Call it a soap opera if you like, but "No Down Payment" is a riveting slice of late 1950s life from Surburbia, USA. This movie follows the intertwining lives of several suburban families in a generic U.S. city, and is fascinating to watch.

We've all seen the characters in our own lives: the bookish engineer (Hunter),the quietly desperate alcoholic car salesman (Randall),the town official with nothing but excuses (Hingle),the violent type that settles everything with his fists (Mitchell),and so on. Great acting by all concerned, along with Ritt's sure direction, make this a winner.

My only complaint is the women's roles. Joanne Woodward produces a great performance, but all the other women's roles are somewhat one-dimensional, and involve spending all day keeping house or setting the dinner table. I guess it's a reflection of the 1950s, but it's still disappointing.

Fine performances, particularly from Woodward, Hunter, and Randall, produce a grade-A effort. Watch it with the 1950s in mind.

"No Down Payment" is a movie about a suburban community--sort of a microcosm of middle class America in the 1950s. However, through the course of the film, you see that this idyllic location is actually a hotbed of vice--with hypocritical folks pretending to be decent, God- fearing folks when through the course of the film you see that all but one of the eight people featured in the movie is decent...the rest are jerks. Alcoholism, cowardice, greed, bigotry and rape....this film is a regular soap opera. And therein lies the problem with the movie. It features four couples who become friends and nearly all of them are awful people. Because of this, the film seems much more like a caricature of America than anything else. Enjoyable in a salacious way but far from art! Decent acting and a script that lacked subtlety or substance.

No Down Payment was a catchphrase of the Eisenhower 50s when people taking advantage of easy credit to buy a home in the newly developing suburbs. Many got there through the GI bill and were able to afford good living. The film takes a look at a quartet of couples that Producer Jerry Wald got for director Martin Ritt and we see some real flaws in their marriages and outlooks on life. The alcohol flows freely with a few of them.

Tony Randall who usually played many a comic role takes a serious turn here as a man who is always looking to make a quick buck with get rich quick schemes. He's an amiable drunk whose fear is not failure, but humdrum mediocrity. He won't settle for that as wife Sheree North tries to bring him down off his high horse schemes and just concentrate on raising a family.

Jeffrey Hunter has a reverse problem. He's an engineer who helps design product. But the money is in sales and wife Patricia Owens wants some better living. Hunter doesn't like selling. I can appereciate that, it's a job I would feel uncomfortable doing. She finds out what a solid guy he is though.

Pat Hingle may be the most materially successful at the moment. Hingle is a manager of a Walmart type store in that newest of phenomenons of the time, the suburban mall. I imagine people who started working at Walmart when it started and stuck with it are pretty well fixed. He's also on the new town council. That position is what is giving him the grief he brings home to Barbara Rush.

The dirty secret of suburbia is also that people tried to keep it nice and white so when one of his workers Ake Aleong wants to buy a house there, he runs into quite a bit of resistance. Hingle is given that choice and he's reinforced by his wife Barbara Rush to take a stand against discrimination. Aleong was a Nisei veteran of World War II as well and it is really egregious that in peace people would deny him a share of the American dream.

Hingle's other problem is Cameron Mitchell who is also a World War II veteran and I'm trying to figure out why he didn't just stay in the army and make that a career. He and wife Joanne Woodward are from the south and are less educated than the others. He runs a gas station franchise and wants an appointment as chief of the newly forming police department. Hingle pushes him, but is unsuccessful. That sets off a whole other dimension and it ends badly.

Mitchell and Woodward are also heavy drinkers. But where as Randall is an amiable but sad drunk, Mitchell can get violent. Demons of the war no doubt. Then again all eight of our cast members have demons. Woodward who got an Oscar that year for Three Faces Of Eve has a lot of demons. Mitchell and Woodward are the unhappiest of the four married couples without a doubt.

This is a great ensemble cast with Mitchell and Woodward getting the meatiest roles and making the best of them.

No Down Payment is a real sleeper of a film, I can't recommend it high enough.