This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

"Sweet Bird of Youth" flying away … deserting our lives ... leaving us with the painful scars of lost memories … vanishing in the air ... erasing our last hopes, and painting our future with a mark that gets more and more indelible ... as time goes by … Richard Brooks' film, adapted from a successful Tennessee Williams' play echoes one of our deepest fears : losing it … losing what? Simply that little something you can't really put your finger on during the biggest part of your life, and can only perceive it while it has definitely deserted it and became a vulgar souvenir, in a word : youth. Youth like an invisible crown on young people's heads and that only older people can see … youth, like a ticket for success … It's ironic that the title resonates as another famous one, "Sweet Smell of Success", both bears the same resonance, the same power in their symbolism, as if one couldn't go without the other … indeed, this bird of youth has a sweet smell, and one thing is certain, we can smell its absence all through the film. The movie is a eulogy to the youth that physically left the glorious and decadent Alexandra Del Lago, Geraldine Page, or that killed the inner idealism of Chance Wayne, Paul Newman … two characters portrayed with such a natural authenticity that I wonder if those parts weren't self-reflexive ... don't get me wrong, they were both great, but we never know when reality outshines the fiction … Geraldine Page had the magnetism of a has-been diva like Norma Desmond with the realistic touch of fragility from Vivien Leigh's Blanche Dubois … or wait a minute, this was from 1962, right? In fact, she had Bette Davis's constantly bitter nostalgic attitude toward the past glory in "Baby Jane Hudson", with the delicateness of Lee Remick from "Days of Wine and Roses" … this was a great year for female alcoholic roles, and I'm still torn about which performance would have deserved the Oscar, but let's not spoil the review by these random cinematic considerations …The film is about the haunting feeling of youth's volatility and therefore its inner preciousness … it's about a time we spend building dreams, told from the view of people aware of that. Indeed, there's a stressing and disturbing feeling of emergency as if all the characters in this film were trying to fulfill their dreams by any means. The worst or let's say, the most tormented of all is of course, Paul Newman, at the pinnacle of his sex-appeal, as a man who tries to take advantage from the fading reputation of her "hostage", Alexandra Del Lago … to blackmail her so she can obtain him a screening with a famous director. Newman as Chance Wayne, if that is his real name, is the wanna-be star, getting off his waiter condition to conquer the governor's daughter, Heavenly, to prove his value, influenced or corrupted by the very ideas of the governor, the Big Finley, played by Ed Begley, believable as the reminiscent of the bigot-minded juror #10, with his sneaky son, a young unrecognizable Rip Torn.In fact, the whole subplot is quite secondary when you consider the real heart of the film, where it's all about the indecent dichotomy between youth and success. It's in fact highlighting the personal fear of Tennessee Williams himself, who after the successes of "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" doubted on his own ability to keep up that level of greatness. A legitimate fear that inspired one thrilling journey into the souls of insecure people, one star who thinks herself as an old relic, and a young gigolo who'd sell his soul just to become someone, forgetting that if you're eager to sell your soul, it still proves that you have one. Chance is a good guy but spoils every of his actions by believing he should be better than what he is, and his self-loathing obsession will be his doom.But the film is less an invitation to accept our own condition than to contemplate the devastating effect of confidence, whether it's lacking or overworking. And in the case of Chance, the man who carries this name with a particular irony, you realize how unlucky he was, as he wasn't able to domesticate his own fear of the future. This encouraged him to leave his girl, to achieve his dreams, but life gives you one chance, Chance, never more … the second miss was fatal as this lead to a miscarriage for his love, and the cruel reputation of a degenerate undesirable human being in his hometown. The whole dilemma will end up to be whether to follow Alexandra or Heavenly, heart or ambition, both the epitomes of youth that can not be separated, and it's not like he didn't try.The conclusion would disappoint the purists as they would expect a darker epilogue for a movie that covers so many dark and taboo undertones, especially when they know about the content of the original play, but I agree that it would have been too dark regarding the general mood of the film. The ending didn't need to be that happy but the symbolism is still powerful as it allowed Chance to be redeemed. It's Hollywood ending, but the movie efficiently made the point that success or happiness can also be a matter of good or bad luck, and through Chance Wayne, Tennessee Williams gives us a self-approach of what he could've been if he wasn't successful or as a matter of fact, what Newman could've been … Thanks God, this is only a movie

If you are a Paul Newman, (Chance Wayne) fan, this is the film for you, he was young and at the height of his career and gave an outstanding performance. Chance Wayne plays the role as a young man who starts many careers and never seems to get anywhere at all. Chance decides he wants to go to Hollywood, however, he has a girl named Heavenly Finley, (Shirley Knight) who he is very much in love with. Heavenly has a father named Tom Finley, (Ed Begley) who does not like Chance and he does everything in his power to keep this couple apart from each other. It is not very long when Chance returns from Hollywood with a burned out actress, Alexandra Del Lago, (Geraldine Page) who adds a great deal of comedy and romance in this film as well as, an outstanding performance. Enjoy.

