Movie Monday: The Young Philadelphians (1959)

For today’s Movie Monday I am reviewing a film with a movie star that I have yet to review here on Faintly Familiar — Paul Newman! The Young Philadelphians was a film I just happen to stumble into watching and I am so glad that I did because I have been wanting to review a Paul Newman film for quite some time. So without further ado, here is my review!

The Young Philadelphians is one of the rare films that appeared in a difficult time era for the movie scene, in my opinion. I have found that films took a bit of a break in being high quality from the year 1956 until about the middle to late 1980’s. However, there were a few movies in that time era that somehow managed to make it big and become a classic. The Young Philadelphians was one of those movies and Paul Newman’s career was a beneficiary.

Speaking of Newman, he was able to truly capture the essence that this film’s plot wanted to follow with his acting talents. He conveys a lot of emotion with his body language and sometimes even with the eyes. Personally, I feel that eye movement is a large part of acting and a real throwback to the silent film days so I am always happy to see when a actor uses this method to their advantage.

I also think that Paul Newman did an excellent job of aging himself. There really wasn’t a heavy use of makeup in The Young Philadelphians so the film’s timeline relies heavily on how the actors portray their own level of maturity. Newman was able to transition his character from a young promising law student to a mature and experienced lawyer. This takes a lot of talent, talent we all know that Paul Newman for sure possessed.

Despite the talented actors who starred in The Young Philadelphians had a little bit of an issue when deciding just what kind of film it wanted to be. The story of the film follows Paul Newman’s character pretty much throughout his life a lot like other familiar classics like Giant (1956). However, unlike these other classics, The Young Philadelphians seemed to constantly switch between being a romantic movie and a film simply about one character. It was a bit cloudy in key points and kind of hard to follow.

In my onion, what really held this movie all together was the acting efforts of Paul Newman. The Young Philadelphians was an interesting film to watch, but it definitely fell in line with what I was thinking of that time era and year in which the movie was made.

Much Love,

Sarah