The Young Lions

Edward Dmytryk – 1958 – USA

Notable as the only film to co-star the two most important Method actors of their era – Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando – The Young Lions sadly remains as toothless and lethargic as it has always been, it not having improved much with time. It is a prime example of that persistent Hollywood phenomenon; the slavishly faithful adaptation of a bestselling novel; (in this case the book of the same name by Irwin Shaw).  Director Dmytryk’s previous film, (which also starred Clift), Raintree County (1957), was another example of the same problem.  Eager for epic prestige pictures in the vein of Gone with the Wind or The Best Years of Our Lives, the major studios repeatedly indulged in these bloated exercises in prefabricated respectability to the point that they came to symbolize what the new wave cinema of the 60s reacted against.  Once the sharp maker of lean noir films like Murder, My Sweet (1944) and Crossfire (1947), Dmytryk was traumatized after being persecuted as one of the Hollywood Ten and blacklisted for a number of years.  His post-blacklist career was marked by safe and somber dramas designed to demonstrate his contrition and reliability.  The glaring let-down of The Young Lions is the fact that the two lions of the Strasberg school, Brando and Clift, do not even share any screen time.  The main point of interest in such a pairing would be to compare their styles in interaction with each other.  Both were in somewhat of a state of decline at that moment, following the period of their electrifying performances throughout the late 40s and early 50s.  It would have been fascinating to see if working together might have rekindled something in them that was missing, and would remain missing for the rest of Clift’s life and until Brando’s  brief resurgence in 1972.  The Young Lions had good reviews in its day and was a box-office success, but it is conspicuously not the major work one would hope for from Clift, Brando or Dymtryk.