I don't know if this is a good movie, but it certainly is riveting. Everyone in it is either cowardly or despicable, and the atmosphere is venomous with cynicism. Stuart Whitman's Rojack is a combative blowhard. Eleanor Parker's Deborah is monstrous in her cruelty (prefigured some 20 years earlier in her Mildred in Of Human Bondage). Everyone looks pallid in the film's harsh lighting, and the movie could be called "Fear and Loathing in L.A.--Cherry's rooftop "garden" is surrounded by elevated freeways and is an apt metaphor for the pervasive aridity. The movie is like a car accident that one can't resist gawking at. A remarkably lovely song was written for one of the film's characters to sing: "A Time for Love" (dubbed by Jackie Ward, who also dubbed for Natalie Wood in Inside Daisy Clover).
Review of An American Dream
