If death comes to those that bray, then Elizabeth Taylor's Flora Goforth will be going forth sooner than she thinks. When Richard Burton's stranger approaches her secluded island compound yelling out her name, it appears that destiny has come a-knockin'. The nasty Flora has a vile temper, screaming at servants and trespassers with great glee, but underneath her delight in her vile personality is a truly unhappy, lonely woman. Burton is attacked by her guard dogs, put into a guest house, and worms his way into Mrs. Goforth's life. Noel Coward, making his entrance on the shoulders of a young man, is a nasty gay character known as "The Witch of Capri", and boy, is he quite a piece of work. Warning Taylor of Burton's reputation, Coward obviously has his own lusts for the younger man who isn't really all that desirable, Burton having greatly aged since his first appearance with Taylor five years before in "Cleopatra".
Not so much pretentious as it is audacious, it is easy to see why that this has inspired years of both criticism and praise for its obviously deliberate camp elements. The play ("The Milk Train Doesn't Live Here Anymore") was much more subtle in its storytelling with Flora an aging eccentric writing her memoirs and dealing with uncompleted lusts. The character is greatly youthened, while the character of the "Angel of Death" is oddly aged. A strange tale like this could only come from the mind of someone like Tennessee Williams who seemed to have a fascination with old ladies on the verge of death facing their disappointments and their destiny with delusional lust which takes that deadly sin into a level of degradation that results in destruction.
"We're eating their eggs. It cuts down on the population", Taylor says, urging Coward to have a seagull's egg as an appetizer while she sits across from him wearing a spiked hat that Cleopatra would have tossed into the Nile. Taylor, still gorgeous, is far too young for this part. It was originally played in an Off Broadway production by eccentric character actress Hermione Baddeley, flopped, and returned briefly with none other than Tallulah Bankhead in the part. I saw the recent Off-Broadway production with Olympia Dukakis in the role, and while the play was far from perfect, the performance of Ms. Dukakis made it seem so much better.
It's obvious to me that unless the leading lady is perfect in the role, it will bomb, and Taylor screeches every line as if she were a combination of every braying character she had ever played. At least, even as Martha in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", she added subtlety in spots, but her Flora shows absolutely no softness, making her twice the shrew than Shakespeare's Kate, a role la Liz had just played to great success the year before. Burton seems around to just carry on the teaming and is totally miscast. Perhaps Daniel Massey, who received an Oscar Nomination the very same year for playing Noel Coward in the musical "Star!" would have been a better choice, and it would have been ironic to see him and Coward rolling around on the bed together.
This is an extremely hard film to get through even if you are curious about the outlandish costumes, terribly gauche sets and eye-rolling performances. Had it been a foreign film (perhaps directed by Fellini or Bergman), it might have been a lot easier to take and even done more subtly, but the attempts to turn this into an artistic metaphor of the sordid lives of the rich and ridiculous just becomes very heavy-handed and absurd. Williams plays tend to be mostly unfilmable, and other than his more accessible plays ("The Glass Menagerie", "A Streetcar Named Desire"), don't hold up well for the most part on screen.
Not so much pretentious as it is audacious, it is easy to see why that this has inspired years of both criticism and praise for its obviously deliberate camp elements. The play ("The Milk Train Doesn't Live Here Anymore") was much more subtle in its storytelling with Flora an aging eccentric writing her memoirs and dealing with uncompleted lusts. The character is greatly youthened, while the character of the "Angel of Death" is oddly aged. A strange tale like this could only come from the mind of someone like Tennessee Williams who seemed to have a fascination with old ladies on the verge of death facing their disappointments and their destiny with delusional lust which takes that deadly sin into a level of degradation that results in destruction.
"We're eating their eggs. It cuts down on the population", Taylor says, urging Coward to have a seagull's egg as an appetizer while she sits across from him wearing a spiked hat that Cleopatra would have tossed into the Nile. Taylor, still gorgeous, is far too young for this part. It was originally played in an Off Broadway production by eccentric character actress Hermione Baddeley, flopped, and returned briefly with none other than Tallulah Bankhead in the part. I saw the recent Off-Broadway production with Olympia Dukakis in the role, and while the play was far from perfect, the performance of Ms. Dukakis made it seem so much better.
It's obvious to me that unless the leading lady is perfect in the role, it will bomb, and Taylor screeches every line as if she were a combination of every braying character she had ever played. At least, even as Martha in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", she added subtlety in spots, but her Flora shows absolutely no softness, making her twice the shrew than Shakespeare's Kate, a role la Liz had just played to great success the year before. Burton seems around to just carry on the teaming and is totally miscast. Perhaps Daniel Massey, who received an Oscar Nomination the very same year for playing Noel Coward in the musical "Star!" would have been a better choice, and it would have been ironic to see him and Coward rolling around on the bed together.
This is an extremely hard film to get through even if you are curious about the outlandish costumes, terribly gauche sets and eye-rolling performances. Had it been a foreign film (perhaps directed by Fellini or Bergman), it might have been a lot easier to take and even done more subtly, but the attempts to turn this into an artistic metaphor of the sordid lives of the rich and ridiculous just becomes very heavy-handed and absurd. Williams plays tend to be mostly unfilmable, and other than his more accessible plays ("The Glass Menagerie", "A Streetcar Named Desire"), don't hold up well for the most part on screen.