Splendor in the Grass (1961) (nat)

Not a movie to watch when your mother is driving you mad. Here we get star crossed lovers (well, not really "lovers" and that's the driving conflict) Natalie Wood (Deanie) and Warren Beatty (Bud). Their parents are enough to drive anyone to the brink. Her father is oblivious and unable to stand up to her mother. Her mother is a meddling moron who asks repeatedly if Deanie has been "spoiled" and then later ignores Deanie's health in favor of asking if the doctors blamed her mother for her illness (citing Freud). His mother is useless and powerless in the face of his father who is an annoyingly loud man who refuses to listen to anyone's opinions but his own. Bud wants to marry Deanie because he loves her (or so he says but the not so subtle subtext is that he just wants to have sex with her and can't stand waiting any longer). Deanie wants to marry Bud because she's flimsy as a person and has attached herself to him in a really unhealthy way. Lots of overt good girl/bad girl juxtaposition (in that you're either one or the other) but the good boy/bad boy dichotomy is more realistic (of course) in that the men can be both good and bad (have your virgin and your whore too--but not in the same girl). In the background is the prosperity and then stockmarket crash of the 20s making for an interesting thread of role reversal in terms of wealth. Natalie Wood is just brilliant. I now want to re-watch West Side Story and Rebel without a Cause.