way" by a man in Chicago and had to be taken to a doctor for an
abortion - "one of those awful operations." The shrewish Mrs. Loomis strikes
fear in her daughter about falling in love: "That's what happens to girls who
go wild and boy crazy."
Upon his return home, Bud announces
personal decisions to his manipulative father about his career plans,
asserting: "It's what I want that counts." His true wishes are to marry
Deanie
and attend an agricultural college:
Dad, I'm gonna marry
Deanie...I
don't really want to go to Yale. I'm not a very good student...I'd like to
go away to a good agricultural college for a couple of years. I'd really
like to do that, Dad. I could come right back here and I could take over
your ranch just south of town...I could marry Deanie. I could take her off
to college with me. That's what I really want. She'd be a big help to me,
Dad.
Mr. Stamper ignores his son's deepest
goals, and attempts to convince him to wait about marriage. But Bud, sexually
frustrated and unable to postpone his pent-up desires any longer, clenches his
teeth in protest. He is advised that there are "two kinds of girls" - and the
'loose' ones are available to sow some wild oats ("get a little steam outa our
system"). Adding to the complexity of Bud's confusion is that he feels sexual
passion for Deanie - one of the 'good' girls. After realizing he's beaten by
his dominating father's hypocritical, morally-corrupt bargain, Bud
doesn't
follow his own heart - he agrees to go to Yale for four years before marriage:
Mr. Stamper: Son, a boy your age
doesn't even know what he wants. After you've had a college education, then
you might change your mind...Trust me, trust me this time, son....(rising
and moving forward) Son, all I'm asking you to do is to finish Yale. And
then if you still want to marry the li'l Loomis girl, you come back here and
you marry her, boy, with my blessing. I'll send you both off to Europe for a
honeymoon. Bud, please wait, son!
Bud: I just don't know if I can, Dad! I feel like I'm going nuts
sometimes.
Mr. Stamper: I understand. (He places his arm over his boy's shoulder.) Your
old man understands. What you need for the time being, Bud, is a different
kind of girl. When I was a boy, son, there was always two kinds of girls. Us
boys - we-we'd never even mention them in the same breath. But every now and
then, one of us boys'd sneak off with a girl - and we'd get a little steam
outa our system.
Bud: Dad, Dad, no girl looks good to me except Deanie.
Mr. Stamper: I know.
Bud: I love her, Dad!
Mr. Stamper: I know, son, I know!
Bud: See, I don't want to do that. (agonizing) OK. I'll go to Yale. But I
want you to know that I'm gonna marry her as soon as I get out.
Mr. Stamper: That's a promise.
Bud: I want you to remember that.
Rain streaks down the windshield of
Bud's sportster parked by the waterfall - the couple's faces are blurred by
the glass as she vows to be faithful for four long years:
Bud, I'll wait for you. I'll wait
for you forever. I'll do anything you want, Bud.
In the Sunday church service,
Reverend Whiteman (uncredited screenwriter William Inge himself) sermonizes:
"Lay not up treasures for yourself on earth. Where moth and rust doth corrupt
and where thieves do break through and steal. But lay up for yourself
treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and where thieves
do not break through and steal. Where your treasure is, there will your heart
be also." Deanie lovingly reaches for Bud seated next to her, while Mr.
Stamper, the one most in need of heeding the Biblical words, snoozes. After
the service, Bud's father requests that his son "spy" ("keep an eye") on
Ginny
while he's away on a short trip to New York: "She won't do anything crazy when
you're around."
At the Stamper's dinner table that
evening, Bud's sister has attracted a muscular, ignorant boyfriend named
Glenn
(Sean Garrison). With his unemployed father, he is a newcomer to town from
Oklahoma and works in the local filling station. Deanie is both amused and
repelled by Ginny's sassiness (termed a "bad nature" by her mother). When they
double-date together after dinner at one of the outlying ranch properties on
the sprawling Stamper estate, Ginny taunts her do-good, miserable, and
sexually-repressed brother:
Why don't you quit trying to
pretend you're so pure and righteous...You never do anything except what Dad
tells you - isn't that right, Deanie? You've been finding that out, haven't
you? He just lets things torment him inside and make him miserable and he
never does anything about them, never does anything.
Deanie and
Bud gaze out over a
landscape dotted with creaking oil wells - Bud assures his fiancee: "All this
- it's gonna be ours some day."
