All Fall Down (1962) ***

Both an easy sell and a tough sell for today’s audience. Easy because, this early in the decade, we’ve got a succession of independent sexually liberated women for whom handsome hunks like Berry-Berry (Warren Beatty) are collectibles. Tough because our ostensible hero is a serial abuser, beating up women.

The tale is somewhat complicated by the narrative which, rather than putting Berry-Berry  and Echo (Eva Marie Saint) together early on, gets more involved in the travails of Berry-Berry‘s innocent young brother Clinton (Brandon De Wilde), leading us to believe this is going to be more of a coming-of-age saga than a more mature romance, especially when the young lad is besotted by the 31-year-old Echo who appears to foolishly encourage him though he’s not much past the age of consent.

Or that it’s one of those stories when the adoring sibling realizes that big brother is not worthy of any adoration and far from looking as if he rules the world with his drinking and womanizing that he’s a pitifully small part of it.

Given the era, only a fraction of the sleazy world explored in the bestselling source novel by James Leo Herlihy (Midnight Cowboy, 1969) can find its way onto the screen. Still, in the first few scenes were are introduced to hookers, strippers and corrupt cops (who steal the cash Clinton planned to spend setting his brother up in the shrimp business).

Berry-Berry hasn’t a protective gene in his body, abandoning Clinton when a rich married woman beckons. It’s not just the unhappily married who alight on Berry-Berry but otherwise respectable schoolteachers. For a contemporary audience this might have been a more instructive avenue to go down, how such women, not all with money to burn, have the confidence to pick up men from a position of authority. Sure, Berry-Berry’s not one, ultimately, to remain at anyone’s beck-and-call but it’s interesting to see just who’s first to do the beckoning.

This is also the kind of picture that comes over more like a stage play and all the hidden secrets that entails  – Echo’s previous boyfriend committed suicide. Clinton’s parents, however, let it all hang out, the father an alcoholic, the mother controlling.

By the time Berry-Berry and Echo manage to get it together, you can tell which way this is heading and even if Echo hadn’t died in a car accident, it’s doubtful given Berry-Berry’s personality whether he could have handled commitment.

Warren Beatty (Kaleidoscope, 1966) comes over like a latter-day James Dean, all quiff and male arrogance and winning smile, but there’s not an ounce of depth to his characterization albeit that he wants to have it all and can’t deal with entanglement and treats women as punchbags when he wants out of a relationship.

Eva Marie Saint  (36 Hours, 1964) is better value, expectation already beaten out of her after having put up with the depressed boyfriend all this time and willing to embark on an affair with Berry-Berry because she hopes that eventually he will come to love her. Her ideal lover, it has to be said, looks like being the sweet-natured Clinton. But Saint leans into her feyness too often.

Much better value are Karl Malden (Billion Dollar Brain, 1967) and Angela Lansbury (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) as the bickering parents. Malden has never looked as unkempt and he retains a marvelous innocence, inviting three bums to the house in the spirit of Xmas.

Too much rests on the shoulders of Brandon De Wilde (In Harm’s Way, 1965) and, in truth, the narrative could have excised him and still arrived at its destination and it seems somewhat preposterous to have him so involved in the final scenes.

The structure emulates F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby where much of what we see is through the prism of a secondary character who in the novel acts as narrator. They junked that aspect for any of the screen versions and they’d have been better off doing the same here.

John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate) directs from a William Inge (Splendor in the Grass, 1961) script.

A contemporary audience might find more interesting the parts that the film only covers in passing. “They ought to have highways stacked with guys like you,” is the come-on of one rather forward lady.