marcar912 After watching this TV-movie on TCM recently, originally produced and aired on its sister network TBS, I couldn't believe that the talents of Vanessa Redgrave and Sidney Lumet created such a poor version of this classic myth. Redgrave, though always beautiful and interesting to watch, is ludicrous as the Italian Lady Torrance. Her accent vacillates between pidgin Italian and cast-upon-the-moors Irish. I couldn't tell what she was saying half the time. Thank God for closed captions. Although I love Redgrave in Blow-Up, Howard's End and Mrs. Dalloway, she was insufferable in this movie. The whole turgid mess was miscast, poorly produced, out-of-focus (literally and figuratively) and just plain awful. And I'm big fan of Tennessee Williams. I had looked forward to watching this movie when I caught it on the TCM schedule, but honestly, if you like Redgrave, Lumet and Williams do yourself a favor and skip this one. It leaves a very bad taste in your mouth, and the tragedy and haunting beauty of the original myth are nowhere to be found.

rebeccax5 Somehow I had never seen this. It showed tonight on Turner Classics and Vanessa Redgraves, who was always great, took it to a level I had never seen this or the play before. I hope there is video obtainable of this on the stage with Redgraves and Anderson.When acting is as great as this it legitimizes the profession to do more the pander or entertain. It's both tragic and comic as well as a statement on human stupidity and evil.

Clothes-Off Only someone who has never heard of Anna Magnani could watch Vanessa Redgrave's performance and not think of her. To be fair the part in Tennessee Williams' original play was written for Magnani; I just wish somehow she could have made it her own. When she spits out Lady Torrance's best lines, she might as well just look skyward and give the late Italian star a wink. As for the story itself, it is still provocative even viewed by todays eyes--perhaps even more, as thankfully fewer people are accustomed to seeing such deeply rooted racism. However, in this era in which we've come to expect plot twists and character development, there is surprisingly little change in any character from beginning to end. Each person in this story is exactly who he/she appears to be, which will be very frustrating viewing for those who like to see a moral or have someone at least learn something from what has transpired. And since a rather repulsive gossipy woman reveals a rather important detail at the very beginning, I kept hoping for other secrets of some sort to be unveiled. The affected young (by comparison), ghostly Charlotte (Anne Twomey) surely has a story or two to tell, but it never comes. This is not so much a flaw in the script, but rather a warning that it's not the kind of story I expected it to be. It is a clear style choice by Williams, I'm just not sure that less is more in this case. If anything, it made me long for a depiction of the ancient mythical Orpheus on which this play is based.

alicecbr Vanessa, an Italian in lower Slobovia, I mean Lousiana or Mississippi.....what a background to play against. This Tennessee Williams classic has great allusions to 'crossing the river', so read up on your Greek mythology before watching this movie. All of us with Southern accents cringe at the dead-on representation of the hypocritical upright citizenry of this pitiful town. The dying husband/Klansman who had burned out his wife's father many years before (and burned her father, as well, we find out) comes to life in the finale as he applies the torch to the hero. The hero, a young man in a snakeskin jacket, gives new life to three downtrodden women. One of them, driven crazy by the town's abuse, shows acute intelligence warped beyond redemption by her suffering.This one is not a light excursion into escapist fare. The fact that most of Tennessee Williams' plays pull back the mask from Society's hypocritical face is certainly emphasized here. We make our compromises with what we learned in Sunday School and one day, we join a gang that strips and sets fire to those who are 'different' among us. When they in turn go berserk, as in Columbine, we blame the movies !!(?). Who is truly insane here?Right on characterizations by the four townswomen, each one familiar to us. The artist who escapes into religious visions after facing lynchings and chain gangs, supervised by the brutality of her sheriff husband, fills the screen with her plain soul-beauty. We were taught of 'Southern Schizophrenia' in Sociology: the cleaving in two of our brains in order to co-exist with going to church three times a week and twice on Sunday.... and our savage mistreatment of the 'different', usually black, Jewish or Catholic. That was then and now is now......are we any different?See it. Find yourself in it. Not an easy trip, because the 'Orpheus descending' is you and me.