Sons and Lovers (1960)

(On Cable TV, September 2020) I’m making a point of trying to watch ever single Best Picture Academy Award nominee, and I’m having a generally good time! The vast majority of the movies having earned such an honour are of high cinematic quality, and many of them do have that extra special ingredient that makes them worthwhile even decades later. But there are exceptions, and the English adaptation of D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers is one of them for me. Proudly belonging to the “subtle psychological drama” school of Oscar nominations, it’s a low-octane, intimate story of a young man’s inability to form bonds with anyone else but his mother, and it’s about as dreary as it sounds. Filmed in semi-realistic black-and-white, with actors clearly working within a subdued emotional palette, it’s meant as a small-scale small-town drama and is unfortunately far too successful as such: the characters are boring, the pacing is glacial, and the ending is a deliberate downer. Dean Stockwell stars but does not impress. There are far better choices out there, and to think—Spartacus wasn’t even nominated for that year’s Best Picture award, while Sons and Lovers was.