Later, on Christmas day, Ginny
cautions her stunned brother after slapping him. She challenges him to
confront their father: "If you want to listen to Dad, go ahead. One of these
days, you'll find out. You'll find out and then God help you."
At a New Year's Eve country-club
dance to bring in 1929, Ginny lives up to her reputation as a booze-drinking,
loose trollop - dipping and passing out gin drinks from a huge bathtub to a
horde of male admirers. During the countdown to the next year, Mr. Stamper
pops with a lit cigar an inflated pink balloon (with "'28" imprinted on it)
atop a model of one of his golden oil derricks. The sexually-suggestive
symbolism (of wealth and male power) is further amplified when a stream of
champagne shoots up from the top of the oil rig - while the band plays "Auld
Lang Syne." He is assured of prosperity in the coming year, but repelled by
the spectacle of his drunken, uninhibited daughter kissing him in public: "You
cut that out. You behave yourself." Shattered by her father's curt rejection
but remaining defiant, Ginny turns to heavy drinking, soon becomes inebriated
("plastered"), and flirtatiously flaunts her wantonness in front of married
men. She barges into the Men's Room - and amidst protests, emerges guzzling
from an upturned whiskey flask.
Mr. Stamper instructs
Bud to take the
soused woman home, and Bud dutifully leads her away from the party onto the
porch. A group of her former partners witness her outspokenness toward her
upset brother:
If you weren't my brother...you
wouldn't even come near me...You're a nice boy. You're nice. I know what you
nice boys are like. I know - you only talk to me in the dark. IN THE DARK!
When she pulls away from him and is
left with at least eight 'nice-looking' boys on the porch, they paw at her and
kiss her. After she implores one of them (Joe) to take her "anywhere!!!," she
is led into the dark parking lot and trailed by the men - and a gang-rape is
implied within one of the sedans. As Bud seeks to rescue and defend her, he
finds the waist-sash from her dress on the ground. He angrily drags Joe from
the car and fights him and others off in a bloody melee, as Ginny
starts the
car and tries to run them over as she drives off.
Unaware of the reason for the fight,
Deanie searches for Bud in the parking lot. With a bloody lip and bruised
face, he staggers and falls into her arms. After driving her home, he
withdraws within himself and refuses her comforting invitation to come inside.
With increased torment in his own mind, he decides to break off their
relationship for a while and stop seeing her:
We've got to stop all this kissing
and foolin' around, Deanie...I just don't think we'd better see each other
for a while.
Deanie stands on the curb - puzzled,
frozen and stunned by his sudden decision.
After some time has passed, Bud is in
school's basketball practice - preoccupied, bewildered, exhausted, and unable
to concentrate. In his English class, Bud is equally dazed when he receives a
"not very good" grade on his term paper from his teacher, Miss Longfield:
"You've got to do much better if you're going to get into Yale in the fall."
In the hallway, Deanie is expectantly waiting for him: "I miss you,
Bud."
During a basketball game as he completes a lay-up, Bud bumps into a padded
pole and soon falls down unconscious. The Stampers' family doctor Doc Smiley
(John McGovern) attends to feverish Bud in the locker room and recommends
hospitalizing him - he may have pneumonia. In the hallway of the hospital with
Deanie listening intently from a short distance away, the doctor speaks with
Mr. Stamper and wonders if Bud will recover: "I'm not a religious man, but I
know what every doctor knows - you can't...reckon with the will of God."
That night, Deanie prays with
Reverend Whiteman to heal Bud: "All I can think of is, 'Dear God, make him
well, make him well.'" Agonizing over her ex-boyfriend's health, Deanie kneels
in the pew: "Oh, please God, make him well. Make him well." Sometime later, in
Doc Smiley's office, Bud is recovering his strength - and receiving a sunlamp
treatment. When he turns to the unhelpful doctor for advice about his
relationship with the "mighty attractive" Deanie, Bud
describes the painful
toll it has taken on him, and his father's suggestion to find a girl who is
more accommodating:
I'm pretty nuts about Deanie
Loomis...I mean I love her and she loves me. But it's no fun to be in love.
It hurts. Every time that we're together, I have to remember things - you
know what I mean?...And I can't just go back to seeing her again, not like
the way we were doing. We'd go out every night and I'd kiss her - I'd just
go home. I mean, a guy can go nuts that way...My dad said that I should get
another kind of a girl...but when you don't really want another girl...I
don't know.
