Young at Heart (1954) - film review

Laurie Tuttle and her two sisters, Fran and Amy, live an idyllic life with their composer father and spinster Aunt Jessie in Connecticut.  When an aspiring young composer, Alex, enters the household, to work on a musical with their father, Laurie and Fran fall instantly in love with him.  Alex invites his friend Barney to help arrange the score.  Laurie is immediately struck by Barney’s cynical attitude to life and tries to help the sad loner see things in a more positive light.  On the day of her marriage to Alex, Laurie discovers that Fran loves him more than she does and decides to elope with Barney...

A slightly too obvious vehicle for two of Hollywood’s biggest stars at the time, Young at Heart promises much but delivers surprisingly little.  Doris Day and Frank Sinatra must have seemed like a dream billing but the two lack the requisite on-screen chemistry to make this romantic drama work, although both give creditable performances and pack great emotional power into their musical numbers.  Director Gordon Douglas did a far better job with his sci-fi horror classic Them!, which was released six months before this film (although some would argue that Doris Day is far more terrifying than a hoard of giant ants).

Sinatra is particularly good here as the jaded loner who has enough chips on his shoulder to open a chain of fastfood outlets.  It is the kind of rough-edged anti-hero role for which Ol’ Blue Eyes is best remembered and which he plays with immense pathos and conviction   It is a shame, that towards the end, the film drifts off into tacky melodrama, exposing the vacuity of the plot and leaving the spectator feeling somewhat cheated.  With so much talent on offer, Young at Heart could so very nearly have been a great film rather than a minor Hollywood classic.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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