Tennessee Williams wrote a terrific Paul Newman and Geraldine Page vehicle in this 1962 top-notch production.Newman is certainly Chance Wayne. He hits every emotional height in the role of a hustler trying to outfox an aging movie star, Alexandra Del Largo, played to the hilt by the fabulous Geraldine Page. This is another super performance for Page and Williams seemed to enjoy writing for her as addicted person in both this film as well as "Summer and Smoke" the year before.Ed Begley won the Oscar for his sensational portrayal of an extremely ruthless southern politician who has got it in for Newman for getting his daughter, Shirley Knight, into trouble. Begley knows how to handle that cane for more than just walking.Mildred Dunnock plays her usual soft-spoken but wise sister-in-law to Begley.Rip Torn, son of Begley in the film, is menacing due to his dominance by his outrageous father.Madeleine Sherwood, who costarred with Newman in 1958's "Cat on A Hot Tin Roof," is terrific as Begley's tormented mistress who manages to turn the tables on this vicious character at the end.

"Sweet Bird of Youth" came towards the end of Hollywood's Tennessee Williams cycle of the fifties and early sixties, being preceded by such films as "A Streetcar Named Desire", "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "Suddenly Last Summer", and closely followed by "Period of Adjustment" and "Night of the Iguana". Indeed, Williams is an author whom I know better from the cinema than from the theatre; he lacks the following in Britain that he enjoys in his native America, and performances of his plays here are infrequent. ("Sweet Bird…..", for example, was not performed in London's West End until 1985, nearly 30 years after it was written).The main character is Chance Wayne, a drifter who returns to his Southern home town. He left the town several years ago with high hopes of becoming a Hollywood actor, but he has enjoyed little success, and has ended up as a gigolo, preying on lonely older women. (His name is highly significant. Wayne is a "chancer", one who lives by his wits and enjoys taking risks. The surname at this period would have evoked the great Hollywood star John Wayne, but Chance has had none of his namesake's success).Wayne's latest conquest is a film star named Alexandra del Lago. Alexandra was once beautiful and highly successful, but is now ageing, addicted to drugs and alcohol, lacking in self-confidence and terrified of losing her looks. Wayne is only interested in Alexandra because he wants her to use her influence to advance his stalled acting career; his main purpose in returning home is to rekindle his love affair with his former girlfriend, Heavenly. Heavenly is the daughter of the local political boss Tom Finley, a Huey Long-style politician, who maintains a grip on State politics through corruption and strong-arm tactics. It was Finley who forced Wayne to leave town after he got Heavenly pregnant, a pregnancy which was terminated by abortion.The emotional, passionate nature of many of Williams' characters made his plays very popular with film-makers, but in the fifties the American theatre tended to be more liberal than the American cinema as regards the portrayal of sexual themes, and a number of his plays were somewhat bowdlerised when turned into films. "Sweet Bird of Youth" is no exception. The reasons why Finley ran Chance out of town are not the same in the two versions; in the play he infected Heavenly with a venereal disease, something unmentionable in Production Code Hollywood. (Pregnancy outside marriage and abortion were quite controversial enough). The ending is very much softened compared with the one Williams originally wrote.Paul Newman plays Wayne in the same cool, nonchalant, laid-back style which characterised a number of other his roles. (It was Steve McQueen who earned the nickname "King of Cool", but Newman could have been a pretender to his throne). Several of these were also drifters, such as Cool Hand Luke or Ben Quick in "The Long Hot Summer". For me, however, the real stars of the film are not Newman but Geraldine Page as Alexandra and Ed Begley as Finley. Page (who was nominated for "Best Actress") was excellent as the drunken, self-pitying junkie, and perhaps even better at the end of the film when Alexandra recovers her self-confidence after discovering that her latest film has proved an unexpected success. Begley certainly deserved his "Best Supporting Actor" award for his portrayal of the ranting demagogue Finley; the one nomination which rather surprised me was "Best Supporting Actress" for Shirley Knight (Heavenly), as she did not seem to have all that much to do."Sweet Bird of Youth" is not quite in the same class as some of the other entries in the Williams cycle, such as "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (which was also directed by Richard Brooks and also starred Newman) or "A Streetcar Named Desire" with its four towering performances in the leading roles. It perhaps represents a rather conservative style of film-making, looking back to the fifties rather than to the stylistic revolution of the late sixties. (After "Night of the Iguana" in 1964 Hollywood was to fall out of love with Tennessee Williams). It is, however, well-made and well-acted, and still remains enjoyable today. 7/10