This Property Is Condemned. 1966. Directed by Sydney Pollack.

(9/6/01-9/19/01)

This film was "suggested" by a one-act play of Tennessee Williams. I can't help wondering how much of Tennessee Williams is in it and whether it bears the same kind of relationship to its source as The Killers did to the Hemingway story on which it was based. In any case, it does retain the spirit of Williams pretty well (based on my regrettably limited knowledge of the playwright) and strikes me as an example of serious adult movie fare during the 1960s.

The film had a theatrical quality in the sense that it had the feel of a stage play. Many of the scenes felt just like that--scenes, with actors playing parts and reciting lines. Of course, the actors recited the lines well and it was enjoyable watching them. The film occasionally "opened up," such as the scenes set outdoors in New Orleans. It didn't all mesh together smoothly.

Robert Redford has quite a presence. He is attractive and engaging as the railroad hatchet man who stays at the boarding house from which Natalie Wood is dying to escape. He is attractive, projects a sexual confidence, but at the same time is a sensitive enough actor to create a portrait of a man who is stuck with a distasteful job.

I have to wonder, though, how Redford's character lets himself get into the situation where he is beaten up by the locals. He has done this job before and is certainly aware of the hostility that comes with the territory. You would think he would know better than to get involved with the local belle and squire her in public. That is the only thing in the film which just doesn't ring true.

Natalie Wood's character's situation is very interesting. Her mother wants to use her sexuality as a means to escape a drab environment. It is a sad situation this woman is in and it is made quite vivid, whether through acting or writing. I felt especially sad, too, for poor lonely Mr. Johnson who is trying to buy Wood's company even though he knows--or should know--that she isn't interested. He is a sad, pathetic character.

I very much liked the young actress who played Natalie Wood's kid sister.

It is interesting that we don't see Natalie Wood again after the final confrontation with her mother who attempts to destroy--and I'm not sure how successfully--her one chance for happiness, by telling Redford how she had married Charles Bronson and rolled him. We don't see the end of the story, but only hear from the young sister how Wood's character had died.