Posted: Sun., Dec. 31, 1961, 11:00pm PT

All Fall Down

By Variety Staff

M-G-M. Director John Frankenheimer; Producer John Houseman; Writer William Inge; Camera Lionel Lindon Editor Fredric Steinkamp; Music Alex North Art George W. Davis, Preston Ames

Eva Marie Saint Warren Beatty Karl Malden Angela Lansbury Brandon de Wilde

Within John Houseman's production of All Fall Down there are some truly memorable passages - moments and scenes of great pith, poignance, truth and sensitivity. How disheartening it is, then, that the sum total is an artfully produced, cinematically rich, historically noteworthy, dramatically uneven near-miss.

A 16-year-old boy (Brandon de Wilde) who idolizes his emotionally unstable older brother (Warren Beatty) is the pivotal figure in William Inge's screenplay based on James Leo Herlihy's novel. The important issue is that the adolescent matures into a decent young man. But his path to maturity is threatened by his adulation for this brother, a selfish, irrational free spirit who survives on odd jobs and loose women. When the older boy proceeds to destroy a young spinster (Eva Marie Saint) whom de Wilde adores in a hopeless, adolescent fashion, the latter has his moment of reckoning.

Angela Lansbury and Karl Malden, as the tragicomic elders, create indelible, dimensional and deeply affecting people.

(B&W) Extract of a review from 1962. Running time: 111 MIN.