All Fall Down

Drawling his way round William Inge's dialogue with methodical surliness while lumbered with a Christian name - Berry-Berry - which sounds more like a disease, Beatty is the epitome of itchy, preening 'rebellion' in this marvellously silly hothouse melodrama of familial angst. In the '50s there would have been a toss-up over James Leo Herlihy's source novel becoming either a Kazan movie or a Golden Age tele-drama, but MGM accommodated that decade's slow fade by letting TV graduate Frankenheimer direct it as if remaking East of Eden. Lansbury and Malden head the gallery of grotesques, while de Wilde's young eyes gradually narrow in disillusion over older brother Beatty's posturing antics.