Now, for the first time, Warner Bros. has encapsulated six of the studio's finest adaptations of the author's works into one astonishing set called, rather unsurprisingly, the Tennessee Williams Film Collection. The pictures; A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Baby Doll (1956), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961), The Sweet Bird of Youth (1962), The Night of the Iguana (1964); represent a decade of work from some of Hollywood's finest filmmakers. Elia Kazan, Richard Brooks, John Huston, each man taking Williams' writing and making it unmistakably something distinctly their own.
Technically, Warner has lived up to the high standards they've set for themselves on previous compilation packages. There is a cavalcade of the usual extras including a smorgasbord of theatrical trailers, brief documentary featurettes produced by Turner Movie Classics, screen tests, deleted scenes and a couple of audio commentaries. The technical specs are astonishing by and large, with the sound quality on all six of the features really something special.
Overall, this collection is a must-own for cinema connoisseurs. While it would have been nice had Warner included pictures from some of the other studios as they have with collections featuring Oliver Stone or Stanley Kubrick (The Rose Tattoo, The Fugitive Kind and Suddenly, Last Summer are all sorely missed), or had inserted a couple modern Williams' adaptations (like Paul Newman's spellbinding 1987 take on The Glass Menagerie), this is still a glorious collection in almost every way.
For those interested in knowing more about the films included in the package individually, please read on. For those already intimate with these pictures, as much as I like people reveling in my sublime verbiage and witty repartees you should probably just stop reading here. All you need to know is that the Tennessee Williams Film Collection is a masterful package, and if you don't just rush out and buy it now I can almost guarantee you're going to hate yourself come morning.
A Streetcar Named Desire (Two-Disc Special Edition)
This is, without a doubt, the reason this package exists and the main reason for most people to pick it up. Simply, those people holding those sorts of thoughts will not be disappointed. This is an extraordinary release, one of the very best DVDs I've had the pleasure to watch this year. It is a landmark motion picture that should be in every true cinephiles library, this Special Edition highlighting a work many consider to be one of the top play-to-film adaptations of all time.
Personally, I'm not one to disagree. Marlon Brando's performance is every bit as titanic as you've heard, his Stanley Kowalski a crushing bruiser of sexually charged angst and fury. But, to my mind at the very least, Vivien Leigh's work is near as good (and richly deserving of her Academy Award), and while she was no where near the actor Brando was working with him brought forth the performance of her lifetime. Kim Hunter and Karl Malden (also Oscar winners) give nicely nuanced support, while Elia Kazan's steady direction ranks with some of the finest of his illustrious career.
This two-disc special edition really is special, featuring five documentaries chronicling the making of the film, theatrical trailers of many of Kazan's Warner Bros. pictures, the feature-length documentary "Elia Kazan: A Director's Journey," a few surviving outtakes and a collection of screen tests featuring Marlon Brando. That final one would make this DVD worth buying on its lonesome. Brando's tests are from Rebel without a Cause and were made a good three years before that film made James Dean a star. These tests are jarring in their power and tenacity, and as good as Dean was in his iconic role you can't help but wonder the film Brando would have made had he decided to stick with the project.
As for the rest, the five-part documentary on the making of A Streetcar Named Desire is fun, the recollections of stars Kim Hunter and Karl Malden particularly intriguing. For me, the best of these is North and the Music of the South an examination of Alex North's groundbreaking score for the film. Unfortunately, the documentary on Kazan is dull and one-sided, nothing more than basically a glossy interview with the controversial director that never digs into exactly why he's such a polarizing presence in Hollywood.
Baby Doll
Whoa Nelly!
Talk about an aggressively controversial follow up. Williams wrote Baby Doll for the screen, and this comedic re-teaming of the writer and Kazan pushed so many overtly sexual buttons it was actually pulled from theaters by Jack Warner himself just four weeks into its release. The story of an older man (Karl Malden) who marries a 19-year-old girl nicknamed Baby Doll (Carroll Baker, fantastic in her motion picture debut) on the stipulation he'll wait until she's "ready" to consummate their marriage. On the eve of her 20th birthday, a wealthy Sicilian stranger (Eli Wallach) comes to the house looking to discover who it was who burned down his cotton gin, Baby's frazzled husband at the top of his suspect list.
What happens next really has to be seen to be believed. The sexual fireworks crackling between Baker and Wallach are decidedly palpable, and it is easy to see why out of all the films in this set it is the only one the MPAA went back and gave an R rating to. It's a bit talky, and Malden's character flies off the handle far too quickly for my tastes, but Kazan's direction is just so playful and Williams' writing is so steamily sensual it's impossible for Baby Doll not to get under your skin.
Extras are sparse, only a collection of advertising trailers and a TMC documentary about the making of the film. Thankfully, of all of the short ten-to-twelve minute featurettes on these Tennessee Williams' discs, this one is by far the best. It digs right inside the controversy surrounding Baby Doll, the stars recollecting their time on the picture and the brouhaha it started with equal parts candor and dry ironic humor. As part of the collection or on its own, this disc rates as a must-on for fans of the director, the stars, the writer or all of the above.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Deluxe Edition)
Why this one rates a designation as a "Deluxe Edition" your guess is as good as mine. The only special features on the disc are another TCM featurette, the film's theatrical trailer and a dry, far too scholarly audio commentary by Williams biographer Donald Spoto, none of which that special enough to make the disc even remotely deluxe. Maybe it gets the designation because of the phenomenal 1.85:1 widescreen presentation. Or it could be the astonishing color restoration job. Or it just could be the fantastic remastering of the movie's sound and score.
