This Property Is Condemned

Considering the wealth of talent that participated in this Tennessee Williams adaptation, the results are disappointing in the extreme. It was co-scripted by Francis Coppola, produced by John Houseman, photographed by James Wong Howe, and features a more than acceptable cast. But despite the array of talent, it's a very banal reworking of Williams' one-act play about a tragic Southern belle longing for a handsome gentleman caller to whisk her away from the family boarding-house to glamorous New Orleans, but who dies disillusioned of a lung complaint. Originally a two-hander, the play told her tawdry story entirely through the eyes of her younger sister, magically transformed through romantic adolescent reminiscence. On screen, inevitably and disastrously opened out, it is constructed as a series of long, unmemorable flashbacks.