Peyton Place is a perfect little New England town, quaint and idyllic, a wonderful place to raise a family. Or so it seems. In truth Peyton Place is full of secrets. Awful, horrifying secrets. Full of phonies and liars, people who act morally superior but who are in actuality total frauds. A pleasant facade hides moral hypocrisy and unimaginable evil. Peyton Place is not a pleasant place at all. And ultimately that makes for a rather unpleasant movie.
The story unfolds in the early 1940s and the time is as important as the place. In this time and place your public image was more important than anything. You can't allow yourself to be publicly shamed, that would be a fate worse than death. Unfortunately in this town all it takes for a young girl, and by extension her stuck-up mother, to be shamed is for the girl to go swimming with a boy. If heaven forbid she should be seen kissing the boy? Scandal! This is the backdrop for this movie's story. Unsurprisingly the youngsters of the town rebel, each in their own ways, against the restrictive atmosphere. For all of them the sooner they get out of this town the better. In the meantime a bunch of nonsense happens. Nonsense which does not make for a particularly interesting or enjoyable movie. And then things take darker turns and the movie becomes nearly unwatchable.
This is a soap opera. And not a good soap opera. Overly melodramatic yet incredibly boring. And the movie just drags on forever. At over two and a half hours the movie way overstays its welcome. It's pretty bad throughout but the last act is just painful to sit through. A nonsensical trial in which the defendant finds life in prison preferable to a public shaming. That's all people care about in this miserable town, what people think of them. Really, it is the town itself and its attitudes that are on trial. The facade is peeled back, revealing the truth about what a miserable place Peyton Place is. This however comes much too late to save the movie.
The story in Peyton Place disappoints. The performances range from middling at best to terrible at worst. Lana Turner, playing the mother of one of those "scandalous" teens, is the nominal star of the movie. Unfortunately her character is so cold and miserable you want nothing to do with her. Meanwhile Lee Philips, playing a potential love interest for Turner's character, has all the personality of a doorknob. So that part of the story is a total dud. Some of the younger performers come off a little better but nobody is really able to rise above the material. The movie is dull and plodding. The phony moralizing from the totally phony characters wears thin very quickly. For most of its running time this is a laughably bad soap opera. And then at the end it tries to get deathly serious and fails at that too. Peyton Place is not a place you want to visit.
The story unfolds in the early 1940s and the time is as important as the place. In this time and place your public image was more important than anything. You can't allow yourself to be publicly shamed, that would be a fate worse than death. Unfortunately in this town all it takes for a young girl, and by extension her stuck-up mother, to be shamed is for the girl to go swimming with a boy. If heaven forbid she should be seen kissing the boy? Scandal! This is the backdrop for this movie's story. Unsurprisingly the youngsters of the town rebel, each in their own ways, against the restrictive atmosphere. For all of them the sooner they get out of this town the better. In the meantime a bunch of nonsense happens. Nonsense which does not make for a particularly interesting or enjoyable movie. And then things take darker turns and the movie becomes nearly unwatchable.
This is a soap opera. And not a good soap opera. Overly melodramatic yet incredibly boring. And the movie just drags on forever. At over two and a half hours the movie way overstays its welcome. It's pretty bad throughout but the last act is just painful to sit through. A nonsensical trial in which the defendant finds life in prison preferable to a public shaming. That's all people care about in this miserable town, what people think of them. Really, it is the town itself and its attitudes that are on trial. The facade is peeled back, revealing the truth about what a miserable place Peyton Place is. This however comes much too late to save the movie.
The story in Peyton Place disappoints. The performances range from middling at best to terrible at worst. Lana Turner, playing the mother of one of those "scandalous" teens, is the nominal star of the movie. Unfortunately her character is so cold and miserable you want nothing to do with her. Meanwhile Lee Philips, playing a potential love interest for Turner's character, has all the personality of a doorknob. So that part of the story is a total dud. Some of the younger performers come off a little better but nobody is really able to rise above the material. The movie is dull and plodding. The phony moralizing from the totally phony characters wears thin very quickly. For most of its running time this is a laughably bad soap opera. And then at the end it tries to get deathly serious and fails at that too. Peyton Place is not a place you want to visit.