**_Melodramatic Southern Gothic with Robert Redford and Natalie Wood_**
This is the film that ended Tennessee Williams’ reign at the box office with six hits or semi-hits from 1951-1964. Of course, this isn’t purely a Tennessee Williams movie since Francis Ford Coppola and a couple of other scriptwriters expanded his sad story with added characters and a romance.
The events take place in 1932-1933 and The Depression milieu is great. You can feel the humidity with the social dynamics being almost surreal and Charles Bronson, Robert Blake and Dabney Coleman showing up in peripheral parts.
The opening bookend is unnecessary, however, and gives away a tragic plot point. Yet I love the way the flick opens with Willie tight-roping the train tracks. Also, there are predictable bits. For instance, you just know what’s going to happen to nonchalant Owen (Redford) as he walks around without a care in the world.
It’s similar to “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter,” which came out two years later, although that one was a modest hit at the box office. If you liked Brando’s “The Fugitive Kind,” this treads similar terrain, although I personally prefer that one.
It runs 1h 50m and was shot Oct-Jan 1965-1966 in Bay St. Louis on the Gulf coast of Mississippi, and Biloxi just east of there, as well as New Orleans, which is an hour’s drive to the southwest. Additional stuff was done in Los Angeles.
GRADE: B-
