Directed by Martin Ritt • 1957 • United States
Starring Joanne Woodward, Sheree North, Tony Randall
Sex, alcoholism, and racial tensions roil a suburban California subdivision in this subversive deconstruction of 1950s conformity, which combines deep-dish melodrama with the socially conscious sensibility of director Martin Ritt and blacklisted leftist screenwriter Ben Maddow (with credited writer Philip Yordan acting as a front). Newlyweds David and Jean Martin (Jeffrey Hunter and Patricia Owens) move into Sunrise Hills looking for their slice of the American dream, only to discover that their neighbors—including Joanne Woodward as a restless housewife and Tony Randall as a hard-drinking philanderer—are concealing a hotbed of dysfunction behind their hypocritical facades.
Up Next in Murderous Melodramas
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Some Came Running
Directed by Vincente Minnelli • 1958 • United States
Starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaineMaster stylist Vincente Minnelli applies his spectacular visual flair to this feverish melodrama, a scorching indictment of small-town hypocrisy that sets every inch of the CinemaScope fram...
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The Long, Hot Summer
Directed by Martin Ritt • 1958 • United States
Starring Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Orson WellesSex, pyromania, and epic family drama heat up this southern-gothic scorcher adapted from three works by William Faulkner. In his first screen pairing opposite his soon-to-be wife Joanne Woodward, P...
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Home from the Hill
Directed by Vincente Minnelli • 1960 • United States
Starring Robert Mitchum, Eleanor Parker, George PeppardVincente Minnelli’s baroquely stylized melodrama casts Robert Mitchum as the patriarch of a wealthy Texas family who must confront their hidden secrets when his philandering ways come bac...
