Marva
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
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.
theoneandonlyjimmypage
When gloomy blooms of what will be becomes an overwhelming, lonely , very lonely cloud... now; all gathered by its decorative string parts the meaning bless of each task becomes a mortal wound and its place a garden and its fountain... tears, memories, had story.Each event.Each well rehearsal. Each script.Each explanation, opportunity, crisis,tomorrow... Each either unacceptable fear or obstacles struck... So this is how this movie feels!
pointer165
First Natalie is breathtaking to watch and I still miss her!.. her sister ,is played by the wonderful Mary Badham. The search for the right girl for " To Kill a Mockingbird" ended up with children that had no acting experience ( IN THAT AREA they filmed) in their lives(Mary played Scout )but forever became a part of our lives with their incredible performances...and she also stands out ,a bit older then" to Kill a Mockingbird" but still that feisty character that played "Scout" in Mockingbird! but Natalie steals this movie ....I just love watching her act..and Sydney Pollack directing Redford would prove a very long collaboration.I think Redford is the same in almost any movie, if they need a wild game hunter,"Out Of Africa" but costarring with Streep, they give a wonderful performance and he does the same thing as if it was in "Barefoot on the Park" nothing differs with his acting, that's my opinion but I like him in his movies...Hubbell .another name that will always go down in Film History...another point,Natalie wears ONE dress this entire movie, a thing a Hollywood actress would shun away from...but Tennessee Williams as the writer, you can't go wrong.Anytime I hear his words, as I do Truman Capote's words.."the world is AOK!" for me..WOW...Redford did "Barefoot in the Park" one year after this movie...that's interesting!revised: I just looked at it again and she wears more than one dress in the movie..sorry Natalie fans!..still just a great movie..how times were, when all you had to worry about was"train service" but T.Williams adds the fact of so many losing jobs, from the lose of that train service
ferbs54
In 1961's "Splendor in the Grass," Natalie Wood gave what is perhaps her finest performance, an Oscar-worthy one, playing the part of Wilma Dean ("Deanie") Loomis, a lovesick teenager in Depression-era Kansas. Five years later, Natalie played a similar role, with some important differences, in the film adaptation of Tennessee Williams' one-act play "This Property Is Condemned." Told in flashback via the reminiscences of her younger sister Willie (Mary Badham, who most viewers will know as Scout from 1962's "To Kill a Mockingbird"), the film tells the story of Alva Starr, "the main attraction" in the fictitious town of Dodson, Mississippi in the early '30s. Alva, it seems, was a beautiful young woman who was used by her mother to attract men to her boardinghouse, but Alva--a dreamy, fantasizing sort whose primary ambition was to get out of this small town and go to New Orleans--never really fell in love until she met Owen Legate (Robert Redford), a hatchet man for the railroad who came to Dodson to lay off many of its male workers. Thus, before long, Alva was having an affair with the most unpopular man in town....An entire treatise could be written comparing the characters of Deanie and Alva, but let's keep things simple here and say that both young women become involved in first love affairs that lead to unfortunate conclusions; both have unlikable mothers who interfere with their love lives; both are living in small towns in the early days of the Depression. But whereas Deanie was virginal, and a woman whose frustrated love drove her to the brink of insanity, Alva was anything but, and she at least got to share some passionate moments with the man she lusted after. Natalie Wood, it should be said here, looks absolutely gorgeous in "This Property" (indeed, the woman grew more beautiful every year that she lived!), and director Sydney Pollack, in this, his second film, wisely gives her any number of stunning close-ups. (Pollack and Redford, of course, would go on to work together professionally for many years, in films such as "Jeremiah Johnson," "The Way We Were," "Three Days of the Condor" and "The Electric Horseman.") Natalie and Redford make a handsome-looking couple, to put it mildly; they had just appeared together in "Inside Daisy Clover" the year before. Pollack's direction is just fine here, in his sophomore film effort, DOP James Wong Howe's work is typically excellent (I love his soaring camera work as Alva enters New Orleans by train, and in the film's very last scene), Edith Head's costumes are marvelous, and co-screenwriter Francis Ford Coppola's script is just aces. So why does the often-dubious Maltin film guide call the picture "absurd" and "trash" and give it a lousy 2 stars (the same rating it gives "Taxi Driver," please recall)? Don't ask me. I feel that Natalie Wood is just terrific in this film, and she is given many scenes in which to shine. Just check out how great she is in her drunken scene, telling off her mother (Kate Reid) and coming on to the brutish J.J. (a well-cast Charles Bronson). So does the film allow a happy ending for Alva and her hunky Owen? Well, let's just say that portents such as Alva's breathing problems, a discussion of the 1932 tearjerker "One Way Passage," and an afternoon stroll through a New Orleans cemetery might give that answer away. Wilma Dean may have appeared in the superior film and lived to tell her tale, but at least the tragic Alva had more fun. "Just because some people might think I'm beautiful that doesn't mean I'm everybody's property," she tells Owen at one point. Turns out that the film's title doesn't just refer to the dilapidated Starr Boardinghouse!