It is late springtime and from a long
shot, Bud and Juanita bask in the hot afternoon sun on the rocks in front of
the waterfall. Unable to restrain his sexual needs, he has chosen to have a
tryst with the most promiscuous girl in the school. In contrast to his date
with Deanie at a distance from the falls in the film's opening, he is now at
the foot of the falls with Juanita. She rubs his bare chest and kisses it,
whispers into his ear - and then they playfully cavort in their underwear
under the falls. She giggles as they lovingly embrace, with soaked and
clinging undergarments, within the roar of the gushing water.
In the school corridor - now without
Bud and knowing that he is dating Juanita, a lonely and melancholy Deanie
walks alone to her English class, disengaged and out of synchronization with
her surroundings. Miss Metcalf recites from William Wordsworth's 1807 poem:
What though the radiance
which was once so bright
Be now forever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower,
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind
She then calls on an inattentive
Deanie to interpret its
meaning in front of the class. Deanie rises and reads the phrases aloud from
her textbook, with tears welling up in her eyes and an uncomfortable lump in
her throat, and then she interprets the lines with great difficulty - with
Juanita looking up from the seat in front of her. She strains not to reveal
the pain in her heart, suddenly realizing that her relationship with Bud may
be over, and that her youthful ideals must give way to adulthood:
Well, I think it has some...Well,
when we're young, we look at things very idealistically, I guess, and I
think Wordsworth means that when we grow up, that we have to forget the
ideals of youth and find strength...
Normally, Deanie
wouldn't take the
poetry that is being taught by her high school teacher very seriously. But
explaining a poem about the termination of an eternal love affair is just too
much for her. Devastated and overcome, she slowly walks to the front of the
room with her textbook still cradled in her arms and her hand shielding and
cradling the side of her face - to ask to be excused. Experiencing a nervous
breakdown, she runs from the classroom before finishing her sentence. Upset,
Juanita begins crying. In the school nurse's office, Deanie
denies that she
has a problem - she both giggles and cries hysterically: "I'm all right, I'm
perfectly all right." In a darkened movie theatre, a brooding Bud and two
buddies discuss Deanie. When Toots
asks about dating Bud's ex-girlfriend ("Hot
dog - now it's my chance"), Bud apathetically doesn't object: "I can't stop
you."
Deanie's
subsequent, heart-breaking
mental and emotional breakdown, due to acquiescence to her parents, is shown
in stages. In her home, her father and mother propose that a full-course,
nourishing midwestern meal smothered with gravy will make her feel better:
"Veal roast, mashed potatoes, and succotash for my girl. Eat a good meal,
Deanie. Make you feel better. Always drink plenty of milk, Deanie." She
trembles and jumps up from the table when her father mentions Bud's
acquisition of a brand new car because the Stamper oil industry is thriving
and making everyone rich. Spiraling downward, she has suicidally lost all will
to live:
Mom, I can't eat, I can't study. I can't even face my
friends anymore. I want to die. I want to die.
In the film's most emotionally-raw
sequence, Deanie is soaking and sweating in a bathtub full of steaming hot water
- attempting to relax and purge herself of poisons and anxiety. She rocks her
head left and right (with her eyes shut) as she sighs feebly and tells her
mother that she feels better. But the tension visibly mounts when she is quizzed
by her mother about Bud. Their bickering and argument soon rises to a feverish
pitch when her mother threatens to call Bud and she screams "Don't you dare!" -
and when she is questioned about the spoiling of her virginity:
Mrs. Loomis: What's been the matter
the past few days?
Deanie: I'm sorry I've troubled you. I don't want to worry you. I don't want
to worry anyone.
Mrs. Loomis: Is it all on account of...because of Bud?
Because he doesn't call
for you anymore?
Deanie: I don't know. I don't know, Mom.
Mrs. Loomis: I have a mind to call that boy and tell him....
Deanie: (sitting up furiously and screaming) Don't you dare! Don't you dare,
Mom! (She covers her face with both hands and lies back down into the tub -
and then tries asserts herself, with her right hand covering her mouth.) Don't
you dare! Don't you dare!...No, Mom! Momma, if you do something like that,
I'll do something desperate! I will, I will, Mom! I will!
