New York Lawyer, Anson Page (Richard Egan), travels back to his Southern hometown to investigate the misplaced royalties of famous author, Garvin Wales. The journey reveals a secret and also reunites him with his former love, Dinah (Dana Winter), although they are now married to other people.
Although his short stay in Pompey's Head exposes all the class and racial bigotry he had left behind, the story also centres on his nostalgia for the place and the rekindling of the affair with Dinah.
For all the location filming, the film struggles to fully engage. Some have blamed Richard Egan and Dana Wynter for being too stiff, but I mostly blame the direction. The flashbacks are poorly conceived with no feeling of being in the past, and the meeting after many years between Anson and Dinah has little build up; the direction is pedestrian.
Narration can be a lazy way of telling a story on film; it can work, but I think it stopped screenwriter/director Philip Dunne from working harder visually and creatively to involve us in Anson's sense of what had been lost and could not be regained. Compare it to another film shot on location in the South a few years later, Elia Kazan's "Wild River", where there is real feeling for the people and the place.
A wince-inducing aspect of the story was the revelation that the big secret Garvin Wales wanted kept was that his mother was coloured. Sadly, the script didn't confront the issue head on. Anson's response that Garvin Wales should have been accepted for who he was and what he had achieved, sidestepped the fact that his mother should never have been ostracised in the first place. Hollywood always trod carefully around the subject back then.
Powerfully-built Richard Egan and beautiful Dana Wynter weren't quite right. He was too controlled, and Dana seemed overly conscious of her Southern accent, she was better in scenes when it actually slipped.
Even the score by Elmer Bernstein, who had composed such emotive works as "Summer and Smoke" and "To Kill a Mockingbird", seemed less inspired here.
It may be seen as a film of its time, but too many things worked to dull "The View from Pompey's Head".
Although his short stay in Pompey's Head exposes all the class and racial bigotry he had left behind, the story also centres on his nostalgia for the place and the rekindling of the affair with Dinah.
For all the location filming, the film struggles to fully engage. Some have blamed Richard Egan and Dana Wynter for being too stiff, but I mostly blame the direction. The flashbacks are poorly conceived with no feeling of being in the past, and the meeting after many years between Anson and Dinah has little build up; the direction is pedestrian.
Narration can be a lazy way of telling a story on film; it can work, but I think it stopped screenwriter/director Philip Dunne from working harder visually and creatively to involve us in Anson's sense of what had been lost and could not be regained. Compare it to another film shot on location in the South a few years later, Elia Kazan's "Wild River", where there is real feeling for the people and the place.
A wince-inducing aspect of the story was the revelation that the big secret Garvin Wales wanted kept was that his mother was coloured. Sadly, the script didn't confront the issue head on. Anson's response that Garvin Wales should have been accepted for who he was and what he had achieved, sidestepped the fact that his mother should never have been ostracised in the first place. Hollywood always trod carefully around the subject back then.
Powerfully-built Richard Egan and beautiful Dana Wynter weren't quite right. He was too controlled, and Dana seemed overly conscious of her Southern accent, she was better in scenes when it actually slipped.
Even the score by Elmer Bernstein, who had composed such emotive works as "Summer and Smoke" and "To Kill a Mockingbird", seemed less inspired here.
It may be seen as a film of its time, but too many things worked to dull "The View from Pompey's Head".