Word: alma
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...around to tell him he is "no good" because his father has rejected him. His pranks are worthy of a Tom Sawyer--but the complication lies in the fact that his brother Aaron is not a prig or toady, but a good guy too. To further complicate the situation, Alma (Julie Harris), the "Becky Sharp" of the story is Aaron's girl...
Jimmy Dean plays the sensitive rebel role to its hilt, even managing fairly deftly the lines he has to mumble. Perhaps his toughest scene comes when Cal sees his father spurn his own birthday gift of $5000 and rejoice over his brother's "gift" of his engagement to Alma. A scene which could have been easily overplayed, it becomes an emotionally powerful piece of acting in a movie full of tortured glances and "sensitive" scenes...
Once away from the Trasks and Alma, however, the "East of Eden" world is one of two-dimensional people and scenes. Actually, there is less use of folksy humor and other side show effects than there might have been. Elia Kazan's handling of the anti-German feeling during World I seemed very fine indeed, and the movie is worth seeing just to watch its town parade of victory girls, the Kaiser in a noose, and Important Citizens...
Referring to Thompson's alma mater, which banned football, one heckler in the crowd asked, "Mr. Thompson, what do they do at Chicago on Saturday afternoons?" Again, Thompson's reply was ready: "I guess they sleep...
...Oedipus complex about Alma Mater has long nourished English letters. From the days of Thomas Hughes (Tom Brown's Schooldays), almost the first things heard out of an English writer are usually the half-strangulated noises of one noosed in an old school tie. As an obsessive theme the Old School has no counterpart in U.S. fiction, unless it is the Home Town and the shouts of the boys who cry Wolfe...