Natalie Wood, never better or more beautiful, is smalltown Kansas girl Deanie, driven to a breakdown by her consuming, thwarted love for high-school football hero Bud (Warren Beatty in his screen debut), whose father’s plans exclude the girl from the wrong side of the tracks. The opening scene of them snogging in a parked car is still a knee-trembler; the final scene, visiting what they have become, still deeply moving.
dvd EXTRAS Oddly, 1961 Road Runner cartoon ‘Beep Prepared’.