From the Terrace (1960) (2025)

Popular reviews

• Review by Daniel ★★★

  "I rather liked the view from the terrace and when I saw you I liked it even more."

  In 1946, Navy Lt. Alfred Eaton (Paul Newman), son of steel company owner Sam Eaton (Leon Ames), returns home from the war to find his mother Martha (Myrna Loy) driven into alcoholism by her abusive husband. Alfred decides to turn his back to his family and make it on his own. Then, he meets Mary St. John (Joanne Woodward), daughter of a wealthy family ...

  From the Terrace is a romantic drama film directed by Mark Robson, based on the novel of the same name by John O'Hara.

  This was the third of many on-screen pairing of real-life married couple Newman and…

• Review by Jack Often ★ 5

  Robson, Lehman, Newman and Woodward in Cinemascope! Sounds like a dream but unfortunately it's a big pile of crap, with a little refutation of 50's conformity in the last 5 minutes. A reward for your numb ass.
  The efforts of Mark Robson and Ernest Lehman are joyless and pedestrian. Based on a book by John O'Hara (who also wrote the ridiculous A Rage To Live,) the film wants to captivate you like Peyton Place, but has no guts or ambition. Time jumps forward indiscriminately, passing over anything that might interest you, yet the film still feels bloated. Joanne Woodward does her best Muriel Puce imitation and Newman is just a rich shitheel who is impossible to care about. He's a…

• Review by eely ✨ ★★

  “are you getting anything out of all your success besides more success?”

  this movie is so frustrating!!! imagine being married to paul newman and cheating on him!!! imagine being married to joanne woodward and cheating on her!!! you think you can do better? you’re WRONG

  also, myrna loy only has like ten minutes of screen time and her character is completely abandoned after the first thirty minutes of the movie?? what is up with that?? she was the most interesting character and they just threw away all her talent in favor of deeply uninteresting corporate and relationship drama. so dull!

• Review by Josh Gillam ★★½

  David Alfred Eaton (Paul Newman) is an ambitious man who begins to become distant from his wife (Joanne Woodward) and status as he becomes attracted to a younger woman (Ina Balin), in this drama co-starring Felix Aylmer, Myrna Loy, Patrick O’Neal and Leon Ames.

  It’s beautifully made, with vibrant cinematography and a powerful score that fits the soapy tone of the story. The lead performances were good, but it’s Loy who steals the show as the alcoholic mother, making the most of her time on screen. In exploring the decadence of the wealthy after the war, the film shows the ultimately hollow success of reaching the top, as David gradually realises the cost of realising his ambitions.

  I wish this…

• Review by yuri ★★★½

  Joanne Woodward looked flawless. The hair, makeup and costumes were all gorgeous. Additionally, her performance was the most compelling aspect of the film, given how she found a perfect balance between being callous and playful. As a result, a role that seemed to be design to evoke animosity, ended up more sympathetic.

  At its core, For the Terrace has some interesting ideas regarding marriage, gender and how both of those elements intertwine. Ernest Lehman’s framing of marriage as a pure façade for status quo management and his quasi-subversive approach to gender, where the woman searches for sex and the man love (though he can’t completely avoid some bystanders that you would expect from such a choice), could’ve been more engaging in the hands of a better filmmaker.

• Review by Filipe Furtado ★½ 4

  For a movie about intimacy, one suspects none of the filmmakers ever met an actual human being.

• Review by Robert Hayes ★★★

  Fit in well with Mark Robson's other trashy melodramas (Peyton Place, Valley of the Dolls, e.g.), although a bit less trashy than it could have been. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were as good a couple as any to headline something like this. Started out promisingly but gradually started to lose me after the halfway point, which the bloated runtime did not help. Good for one viewing, I guess. If I'm in the mood for 1950s/1960s melodrama, I'd sooner return to something else.

  Two random asides:
  1. Platinum blonde looked very good on Joanne Woodward.
  2. Although she wasn't in it that much, seeing Myrna Loy as a drunken wreck was a little disconcerting/disheartening.

• Review by chavel ★★★

  Philadelphia High Society, circa 1946. Paul Newman is Alfred Eaton, a war vet who gets to come home and take tow of his father’s mill company. But he wants more than the average socialite. He wants an airline company, he wants to be a banker on Wall Street, he wants to marry Mary St. John (Joanne Woodward), and not necessarily in that order. What’s in Alfred’s way is the elder snob culture, in which some of them tell Alfred he’s not good enough to belong in their company. What’s really the core problem to that is that Alfred is young and handsome, and when he walks in with duck-hunting attire (that brash red-colored shirt!) he is made to feel by…

• Review by vintagebuff ★★★★★

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  Out of all the reviews I read of this movie , I’m the only person who loves it 😂😂

  
  This film in my opinion is underrated, like the love story is amazing. Paul Newman and his wife were cute in this film but I was soo rooting for him to end up with the character of Natalie like I was screaming go to the women you love not the women your not happy with but I was satisfied at the end . I still don’t understand why rotten tomatoes gave such a low rating , but I guess not all people can be satisfied enough.

• Review by Spencer Howard ★★½

  Overwrought. Tedious. Melodramatic. But man, there's a lot to be said about how much sex is in this movie without anyone getting naked.

• Review by Skele_D ★★½

  I'd totally have an affair with Paul Newman.

• Review by Jenna Ipcar ★★½

  Wants so badly to be Douglas Sirk but can’t be bothered to deal with silly little things like ‘women’s feelings’ or men who have ‘emotions.’ Truly just abandons its characters for multiple extended scenes of pandering to Capitalist hierarchy mixed with some of the most overtly horny flirting this side of Dorothy Malone.

  The best scenes in this are of Newman talking about how painfully miserable he is and Ina Balin responding with how hot that makes her. But really, it’s the only moments that feel real in a sea of clumsy dialogue that clearly expects us to appreciate its efficient commitment to brevity (“You should learn to love your war hero son Alfred who you resent for not dying…