Stephan Hammond It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
Edwin The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.
ben-73164 I first saw this movie on Netflix and watched it non-stop until they took it off. Then I bought this movie and put it on my Macbook. I have no clue how many times I have watched it. I know it is over 50 times. You can ask me any question about any scene and I can tell you every word spoken and answer any question about any scene. If I play the movie and walk away , I don't even need to see what scene is playing. I can see it in my head very vividly and i know exactly what that scene looks like. I say I love this movie is a gross understatement. But if you ask my why I love it this much, I do not know how to answer. I often wonder why I love this movie as much as I do. There is something inside of me that this movie triggers beyond belief. I wish I knew what it was.
James Hitchcock "This Property Is Condemned" came towards the end of Hollywood's Tennessee Williams cycle of the fifties and early sixties. By 1966 most of Williams's most famous plays- "A Streetcar Named Desire", "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", "The Glass Menagerie", etc.- had already been filmed, and this film was based on a much less well-known one-act play from 1946. The story takes place during the depression era of the early thirties in the fictional Mississippi town of Dodson, a major railroad junction. The film takes the form of a frame story in which a girl named Willie Starr (her parents wanted a boy) tells the story of her older sister Alva to a friend. Alva's story is largely shown in flashback, although at the very end the film cuts back to Willie explaining what eventually happened to her sister. Willie and Alva's mother, Hazel, runs the Starr Boarding House in Dodson, their father having deserted the family. (The film's title derives from the fact that by the end of the film the boarding house has fallen into disrepair and has been condemned by the local authorities as unfit for human habitation). Because of the depression, business is not good, and Hazel hopes to exploit the good looks of her elder daughter to improve her financial prospects. She encourages Alva to "get friendly with" (euphemism for sleep with) an older man named Mr. Johnson, one of the guests in her boarding house, who has taken a fancy to her. Johnson is already married, although he is separated from his wife, an invalid, but Hazel is not particularly worried about his domestic circumstances; all she cares about is that he pays good money for his room, and that if Alva is "friendly" to him he will want to stay longer. The flirtatious Alva, however, is not interested in being a pawn in her mother's schemes. She is much more interested in another of her mother's guests, Owen Legate. Part of the attraction is that Owen, a railroad official, is young and handsome, and part is that he is from New Orleans, a city which to the small-town girl Alva seems a very glamorous, sophisticated place, with the same sort of allure that Moscow has to Chekhov's "Three Sisters". Owen, however, is very unpopular with the townsfolk of Dodson because his task is to lay off several railroad employees due to cutbacks made necessary by the depression.One of the attractions of Tennessee Williams adaptations to the film stars of the period was that he created some great characters who gave those stars the chance to show off their acting skills in a way that more standard Hollywood fare did not. "This Property Is Condemned" gave Robert Redford, not the huge name in 1966 that he was to become a few years later, a chance to prove himself a serious actor, just as his friend Paul Newman had done earlier in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "Sweet Bird of Youth". Redford was also to star in "The Chase", another drama with a Deep South setting, later the same year. This was Redford's second film in his long collaboration with director Sydney Pollack; the first had been "War Hunt". Redford's style of acting was generally very different to that of his co-star Natalie Wood, he being calmer and more controlled, she often more nervous and agitated. They combine well here, however, with their different styles well-suited to their respective characters. Owen is the stronger character, emotionally in control; he finds his duties as an officer of the railroad distasteful but this does not prevent him from discharging them as efficiently as possible. Alva, beneath her flirtatious exterior, is a sensitive young woman, but one who can also be wild and impulsive. There is another particularly good acting performance from Kate Reid as the scheming, domineering and manipulative Hazel, a woman happy to prostitute her own daughter for her own financial advantage. Reid was only 36 at the time she made this film, only nine years older than her supposed daughter Wood, but nevertheless is still completely convincing. It was interesting to see Charles Bronson in something other than an action thriller, although before he became typecast as a tough guy leading man he did sometimes take ing roles in more thoughtful dramas. ("The Sandpiper" is another example). Like the play upon which it is based, the film, despite some big names among the cast, is also not particularly well known. Having recently seen it for the first time, however, I feel that it deserves to be better known. It is not perhaps a classic of the cinema like "A Streetcar Named Desire" or "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", but nevertheless contains some fine acting and works well as a touching human drama and love story. 7/10
jzappa What stays with me about this ably produced, well-acted Depression-era drama about the upshot of railroad cutbacks on a cluster of boarding-house folks is the controlling effect Kate Reid has on her daughter Natalie Wood, to the point perhaps of tragedy. Why does she control her this way? For her own selfish reasons, maybe, but also for her own feelings of security and peace of mind, which Wood herself is longing for. The real tragedy could be the society for whom Redford, Wood's object of ion, works, which pits mother against daughter in a way that happiness can only be had one way or another, with or without the happiness of one or another.Sydney Pollack would become a maker of classic, star-studded Hollywood period dramas, thrillers, romances and comedies, but This Property is Condemned, which is maybe a little overdone, is one of his strongest pieces because it has a beautifully tragic understanding of the trap that is set by a desperate society of people. People who love each other resort to respectively manipulating each other to the point of excruciating emotional pain and abandoning one another's penultimate wishes. It is either Tennessee Williams' original one-act or the script by Francis Coppola, Fred Coe and Edith Sommer that makes this come so powerfully alive in at least two scenes, but it's the strong acting between Reid and Wood, and the one she gives me. She stars as the youthful Dixie belle, older daughter of the former who plays a sordid proprietor to some railroad men. Wood longs for another life while she teases every drop of testosterone in town, functioning as the shill for her mother. It is a movie that's adult without being scandalous, poignant without being slushy. Charles Bronson is first-rate as a coarse lodger, by the way.Does it have the vibrant energy between performers that Tootsie does? No. Does it have the brilliant editing touch and metaphoric tragedy of They Shoot Horses, Don't They? No. But I would still consider it among the strongest of Pollack's directorial works, the first collaboration between he and star Robert Redford, who gives an exceptional performance as the railroad efficiency specialist sent to dismiss nearly all of the crew. In narrative , the role is unrewarding and burdensome, but Redford, through tone, look and physicality, consummate acting, makes the character fully human.
kluismans this movie is so difficult to comment on. in many ways it is deeply flawed. the music is simply awful, absolutely wrong, the performances at times feel staged, and the direction too loose. and yet despite this - this is a wonderful film.i think it is simply the quality of natalie wood, not her performance which again is actually quite week. sometimes she seems to lose concentration and flits in and out of character - but this is a challenging role and one that i cannot believe another actress could play better. wow she takes your breath away - filling you with such strange sensations of warmth, pity and anger. i cant think of a performance that has moved me so much.she of course lived pretty much a tennessee Williams' story in her own right - except williams would have eschewed the melodrama and the intrigue of her death. and i think that is why she is so compelling in this, because she is simply revealing herself - and what we see is beautiful.
