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!
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!