Mrs. Loomis: (standing over her)
Deanie, how serious had you and Bud become? I
mean, well, you know what I mean. Deanie - had he - had anything serious
happened? Did he - did he spoil you?
Deanie: (raging and laughing hysterically and uncontrollably) Spoil??? Did he
spoil me? (She turns and submerges her head under the steaming water. She
flails around and then sits up again.) No. No, Mom! (hatefully) I'm not
spoiled! I'm not spoiled, Mom! I'm just as fresh and I'm virginal like the day
I was born, Mom!
Mrs. Loomis: Stop it! Stop it!
Deanie: I'm a lovely virginal creature who wouldn't think of being spoiled!
(She stands up in the tub and steps out with her arms outstretched.) I've been
a good little girl, Mom! I've been a good little, good little, good little
girl! I've always done everything Daddy and Mommy tell me. I've obeyed every
word. I hate you, I hate you, I HATE YOU!
After confessing her prudish celibacy
and that she's been 'a good little girl," she screams invectives of hate at her
mother and runs naked toward her room. [Although Natalie Wood had agreed to be
filmed nude in the scene, potentially the first ever by a major star in a
mainstream film, Hollywood censors cut the shots of her nudity. What is left is
a brief shot of her running naked away from the camera toward her room, with
only a brief view of her buttocks.] Mrs. Loomis stands helplessly and watches
from downstairs with her terror-stricken husband. Deanie's bare legs (on her
bed) are all that is visible as she wails in her bedroom ("Leave me alone...I'm
not spoiled.") In her locked room, she chops away at her long hair with an
oversized pair of scissors - to create a more daring, hardened, flapper-style
curl.
Her parents consider taking their
daughter to a psychiatric institution in Wichita for mental rehabilitation, but
the overbearing Mrs. Loomis denies the seriousness of the crisis and the reality
of Deanie's illness: "I can't believe it's that serious. She's bound to get over
it in a little more time. There's never been any mental trouble in either of our
families." Toots arrives to ask Deanie to attend the school prom with him. She
is reluctant and vows she'd be "an awful drip" - but then consents - determined
to warm up her cold-hearted ex-boyfriend and show him how appealing and
seductive she can be.
Deanie leaves for the Bon Voyage Grads
dance (held in the school gym) in a red, slinky outfit, as she hears her mother
call out from the porch: "I'll leave the door open...Don't stay out too late!"
Toots listens to Deanie's criticism of her over-protective mother:
She's been saying that to me ever
since I was knee-high. I used to think it meant something, but it doesn't. It
doesn't mean a thing.
Her girlfriends happily embrace her as
she appears - she instantly scans the couples for a glimpse of Bud. She notices
him dancing with her friend Kay. When Kay asks
Toots for the next dance, Deanie
seeks out Bud and becomes reacquainted with him in the parking lot. She smokes
cigarettes inexpertly, and then takes Bud's arm. He is tentative about speaking
of their past, but Deanie can't restrain herself:
Deanie: I know why you've quit coming
by...I've got to talk about it, Bud. All I've done the past couple months is
just - just sit home and think about it...
Bud: Deanie, I want to tell you something. (He puts his arm over her
shoulder.) Every night after dinner, I have to force myself from going to the
telephone and calling you.
Deanie: Oh, Bud!!!
Bud: Deanie, I think about you all the time but -
Deanie: Oh, Bud!! (She melts into his arms and hugs him.) Where's your car?
Oh, come on.
She guides him to his car and makes
desperate sexual advances toward him - to consummate her feelings for the
greatest love of her life. Lustfully, she risks everything when she begs him to
make love to her. Again he rejects her during the failed reunion - for not being
'herself' ("a nice girl") and for denying her pride. Her emotional frailty
causes her suicidal thoughts and tortured madness to resurface:
Deanie: Bud, please Bud, please.
Bud: Deanie, cut it out.
Deanie: Now, Bud.
Bud: Deanie, you're a nice girl.
Deanie: I'm not. I'm not a nice girl.
Bud: Come on, cut it out.
Deanie: (enticingly) I just can't go on like this anymore.
Bud: Now come on, Deanie, we're gonna go back inside.
Deanie: No.
Bud: Come on.
Deanie: No. I don't want to go back inside...I wanna stay here with you...I
want you.
