Splendor in the Grass

Kazan’s romantic melodrama engages with teenage longing under the repressive eye of meddling parents and the strict regimen of puritanical mores.

  • Director

    Elia Kazan

  • With

    Warren Beatty, Natalie Wood, Pat Hingle, Barbara Loden

  • USA 1961. 124min

  • 35mm

  • Certificate

    15

  • A BFI National Archive print

A tale of unfulfilled teenage desire set in Kansas circa 1928, Elia Kazan’s hothouse parable (with an Academy Award winning screenplay by playwright William Inge) examines the toll of Puritanical social propriety and sexual repression on high-school sweethearts: Bud Stamper, the child of oil wealth (Beatty’s Hollywood debut) and the fragile Deanie. Loden’s tempestuous role as Bud’s wild flapper sister Ginny provides a prominent foil for the film’s critique of judgmental small-town mores.

Contains sexual violence, mental health issues, suicide.

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