Peyton Place (1957)

(On Cable TV, February 2020) I’m not sure it’s possible to put ourselves in the same frame of mind in which audiences first took in Peyton Place. It was the late 1950s, after all, a time at which American society barely started to acknowledge the rampant dysfunction behind its picture-perfect façade. The previous year, Grace Metalious’s novel had become a publishing sensation by acknowledging the rot to be found in small towns, and the film had to tone down or remove much of that material. What remained, however, was enough to create some amount of controversy even at the twilight of the Hays Code era. Of course, we’ve seen much—much—worse since then, and going back to Peyton Place with a modern mindset is closer to “well, what did you expect?” as the town’s sordid secrets are exposed at a time when few took familial abuse seriously. Alas, the result suffers. The film is both far too long at 162 minutes and now too tame to be entirely interesting. Despite the good sequences to be found here and there (most notably Lloyd Nolan as a town-castigating doctor), much of it feels like the talky melodrama it was meant to be. Lana Turner is good in the lead role, but this is really an ensemble cast. The Technicolor cinematography brings a distinctive sheen to the movie, but Mark Robson’s flat direction doesn’t really lead to any cinematographic distinction. I found Peyton Place substantially dull, but then again– I acknowledge that you really can’t perceive the film as audiences did back then.