Bud: This isn't the way it should be.
Deanie: Why? Why not? Why not? Why don't you, Bud? Why don't you?
Bud: Deanie, you're not yourself. Deanie, where's your pride?
Deanie: My pride? MY PRIDE!! (He slaps her face as she becomes hysterical.)...
Bud: Stop it, Deanie! (He shakes her to make her come to her senses.) Stop!
Deanie: Oh, God. I haven't any pride. I HAVEN'T ANY PRIDE!
Bud: Oh God, Deanie, what am I gonna do with you? (He hugs her.)
Deanie: I don't care what you do. I don't care what happens. I haven't any
pride. I just want to die. I just want to die.
She runs off into the night away from
him - into the arms of Toots. He picks her up and lifts her into his car. He
bends over her, caresses her face, and then kisses her. Deanie responds to his
advances, but then fights him off when they park at lover's lane by the
waterfalls - hidden by huge Stanoer oil pipelines. He glares at her when she
protests with her fists and mistakes him for Bud ("Stop it, stop it. Don't,
Bud,
don't!") While Bud is in front of the Loomis
house calling up at Deanie's
window, she walks on the rocks by the waterfall and then runs across the dam's
wall. Despairing over Bud, she jumps into the river - submerged up to her neck -
and begins swimming toward the falls. Just in time, she is rescued from drowning
herself by onlookers.
In the waiting room where Deanie has
been hospitalized, Mrs. Loomis blames her daughter's (she calls
Deanie her
"baby" and her "little girl") troubles on Bud: "I don't want to see you ever
again...He's the cause of all her trouble. He's the cause. What did you do to
her tonight?" Deanie is diagnosed as being "in a very nervous condition" by Doc
Smiley. Mr. Loomis has resolutely decided to sell their Stamper oil stocks and
"send that girl off to Wichita." To complicate matters, Bud vehemently rebels
against his father and vows to marry Deanie: "I'm legal age. I don't care what
he says, Doc. I'm gonna marry her." But after seeing her delirious instability
for himself (off-screen), Bud is advised by the doctor to postpone any marital
plans: "Do you want to help Deanie? Then, stay away from her." When the camera
cuts to a medium-shot of her face in bed (with a white highlight around her
eyes), Bud breaks down in the hallway. She hears his self-pitying bawling and
asks the tight-lipped nurse:
Who's that? Who's there? Who's
there?...Was somebody here? Somebody was here. Somebody was here.
A melancholy saxophone provides the
audio backdrop as the camera pans down on a view of the campus of New Haven's
Yale University and Bud in his dorm room - depressed, he wastes his time smoking
cigars and playing solitaire, a prelude to getting kicked out. Meanwhile, Deanie
is institutionalized - she passes the time by rocking back and forth in a chair
by an open window. In a small Italian pizza restaurant, the black-haired
waitress Angelina (Zohra Lambert) prevents Bud from ordering more "home brews"
by suggesting that he order a pizza to fill his stomach. Amazingly, the
Kansas-bred Bud asks: "What is pizza?" Likewise, Angelina has not heard of his
home state "right in the middle of the USA." When she asks, "You must have a
sweetheart out there," he responds simply: "I did."
In her occupational-therapy class at
the Wichita hospital, Deanie wears an artist's smock and paints a still-life
portrait, even amazing herself ("I never thought I could do this well, really")
and a handsome male patient named Johnnie Masterson (Charles Robinson) who is
making a metal-work sculpture next to her. He has been hospitalized with
aggressive tendencies due to the pressure his perfectionist father put on him as
a medical student to become "the greatest surgeon who ever lived."
Her parents visit for the first time
since her hospitalization - six months earlier, and Deanie is at first overjoyed
to see her mother. She is embraced by her clutching mother (who calls her "my
little baby") and her father (who calls her "our little girl"). Mrs. Loomis
assuredly denies that there is any psychiatric problem: "She's just as sound and
normal as the next one...There's nothing the matter with you. You just remember
that. You - are - perfectly - all right." Deanie, who becomes visibly disturbed
by the visit under the watchful eye of a stern-faced Nurse, isn't allowed to
make plans to have dinner with her parents, and she leaves them after a very
short visit. During an office visit with Dr. Judd, her psychiatrist,
Deanie
criticizes her parents for treating her like a child: "Don't they realize I'm
me." She is advised to "accept them as people with a lot of faults maybe." She
has also lost contact with Bud:
We've given up writing. I guess he's
probably away at school. I don't know. No one ever writes me anything about
him. I guess they're afraid that it would upset me.
