Raetsonwe Redundant and unnecessary.

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

JohnHowardReid Photographed in CinemaScope. Lenses by Bausch & Lomb. Westrex Sound System. Producer: Mark Robson.Copyright 1960 by Linebrook Corp. Released by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Paramount and the Murray Hill: 15 July 1960. U.S. release: July 1960. U.K. release: 14 August 1960. Australian release: 22 September 1960. 12,948 feet. 144 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Paul Newman plays Alfred Eaton, a young Philadelphian of good family who returns from World War I to find his mother, Martha Eaton (Myrna Loy) bogged down in alcohol and his father, Samuel Eaton (Leon Ames) a wealthy businessman, as unfeeling and autocratic as ever. Alfred is uptight with his father because the elder Eaton continues to idolize his dead older brother, to whose memory Alfred is still playing second fiddle. Alfred scorns employment in the family business to take off for New York, where he joins his friend Lex Porter (George Grizzard) in an aeronautics venture. NOTES: With the initial gross domestic rentals topping a hefty $5.2 million, the film came in number 8 at the U.S./Canadian box-office for 1960. (The movie didn't take anything like this sort of money in England or Australia).COMMENT: Boring. You either like long-winded John O'Hara novels or you don't. I don't. You either like Paul Newman as a rich kid or you don't. I don't. You either like Joanne Woodward or you don't. I can either take her or leave her, preferably the latter. (The other players are of little interest, either because of their own innate lack of personality or because their roles are too small to make any impression. The one exception is Myrna Loy whose gauche performance here is best passed over in silence). Admittedly, I am way in the minority. Most people love Newman, Woodward, O'Hara (in that order). As for Robson and Lehman, despite their prominence in the advertising, most people couldn't care less. My sentiments exactly.

HotToastyRag I wonder if Paul Newman ever got tired of playing "Paul Newman". It seems like he's always cast in the same role: rebellious but still seeking approval, parents don't like him, bad boy, a ladies' man, and a bit of an unlikable edge. However, unlike other Paul Newman movies where this type of character actually captures the audience's attention, From the Terrace is lousy.Paul Newman comes from an unrespectable family, but he wants to make something of himself. He wants to become a member of high society, so he can see the view "from the terrace". In his quest, he pursues high-class Joanne Woodward. In his overwhelming ambition, he works too much and leaves his wife alone too often. She turns to alcohol and humiliates him by having an affair. But why are we supposed to be surprised? When he met her, she was engaged to someone else. She cheated on her fiancé and left him for Paul Newman. Once a floozy, always a floozy! The plot is disjointed and boring, and despite Hollywood's repeated casting of Joanne Woodward in sexy roles, her aura reeked like she didn't know where the bedroom was, not like she spent all her time there. The costars were married by the time they made this movie, but if you really want to see their chemistry, you have nine other films to choose from.The only good scene in this movie is in the beginning. Paul Newman returns home from the war and witnesses an argument between his parents, drunken floozy Myrna Loy and stern Leon Ames. Go ahead and watch the first twenty minutes of the movie, then do yourself a favor and turn it off.

Dalbert Pringle Over these many years I have been told, time & again, about what a really great actor Paul Newman was in his heyday.Well, I have now seen Newman in 6 films that all came from the first decade of his acting career, and, let me tell you, I am not at all impressed. In fact, I'd actually go so far as to say that Newman was one of most over-rated and disappointing, big-name actors from that particular era, bar none.Set in the year 1946, From The Terrace was yet another star-vehicle of Newman's where I strongly felt that, at 35, he was clearly too old for his part. This time around he played a young soldier returning to his Philadelphia home after the war.The very minute Newman's character (a spoilt, tormented rich kid named Alfred Eaton) sets foot inside the door of his home the story immediately accelerates into a most tedious and predictable soap opera of non-stop bickering, jealousy and resentment, with a generous dash of infidelity thrown into the mix for good measure.Everybody in this story seems to either have an axe to grind, or be out for blood, or at one another's throat, ceaselessly.I, for one, found this 1960 film (with its plodding 145-minute running time) to be a tiresome ordeal which went far beyond anything even reasonably tolerable.Paul Newman, or not, I would never, ever recommend this bitchy, backstabbing bull to anyone.

MARIO GAUCI This is another film which, though a staple on Italian TV over the years, I somehow never bothered with until now (obviously included in my Paul Newman tribute) – mainly because it’s a glorified soap opera of a kind (accentuated by garish color and the Widescreen format) that was prevalent in Hollywood for about a decade, beginning from the mid-1950s.It’s based on a John O’Hara best-seller which, if the trailer is to be believed, was a “sensation” when it emerged; its impact, however, has been heavily diluted in the screen adaptation – not to mention by the passage of time since the film’s release! Still, the result is reasonably entertaining (often unintentionally so in view of the ongoing histrionics) and, thankfully, its hefty 144-minute duration isn’t an excessive burden. Besides, no expense has been spared with respect to production values (director Robson, screenwriter Ernest Lehman – both of whom would memorably reteam with Newman on the delightful Hitchcock pastiche THE PRIZE [1963; still bafflingly M.I.A. on DVD], cinematographer Leo Tover and composer Elmer Bernstein).On the other hand, casting is variable yet surprisingly adequate – this was Newman’s third teaming with wife Joanne Woodward: interestingly, she plays an unsympathetic role (whereas he’s typically brooding), so that the couple’s initially blissful relationship (compromised by his ambitious drive and her own faithlessness with ex-beau Patrick O’Neal) deteriorates and sends Newman into the arms of decent girl Ina Balin…all of which leads to an idealistic ending in which the disillusioned hero gives up his career in favor of true love. Myrna Loy, then, appears briefly at the start in the role of Newman’s perennially soused and whorish(!) mother; ditto Leon Ames as his steel-mill owner father (which Newman abandons after the old man’s death) – fixated on his other, dead son!; Felix Aylmer is an elderly tycoon whose grandson the hero saved from drowning – which wins Newman a position in his firm and later, satisfied by the former’s over-achieving performance, he even goads with a partnership…but the hero turns him down flat!; and Ted de Corsia is atypically featured as Balin’s modest businessman father, whom Newman had been sent by Aylmer to check on.