The Restless Years (1958)

A 16 year old girl (Sandra Dee) with an emotionally unstable single mother (Teresa Wright) who keeps her sheltered and a misfit (John Saxon) whose salesman father (James Whitmore) keeps moving from town to town are attracted to each other. But small town gossip may prove to be their undoing. Films about small town hypocrisy like KINGS ROW and PEYTON PLACE and their effect on innocent people are almost a genre unto their own. This modest B&W CinemaScope effort isn't in those films' league but it's a moderately engaging effort. One of two films that the German director Helmut Kautner made in Hollywood, it's based on a play by Patricia Joudry called TEACH ME HOW TO CRY. It's rather simplistic in its execution with its characters black and white rather than gray shadings. Dee and Saxon make for an attractive pair which compensates for their still unrefined acting skills but the adults take care of the histrionics. The lush underscore is recognizably by Frank Skinner. With Virginia Grey, Margaret Lindsay, Jody McCrea, Hayden Roarke, Dorothy Green and Luana Patten as the treacherous high school bitch.