THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED

Three screenwriters, Fred Coe, Edith Sommer and, believe it or not, Francis Ford Coppola, expanded Tennessee Williams' one act play from 1946, THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED, into a feature length film in 1966.

Like many films based on material originally written for the stage, PROPERTY has several scenes that play as "stagy", consisting of characters in one room (or set), trading long passages of expository dialogue. But credit must be given to the screenwriters and director Sydney Pollack for opening up the action (especially in the New Orleans set third act) as much as possible.

Still, that suffocating, stagy feel to much of the narrative actually serves the film well as the main character, Alva (Natalie Wood), yearns desperately to escape the dead-end environs of small, Mississippi railroad town Dodson circa nineteen-thirty-something. Alva and her younger sister, Willlie (Mary (TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD) Badham), live with their domineering mother (Kate Reid), who runs a boarding house in which many railroad workers live.

Alva, has one foot in the clouds, dreaming of running away to someplace, any place else, where magic might be found. Her other foot (and the rest of her body), is rooted in the bedrooms of the boarding house where it's clear she's been sleeping with most of the workers including J.J. (Charles Bronson) and Sidney (Robert Blake). Dirty old man Mr. Johnson (John Harding), wants to take the three women out of Dodson to Memphis where it's clear Alva would be obliged to perform sexual favors for the man, who's wife is alleged to be infirm.

Into this slowly simmering pot of sex and dreams of escape, comes a handsome young stranger, Owen Legate (Robert Redford). He's clearly no railroad worker but he does have work to do in the town. He's there to lay people off from the railroad, this being the middle of the Depression and all, and the railroad is not carrying as many harvest loads as in the past. Owen is hated by everyone except Alva who sees the blond outsider as her ticket out of town.

The third act, filmed on location in New Orleans' French Quarter, offers hope that Owen and Alva will finally achieve true happiness but this being Tennessee Williams, things do not end well.

Wood, never more beautiful, plays Alva as a spiritual cousin of Williams' other great soiled Southern Belle, Blanche DuBois. Alva's not as slap dab crazy as DuBois, but the two share a fantasy outlook on life while being perpetually used by brutish men who only want the women for their bodies.

Originally intended to star Elizabeth Taylor, that deal fell through when Taylor insisted that her husband, Richard Burton, direct the film. The producers balked at that. Natalie Wood was a big enough star at the time to call her own shots and she insisted on casting Robert Redford (whom she had co-starred with in INSIDE DAISY CLOVER (1965). Redford then suggested to Wood that Sydney Pollack be hired as director. THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED was only Pollack's second film as a director, following THE SLENDER THREAD (1965). He and Redford went on to work together on a string of extremely successful films including JEREMIAH JOHNSON (1972), THE WAY WE WERE (1973), THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR (1975), THE ELECTRIC HORSEMAN (1979), Best Picture Oscar winner OUT OF AFRICA (1985) and HAVANA (1990).

The supporting cast is solid with Bronson playing a non-action role for once in his career and young Jon (LASSIE) Provost appearing in the framing sequence that opens and closes the film. PROPERTY was only the second feature film of young Mary Badham after her star turn as Scout in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962). But THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED belongs to Natalie Wood who gives a bravura performance as the damaged and doomed Alva. 

Recommended.