The understanding doctor senses that
she hasn't gotten over Bud (or her mother's domination) and it would affect her
if she saw him again: "Well, maybe you'll feel a little stronger about it in
time."
On their porch, Mrs. Loomis
complains
about Deanie's Freudian psycho-sexual therapeutic treatment and its cost: "I'll
bet they've been practicing some of that Freud on her too. Oh, I've read about
him. All he's concerned about is sex. And it's costing us every blessed penny we
made on our stocks." They are stunned when a radio report from Wall Street
flashes the announcement of the crash of stock market prices "in the most
disastrous trading ever encountered on the New York Stock Exchange. Fourteen
million dollars was lost in a nationwide attempt to unload."
In his hotel room in New Haven,
Connecticut (while visiting his boy in college who is "flunking every course"
but "doin' just fine"), Mr. Stamper is listening to the same radio reports of
the stock market crash in the fall of 1929, and speaking on the phone. He
exhorts his business partner to not "get panicky" and "sell out." An
anonymous-looking man who has been paid to spy on Bud's social activities at
school arrives with information on "what's wrong with him" - he has been 'eating
up his time and energy' by becoming involved with a waitress in a pizza place.
Later, in Dean Pollard's Office at the
university, the forceful, determined Mr. Stamper is incensed that his subdued
son is indifferent to his studies and doing his best to flunk out and
"disappoint" him, but still makes excuses for him anyway:
He just hasn't been applying himself.
I know my boy. He could pass any course you people offer up here with flying
colors - straight A's!
In confidence, Bud
explains to the Dean
why he hasn't been interested in his work at Yale - he has no aspirations other
than to ranch - that's all he ever wanted to do: "I never wanted to do a thing
but ranch - but Dad..." Mr. Stamper is summoned to New York due to the financial
crisis ("the whole town of New York is jumping out of windows. I mean they're
quitting"), but before he leaves with Bud for a weekend of carousing in the
city, the Dean recommends that Bud drop out. Not a very good listener, Mr.
Stamper is desperate that his son remain in school - and again blames Bud's
failures on his association with the seductive wiles of a lower-class female:
Don't give up on him...I had to go
through something like this with him once before. He falls for some little
girl and then that's all he can think about...I THINK THAT'S IT! I THINK
THAT'S IT! I think I've known him a little bit longer and a little bit better
than you have. I had to break up something like this once before and I see I'm
gonna have to break it up again. (He slaps his hand on the Dean's desk.)
Once again dominating his son's life
with rigid and obsessive aspirations for his success, Mr. Stamper takes
Bud to a
posh New York nightclub for a night on the town. He drinks and generously offers
$50 to a cute salesgirl selling kewpie dolls from a tray. Silver-haired
entertainer Tex Guinan (impersonated by Phyllis Diller in a cameo), the owner
and hostess of the club, walks among the tables jovially greeting guests and
delivering a comedy routine: "Hello suckers. I think I smell fresh money
tonight. I'm glad you didn't let a little thing like the stock market crash keep
you from coming out tonight. Tonight, as I was walking down Park Avenue to get a
taxi, I had to dodge the bodies jumping out of the windows. But let's don't be
morbid."
At their cocktail table, Bud listens to
his father justify his coarse discouragement of a romance with Deanie. With an
additional bribe to raise his boy's libido and spirits - he proposes a Deanie
'look-alike' for his companionship that night - he points to a red-outfitted
chorus-line dancer on the stage:
I may not be around too much
longer...it may be that I haven't always done the right thing by you, boy, and
I'm sorry. Anything I might have taken away I-I'd like to make it up to
you...(pointing) Up there on that stage - Deanie...Exactly, the same damn
thing exactly. The same damn thing, just as pretty. Just as pretty! You've
never been fair to me. I did that for your own good. How'd you like to be
married to her now? Did you ever think about that?...How'd you like to be
married to Deanie with her in that institution?...What the hell difference
does it make?...That's the same thing exactly. Just as pretty...You look up
there at that...You want that? You want it, son?...You can have it, boy. I'll
get it for you. You can have anything you want, anything you want, boy. This
world is your oyster.
