Splendor in the Grass

With Beatty (his debut) and Wood star-crossed by parental opposition to their adolescent romance, William Inge's script is a sort of Romeo and Juliet translated to Depression Kansas. Attacked by many as being a hysterical account of sexual neurosis, praised by others for the acting (especially of Wood, as the daughter who goes mad) and for its occasional moments of great beauty, this is probably Kazan's most fought-over movie. A complicated film that never really successfully yokes together the themes of money-making and sexuality, it reveals both Kazan's operatic sensibility and his inability to follow an argument rigorously through.