O Anjo Violento

All Fall Down...did not live up to its promise... some dramatic scenes are , at times , laughable.. But you keep watching, and waiting. nothing much happens but a good study of a dysfunctional family in early 60's... The cast is probably the reason why we cant stop watching this beautifully photogaphed black &white film.. Angela Lansbury just about steals every scene .. not her best work but always good ! Karl Malden is also very good a Ralph the father... both were much younger than the roles they were playing.. Eva Marie Saint maybe miscast but she played the part very well.. young hunk Warren Beatty plays his confusing role well, and never looked better..what an early 60's masculine masterpiece was he...Barbara Baxley almost steals the show as the schoolteacher lusting after and later beaten and beratted by Beatty (Berry-Berry)..I would meet Ms. Baxley at an NYC bar years later (mid 1980s) and told her how much I admired her work...she replied in a euphoric stupor, & a puff of her cigarette..."I'm glaad someone remembers me darling "... true story.... But most of all .. Brandon De Wilde...growing up in the 1950's he was my teen idol I wanted to be Brandon de Wilde... blonde, beautiful talented making movies with A.Ladd etc.. what a screen talent.. what a loss.. long live Brandon de Wilde !!!

One forgets what a sensational actress Angela Lansbury was, is and always will be. Her success as Jessica Fletcher in TV's "Murder She Wrote" have distracted audience's attention from the real Lansbury. To see "All Fall Down" in 2009 is quite an experience. All the clues about Warren Beatty's complex character are discovered in Angela Lansbury's extraordinary cinematic face. We discover everything visually without any exposition. I don't want to spoil it for you so I'm not going to pinpoint the moments I mean because part of the pleasure is to discover them by ourselves. Brandon De Wilde is another shattering presence on the screen. He died at 30 years of age and I can't help wondering what he could have become. He was the young kid from "Shane" remember? But, let's got back to Lansbury, she plays Warren Beatty's mother, although in real life they are only a few years apart, she is fearless and enthralling as she was in another collaboration with John Frankenheimer: "The Manchurian Candidate" I keep thinking that Tilda Swinton won an Oscar for her performance in °Michael Clayton" and Angela Lansbury was not even nominated for this. I confess to you that I saw "All Fall Down" twice in a row. I was overwhelmed by Lansbury's performance and her strange and compelling chemistry with Karl Malden, her husband, Warren Beatty, her eldest son and Brandon De Wilde, her youngest son. I highly recommend it.

Many of the earlier posts on this film mirror my overall impressions as well. I caught this on TCM a few weeks ago and I was compelled to keep watching despite some flaws and very awkward scenes. This film has that distinctive early 60's feel to it and also is lacking certain elements of specificity in its storytelling and character development. The Willart family is dysfunctional but we are not able to put our finger on the dynamics of exactly why. We know the father, Karl Malden, is an alcoholic, yet a noticeably genial and upbeat one. We know the mother, Angela Lansbury, seems perpetually stressed and perhaps emotionally isolated, but the dialogue between the two never gets to the heart of their unhappiness. The late Brandon de Wilde (who died in 1972 in an auto accident) is the younger of two brothers through whose perspective the story is told. He is an aspiring writer who spies and eavesdrops on his parents' conversations and records what he hears in a journal. I thought his overall performance was very effective and believable. A young Warren Beatty in one of his first major roles plays the older son, the wayward Berry-Berry. (His name is puzzling and one wonders why nobody thinks to call him Berry for short.) Eva Marie Saint plays a somewhat mysterious woman, Echo, who provides the basis of the storyline through her involvement with both brothers. I found it to be a flaw of the film, though a minor one, that we never know much about Echo....what her background is, how she came to be close friends with Mrs. Willart, what she does for a living, and why she is driving such an unusual car. An absorbing story once you get drawn into it, with several awkward scenes balanced out by several touching and poignant moments.

When you get a writer like William Inge, who is a playwright by nature, to write a screenplay you get a movie like "All Fall Down" that seems like it is an adaptation of a play. The black and white photography and confined spaces provide an air of claustrophobia which is appropriate for this close examination of the Willart family. The father, Ralph (Karl Malden), is an alcoholic real estate broker who is a rather simple but decent soul; Clinton (Brandon De Wilde), the younger son, is a sensitive teenager who likes to write; Berry-Berry (Warren Beatty), the older son, is a handsome wastrel who lives off his good looks; Annabell (Angla Landsbury), is the controlling mother who obsesses over Berry-Berry and has pretty much wrecked the family. Things get off to a rather slow and awkward start, but when you throw Echo (Eva Marie Saint) into the mix, things get rocking when both sons are taken with her.

De Wilde is called upon to carry a good part of this movie. Hardly anyone is better at playing the clean-cut innocent and good natured youth ("Shane, come back!") than De Wilde, and he puts that talent to use here. I was struck by how similar De Wilde's Clinton is to Lonnie, the kid he would play opposite Paul Newman the next year in "Hud." Just as in this movie, in "Hud" he would play a young man who idolizes a more experienced relative, and ultimately comes to be totally disillusioned with him. Overall, the casting for "All Fall Down" is near perfect and the acting excellent.

I was expecting more from the Alex North ("Spartacus", "Goodfellas") score, but it is pretty much early 60s generic. The Sibelius symphony that accompanies the only romantic scene (higly scaled down by modern standards) is a bit over the top.

This movie would appear to be Inge's "Long Day's Journey into Night," but it is not nearly as powerful as the O'Neill play that was made into a brilliant movie in the same year.

I assume there is some significance, lost on me, to the fruit theme and the hyphenated "Berry-Berry." In any case, that name quickly started to bug the hell out of me.

I saw this one when it was first released, responding to some justly deserved positive reviews. Recently Turner Classic Movies showed it and my memories were confirmed: terrific cast beautifully responding to John Frankenheimer's astute direction; impeccable black-and-white cinematography by Lionel Lindon, especially that opening on-location sequence in Key West, Florida; one of Alex North's most apposite scores, not at all too florid (Was any Hollywood composer better at enhancing a story filled with neuroses in full bloom?); and a story whose downward spiral seems inevitable, despite some slight excesses on the part of the scriptwriter.

Minor reservations: Karl Malden's being required to vociferously refer to his son, Berry-Berry, as "The Big Rhinoceros" and as other assorted wildlife creatures (Why? Never really explained and seemingly inappropriate, given Warren Beatty's rather sleek appearance); the given names of the characters played by both Warren Beatty (Berry-Berry) and Eva Marie Saint (Echo O'Brien) - pure flights of fancy on the part of the writer(s), when compared to the more down-to-earth names given the other Midwesterners in the story; the frustration of seeing the doomed character, Echo, often expressing her affection for the younger brother, Clinton, while pathetically succumbing to the brutish abuse of his older brother, Berry-Berry.

But the interplay of all the cast (including some excellent supporting players) makes this somewhat forgotten gem a real must-see. It's one time when Angela Lansbury, running on all cylinders, is easily and compatibly matched by her fellow actors. This one's a keeper!