Embarrassed when his father leaps up to
the stage to grab the attractive brunette, Bud leaves the noisy nightclub. That
night as he sleeps in his hotel room, a knock on the door awakens him. He opens
up his door - and is bewildered to find his father has purchased for his
pleasure the Deanie-Girl hooker from the stage. She ushers herself in. A cutaway
to Mr. Stamper's room shows him looking at a long string of ticker-tape curled
on the floor. His fortune obliterated, he contemplates suicide from his hotel
window. Early that morning, another knock awakens Bud from sleep. [The
prostitute's red dress has been tossed on his dresser, but she is nowhere in the
room.] He is summoned by officials to an alley next to the hotel to identify his
father's blanket-covered body lying on the wet concrete. Bud peacefully tells
the policeman: "I'll take him home."
The giant pendulum of a clock in the
psychiatrist's office tick-tocks loudly as Deanie awaits her departure from the
sanitarium. She is dressed in a bright-blue outfit, with a string of white
pearls around her neck, white gloves, and wide brimmed white hat for the journey
- after being institutionalized for almost two and a half years. She describes
her feelings of going home after recovery: "Like going to a foreign country." A
former patient Johnnie, who has returned to Cincinnati and is practicing
medicine, has proposed marriage and she is contemplating her future with him -
though she still loves Bud: "It's different from the way that I felt about
Bud -
but I love him." The doctor asks a crucial question about her homecoming - and
encourages her to 'face her fears':
Will you see Bud
when you're
home?...Do you think you'll be very happy married to John if you still don't
know how you feel about the other young man?...When we face these fears, they
sometimes turn into nothing.
A taxi delivers her to the front of her
home. After a dissolve, her mother helps her unpack her things in her room upon
her return, and worries about her agreement to marry someone in the East -
someone possibly with mental problems of a different political persuasion: "What
do you know about this young man you're marrying? After all, you met him
in a mental hospital. Are you sure he's all right?...Is he a New Dealer?" She
laments, with self-pity, about the thought of losing her daughter, and is
concerned that doctors blamed the parents for her wrongful upbringing: "I could
cry, just cry, when I think I'm gonna lose my little girl...Deanie, did those
doctors at the hospital say your mother had raised you wrong, or something? Did
they blame your father and me in any way?" Now calm and with inner peace, Deanie
thoughtfully consoles her own mother - with a kiss and embrace:
I don't blame anyone, Mother...I love
you, Mother.
As Deanie puts things away in her
dresser, she notices the bare imprints on the wall where Bud's pictures used to
be, and the taped outlines on her mirror of his pictures - she tentatively
reaches out toward the blank spaces. Her mother babbles behind her about the
difficulties of parenting and guiding children toward "happy, normal lives":
You know, it would be nice if
children could be born into this world with an absolute guarantee that they
were going to have just the right kind of bringing up and all lead happy,
normal lives. Well, I guess when we get born, we just all have to take our
chances.
Deanie learns that Bud's sister
Ginny
"got killed in a car accident" - a fate that a self-destructive, 'bad girl'
deserves ("Oh, we all knew something like that would happen, the way she carried
on"). And "the Stampers are almost extinct in this town now...Their home has
been turned into a funeral parlor."
When girlfriends Hazel (Crystal Field)
and June arrive to welcome her home, Deanie joyously and affectionately greets
her old high school friends. Deanie readies herself to go on a ride with them -
to see Bud. Still with hope in her heart, she selects a special white dress,
white pearls, and broad-brimmed white hat from her upstairs closet. Downstairs,
Mrs. Loomis ominously and insistently warns her friends about keeping her away
from Bud:
The very first thing she did was ask
about him. And then she laid on the bed and cried and cried. Oh, I thought
maybe the years away, she'd forget about him. Now I want you to promise me.
The doctor says she's perfectly all right now, but there's no use in asking
for trouble. Keep her away from him.
When her friends cooperate with Mrs.
Loomis and refuse to tell Deanie where Bud
is living and can be found, she finds
an ally in her father - he reveals Bud's location on a local farm:
"He's staying
out at his father's old ranch." [This is the farmhouse where she shared a
double-date with Bud and his sister years earlier.] She walks over to her
trusting father who demonstrates confidence in her new-found emotional health
(contrary to her mother's opinion), and kisses him warmly on the forehead.
