Autumn Leaves (1956)
Director:
Robert Aldrich
Tagline:
« “He was so young – so eager and I was so lonely…” »
Actors:
Milly Wetherby
Burt Hanson
Virginia Hanson
Mr. Hanson
Liz Eckhart
Genre:
Drama
Rating:
(3’718 votes)
(3’718 votes)
Quotes:
« Mr. Hanson: The place for him is an institution. You cut off a leg to save a life or put him away in some hospital or whatever where he can't do anybody any harm. You're his wife. Authorize some head-shrinker to go to work on him. Get it over with.
»
« Virginia: Sure, he should be committed.
»
« Milly: Of course, you'd want me to commit him, get him out of your life, put him away permanently… someplace where he can never again remind either one of you of your horrible guilt; how you and you had committed the ugliest of all possible sins, so ugly that it drove him into the state he's in now!
»
« Mr. Hanson: What kind of a woman are you to be satisfied with only half a man? There must be something wrong with you…
»
« Mr. Hanson: Even when he doesn't know what he's doing, he's a saner man than you are! He's decent and proud. Can you say the same for yourselves? Where's your decency? In what garbage dump, Mr. Hanson?
»
[to Virginia]
« Mr. Hanson: And where's yours, you tramp?
»
« Mr. Hanson: I don't have to listen to that!
»
« Virginia: She''s the one who's crazy.
»
« Mr. Hanson: She'd have to be crazy to be… put up with that weakling.
»
« Virginia: You, his loving, doting fraud of a father!
»
[to Virginia]
« Virginia: And you, you slut!
»
« Virginia: Hey, you listen…
»
« Milly: You're both so consumed with evil… so rotten, your filthy souls are to evil for Hell itself.
»
« Burt Hanson: Aw, Milly. You wouldn't want me to spend the rest of my life with a bubble-gum addict. Would you, Milly?
»
« Milly: Sorry, I goofed!
»
« Burt Hanson: You "goofed?" Hey, man, that's "Bop" talk! Where did you ever pick that up?
»
« Milly: Well, why shouldn't I pick up an expression here and there? I'm not THAT old!
»
« Burt Hanson: [Last lines] You didn't even give me a chance to say hello.
»
« Milly: Did you want a chance?
»
« Burt Hanson: [Nods] Hello. Milly.
»
[They kiss]
« Milly: I think people are staring at us.
»
« Burt Hanson: Well, do you care?
»
« Milly: No – let them!
»
Trailer:
Official Trailer
Runtime:107 minutes
Plots:
A lonely middle-aged woman meets a younger man, but their relationship is threatened after the man’s troubled past reveals itself.
Millicent Wetherby is a middle-aged woman whose life is devoid of love and affection. Millicent’s solitary existence changes when she encounters Burt Hansen a charismatic younger man. As Burt successfully woos her and wins her hand in marriage, rumors begin to surface that Millicent’s newfound beau is in fact a deranged maniac. Things grow even more complicated for Millicent when a woman claiming to be Hansen’s first wife shows up. As Burt begins to lose control of himself, Millicent ponders the most radical of actions against her husband.
Forgoing a personal life in her younger years to take care of her ailing father, Milly Wetherby, a Los Angeles-based freelance typist, is a middle-aged spinster who embraces her loneliness in her fear in not wanting to be hurt. In embracing that loneliness, she initially rebuffs the advances of much younger Burt Hanson. In his persistence, they embark on a May-September romance, still with the age difference foremost on her mind and the belief that they both being lonely people unable to sustain anything long term. Regardless, they end up getting married, for Milly in that hope of truly being happy. After the wedding, Milly begins to discover Burt having told outright lies or having lied by omission, arguably the biggest of those being that his father, who he said was dead, is very much alive, and that the steady girl he had when he was younger actually became his wife, she, Virginia, who initiated the proceedings, only having the divorce finalized during the time Milly and Burt were dating. Although not outwardly malicious, both Virginia and Mr. Hanson, without Burt’s knowledge, tell Milly troubling stories about Burt. Milly wants to discover the complete nature of these stories in her love and devotion to Burt, if she is able to do so which may show if her love and devotion is misfounded and thus her life in danger in the process.

