The Young Lovers

Mixed up college kids try to figure out what to do next in life in this solid attempt to make a dramatic film to appeal to the drive-in crowd. Takes on some serious issues -- abortion, war, marriage... all with a nice cast of the early 60s' best up and comers. Adams and Walley are there at the beginning mostly for laughs, and the film only touches on their situation, which is unfortunate because to me they're the more appealing couple and their situation is more realistic (whereas Fonda and Hugueny's is pure melodrama).

Solid, but unexceptional; a worthy effort.

This is a counterculture look college life in the 60's. Not the greatest storyline. Not the greatest themes. Watchable though.

To see Peter Fonda, Sharon Hugueny, Nick Adams and Deborah Walley in a movie together brought back good memories for me. I really like them all.

Beatrice Straight, Joseph Campanella, and Malachi Throne have supporting roles and it's great to see them.

So the cast for me is totally worth a look!

It's sad. Nick, Sharon and Deborah would pass away way too young. It kind of haunts me watching the film.

This is the only film Samuel Goldwyn Jr ever directed making it more interesting.

It involves young people seeking to break away from the morals of the past. To me it highlights the unfairness of it all. If young woman gets pregnant without being married she gets scorn and pain instead of kindness and understanding. If men could get pregnant, abortion world be safe and legal in every state.

The word abortion is never uttered.

Thin script from Julian Haley's novel about a college senior who struggles to stay with the curriculum after falling in love with an attractive co-ed. Peter Fonda, pre-"Easy Rider", amusingly enters the film on a motorbike, but never manages to find an appropriate acting style and seems distinctly miscast; either he's smiling too much or talking too slowly, his heavy-lidded eyes fixated on the ground. It's a bad match between actor and material, however Nick Adams is very enjoyable as a goof-off who gets drafted. Sharon Hugueny is a rather bland beauty, and all the adult characters are stereotypically rigid and humorless, but the film's cinematography (by Joe Biroc and Ellsworth Fredericks) is beautifully expressive. Overall, a fairly rote youth flick, but one with a curiously downbeat, foreboding tone. ** from ****

There are lots of memorable/silly lines in this one. One of the best is: "I didn't come to college to cop-out". How about when the kids get together for a party? One of the guys says: "Hey, let's have a hootenanny"! A girl wisely tells him: "Get Lost".

THE YOUNG LOVERS is loaded with laugh out loud lines like this that betray the writers total lack of knowledge about how college students talked. It appears to have been written by someone trying to be hip but old enough to have remembered the films of the 30s and 40s.

The script is the real problem here. Although the idea is a good one. I just wish it had been executed more competently.

Made and released in 1964 it sells itself as a contemporary drama about a serious issue at the time: Unplanned pregnancy in college. It was a timely subject. Roe V Wade had made abortions legal only the previous year. The movie attempts to make a very good point about it's subject but gets tangled in silly, unbelievable dialog, stereotyped characters and bad casting.

Peter Fonda is totally out of his depth with this one. In fact you could make a case that Fonda was a terrible actor. But strangely it does not seem to have hurt his career. He continued to get other parts in films and still remains a working actor. In later years his laconic acting style would lend itself primarily to roles that fit that character. A good example is EASY RIDER. In the beginning I guess the producers or this film wanted an actor with the same last name as Henry Fonda to bring audiences to see it. Too bad that Peter's inherited qualities did not include his father's skill as an actor.

Five years later, a much better film was made about first loves in college. THE STERILE CUCKOO. Pass up THE YOUNG LOVERS and go see THE STERILE CUCKOO.

Sometimes the real value of a fictional work (insert film here) lies in the historical clues provided about the sociological attitudes prevalent at the time it was produced. "The Young Lovers" (1964) offers a reasonably accurate glimpse into the life of a typical college student in the early 1960's. It makes for an especially good comparative viewing experience when paired with "Getting Straight" (1970). The plot, the themes, the setting, and the characters in the two films are virtually identical. Yet in the six years between their production the challenges and concerns of the college student changed to a incredible degree.

Imagine being a high school student in the mid to late 1960's with aspirations of attending college after graduation. Your mindset and expectations formed by films like "The Young Lovers" but your reality after matriculation much closer to "Getting Straight".

Both films are told from the point of view of a somewhat unconventional California college student on the verge of graduation. They are coming of age stories in which the hero gradually becomes aware that his luxury of being a rebellious free thinker is rapidly coming to an end. They are being forced to make the hard choice between a conventional-responsible adulthood and continuing their somewhat free- spirited existence. A certain degree of conformity will be required if they are to successfully pass out of the institution. But "The Young Lovers" Eddie Slocum (Peter Fonda) faces a conventional choice about marriage and family. Harry Bailey (Elliott Gould) in "Getting Straight" is spared this (by 1970 marriage was old-fashioned), his decision is a political one about compromising his principals to conform with straight society.

For Eddie, Tarragoo (Nick Adams), Pam (Sharon Hugueny), and Debbie (Deborah Walley) the principle conflict in their lives is sexual frustration. Six years later the "free love" movement presumably allowed college students to focus on more substantive issues. Eddie's on-again off-again relationship with Pam would be recycled with very different results in three late 1960's films; "Goodbye Columbus", "The Graduate" , and "Adam at 6AM".

Despite being "Sam Goldwyn Jr.'s sole directing effort, "The Young Lovers" is a very modest budget black and white film. Although it has some spots of nice cinematography, it has several too obvious in-studio outdoor sequences. They go out on a nice shot of Eddie following Pam down a long outdoor stairway, but the scene loses much of its power because cut into it are shots of Eddie standing in front of a projected campus background.

Watch for the symbolic use of balloons throughout the film (which are even seen in the final shot); they are probably there to represent freedom but their juxtaposition by the film's editor is so forced that the meaning (if any) is never clear.

The pre - "Easy Rider" Fonda gives a decent performance and zips around campus on a beat-up Triumph motorcycle. Hugueny is nothing special but has the correct mousy look they needed for her character. She and Fonda share the film's best scene, a Spanish dance sequence very early in the story during which she lets her hair down (literally) and transforms into a very hot property. Adams is obviously too old for his part but it doesn't hurt the film. Walley is absolutely adorable (super pretty-especially so with her hair up) and acts circles around the other three. Fonda is the only one of the four still living (kind of scary).

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.