With her friends, they drive along a
dusty road to Bud's farm property and ramshackle ranch house. She fears that
seeing Bud again may rekindle their deep, glorious, and hopeless love - and the
emotional breakdowns as well. At an apprehensive Deanie's
urging, Hazel locates Bud, with greasy hands and overalls, working on a hay truck behind the house. He
boasts "we're eating regular." He is also hesitant about seeing Deanie with his
dirty hands, but agrees to speak to her. They spot each other between a long row
of tall green bushes - he's in work clothes while she is beautifully dressed in
her white outfit with white gloves. They tentatively wave, and then Deanie
runs
up to him while holding onto her white hat to keep it from falling off her head.
They try to remain lighthearted as she looks deeply into his face:
Bud: Long time no see.
Deanie: A long time.
Bud: It's good to see you, Deanie.
Deanie: Thanks, Bud. (The wind stirs the bushes behind him. She laughs
nervously.)
Bud: Hey, you wanna meet my family?
Deanie: Of course.
Deanie is introduced to Bud's
hospitable, pregnant wife - the Italian waitress from New Haven, Connecticut
that he married and impregnated during his first year in school before he
dropped out. Deanie is stunned but not overcome after learning he has a family -
an infant named Bud, Jr., and another on the way. Lovingly,
Deanie holds the
baby boy up in her arms and lets him play with the pearl string around her neck.
Now a little older and more sophisticated, she can see that her high-school hero
is burdened by a pregnant wife and a run-down farmhouse.
As they walk to the car, the short
visit has confirmed for Deanie that her former lover hasn't matured much since
she last saw him as a high-school senior. But his lifestyle has changed
radically from one of wealth and prosperity to the hard-working life of a
rancher/farmer. And he seems only half-satisfied with married life. They both
have had to accept compromises in their bitter-sweet lives ("You gotta take what
comes") - no longer able to dwell obsessively on recovering the intense
happiness (and its attendant agony and confusion) that they once experienced.
Although she still loves him warmly, she discovers that the affection that they
once had could never be recovered:
Deanie: You're happy, Bud?
Bud: I guess so. I don't ask myself that question very often, though. How
about you?
Deanie: I'm getting married next month.
Bud: Are you, Deanie?
Deanie: (She nods.) A boy from Cincinnati. I think you might like him.
Bud: Gee - things work out awful funny sometimes, don't they, Deanie?
Deanie: Yes, they do.
Bud: I hope you're gonna be awful happy.
Deanie: Well, like you, Bud. I don't think too much about happiness either.
Bud: What's the point? You gotta take what comes.
Deanie: Yes - well -
Bud: Deanie! (She turns toward him.) I'm awful glad to see you again.
Deanie: (She sighs and affectionately flitters her eyelids.) Thanks,
Bud.
Goodbye.
Bud: Goodbye.
When he returns to the house, Angelina
senses that Deanie was once Bud's closest love in his life. As the three
girlfriends drive off, Deanie is asked about the love of her life:
Hazel:
Deanie, honey, do you think
you still love him?
She removes her white hat and looks
ahead to her new future with a wise, unspoken understanding and acceptance. She
has calmed inner conflicts, disappointments, and struggles and put herself back
together after the painful shattering of her intense, first youthful love. With
new awareness, she realizes she has outgrown the very different, still
good-natured Bud that she once loved and worshipped.
Deanie has put aside
youthful exuberance, grieving, and denial of love to move forward. She has also
gained strength from what remains - the memories of her "splendor in the grass."
As she narrates (in voice-over) and
remembers the words of the Wordsworth's poem Ode, Intimations of Immortality
from Recollections of Early Childhood, taught to her by her schoolteacher,
Deanie peacefully and fully answers the question about her loss of love - one
that has finally been resolved:
Though nothing can
bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower
We will grieve not, but rather find
Strength in what remains behind.
[The final lines of the
film, the telling of Wordsworth's poem, are the second instance of
Deanie's recitation of the words.]
Splendor in the Grass
There is a miracle in being young...and a fear.
NOTE:
What I gained from Bud and Deanie seeing one
another again, is that they still love one
another. A love that will never
stop. But, they have to move on in/with
their lives.
Splendor In The Grass Poem
From
My Desk
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Splendor In The Grass Poem
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