This Property Is Condemned ***½ (1966, Natalie Wood, Robert Redford, Mary Badham, Kate Reid, Charles Bronson) – Classic Movie Review 5044

Director Sydney Pollack 1966 dysfunctional family romantic drama is typical Tennessee Williams fare, though his two-hander, one-act play is merely the starting point of a more ambitious movie screenplay co-written by the young Francis Coppola.

Natalie Wood is on great form as the strange tubercular heroine, Alva Starr, the town flirt, who escapes her domineering mother (Kate Reid)’s Southern boarding house by marrying mom’s brutish lover J J Nichols (Charles Bronson) instead of relying on the kindness of hunky stranger, railroad official Owen Legate (Robert Redford). Legate has come to Dodson, Mississippi, to close of the town’s main source of income, its railway.

The acting and James Wong Howe’s Technicolor photography make it both seem and look very classy, even if a slightly disappointing script means that isn’t actually always the case. And it is superb to see the young Wood and Redford going through their acting paces.

Reid gives a tour-de-force as the clutching mother, Hazel. Howe’s cinematography is another one of the film’s major assets. Pollack directs with an assured hand. But you have to be prepared to sit and listen to the Williams dialogue, too.

Also in the cast are Mary Badham, Jon Provost, John Harding, Alan Baxter, Robert Blake, Dabney Coleman, Brett Pearson, Robert Random, Quintin Sondergaard, Mike Steen, Bruce Watson and Nick Stuart.

The other screen-writers are Fred Coe, Edith R Sommer and David Rayfiel. It is produced by Ray Stark and John Houseman, scored by Kenyon Hopkins and designed by Stephen B Grimes.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5044

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