For me, however, the reason Warner Bros. decided to give this film a signatory of deluxe is because it just so happens to be the best darn film in the set. From mesmerizing performances by Paul Newman (as drunken favorite son Brick Pollitt), Elizabeth Taylor (as frail – but not fragile - Margaret "Maggie the Cat" Pollitt) and Burl Ives (as gruff, authoritative family patriarch Harvey 'Big Daddy' Pollitt), to Richard Brooks sterling direction and Williams' scintillating dialogue, this movie is just plain fantastic. Ives, in particular, blew me completely away with his larger-than-life portrayal, and pardon me for my idiocy in not realizing the "Silver and Gold" folk singer had acting ability quite this mesmerizing.
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
Not well received during its initial release, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone is nowhere near as bad as some of the reviews originally made it seem. Unfortunately, it's still not that great, easily ranking as the low point in an otherwise stellar collection. The story of an aging actress (Vivien Leigh) romanced by a sexy Italian gigolo (Warren Beatty) after the death of her husband, this sad, ironic and passionately depressing melodrama is undone by a major piece of miscasting and ham-handed direction by José Quintero. The film meanders incessantly, almost as if the director hasn't the first clue what he's doing or why.
And yet, the climactic ten minutes are undeniably powerful, a deliciously carnal final scene so devastating in its horrific melancholy I couldn't help but shed a tear. It helps considerably that Leigh, battling both the twilight of her own career and a serious case of cancer that would ultimately do her in, is fantastic, achieving a depth of feeling in her portrayal that's truly astonishing. Harry Waxman's luscious widescreen cinematography (presented here in a glorious 2.35:1 transfer) helps keep things visually interesting as well.
The extras are pretty uninspiring, featuring another TMC documentary and the movie's underwhelming theatrical trailer. While the documentary speaks plainly about critical and audience responses to Beatty interesting, if flawed, performance, the whole thing feels like nothing more than a collection of talking heads giving an historical lecture than it does an introspective documentary looking back on the film.
The Sweet Bird of Youth
Why this one isn't called a "deluxe edition" like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is beyond me. Not only is the requisite TMC featurette on the film top-notch, this DVD also features some grand vintage screen tests from both Rip Torn and Geraldine Page. All it is missing is an audio commentary, and if previously mentioned Donald Spoto could take the time to record a monotone track for that classic he sure as heck should have been able to do the same here.
No matter, The Sweet Bird of Youth is still a firecracker of a motion picture. Paul Newman and director Richard Brooks team up to bring Williams' to the big screen once more and the results are near as fantastic as their first go-around. The battle of wills brewing between Newman's drifter Chance Wayne and Ed Bagley's iron-fisted Tom 'Boss' Finley is mesmerizing, while a luminous Page heats up the screen as the chief love (or could it be lust?) interest. The film is galvanizing first frame to last, a spirited reminder of Newman's timeless magnificence and why he's (rightly) considered one of the greatest (and most talented) Hollywood movie stars of all time.
Unfortunately, the transfer on this disc doesn't quite live up to the specifications presented by the previous four discs. There are noticeable nicks and scratches throughout, while the sound quality, while decent, doesn't come close to living up to the specifications of the other DVDs in the collection. Thankfully, the film's passion and power immerge unscathed, but as good as this movie is it deserved a better presentation than the one offered here.
The Night of the Iguana
In complete honesty, I'm still scratching my head over this one. The transfer is adequate, nothing more, too many scratches in the first couple of reels to make me believe the studio spent much time restoring this one. But the sound is excellent, director John Huston's use of ambient noises, music and sound effects is sensational, probably sounding better here than it ever did at the time of its release. Also, while the TMC featurette is lackluster, the trailers for this are probably the best in entire series and there is a vintage documentary on the making of the movie that blows your socks off.
As for the film itself, this once lauded picture is something of a mixed bag. The great Richard Burton plays defrocked clergyman Rev. Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon leading a busload of Baptists on a tour of the Mexican coast. A young blonde bombshell (played with vampish glee by Lolita babe Sue Lyon) tempts him to the point where her handler (a gruff Grayson Hall) decides to see the man fired from his dead-end position. With nowhere to turn, Shannon hijacks the tour group and takes them to the deserted inn run by the sensuously flippant Maxine Faulk (Ava Gardner). Everything comes to a head during a sonorous thunderstorm, a bemused painter (Deborah Kerr) helping the former churchman come to grips with the failure haunting his surreal life.
Burton is good, Lyon is gorgeous if a bit too vacant and Kerr is hopelessly miscast. The first act is wildly uneven in both emotion and tone, the second is intriguing if slightly bland, while the climax is absolutely shattering in almost every conceivable way. It is Gardner, however, that is the real draw. This is a towering performance, the raw unbridled sexuality of her portrayal one of the best I've ever seen. Thanks to her and that vintage doc, I'd call this DVD a must for those who've purchased the entire set. On its own, however, unless you're a fan of the stars or a completist trying to capture all of the Huston's features, The Night of the Iguana is one you probably won't feel too bad forgoing.