Tennessee Williams' South

Included in Warner Home Video's Tennessee Williams boxed set, this 1973 quasi-documentary consists mainly of interviews of Williams himself and actors acting out in some cases actual scenes from his plays/movies ("The Glass Menagerie" and "The Night of the Iguana") or scenes that never actually occurred, but that Williams imagined to be extenuations of his characters thoughts/emotions (Jessica Tandy, who played Blanche in "A Streetcar Named Desire" on Broadway but was snubbed in favor of Vivien Leigh for the filmed version, recites a scene) and (Burl Ives acting out a younger version of his 'Big Daddy' character from "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof").

Overall it is a disappointment. The interviews with Williams, while informative aren't all that interesting. The acted out scenes are very dull (compare the two reciting from "Iguana" to Richard Burton and Deborah Kerr-- the difference is day and night). Although with an extremely low budget, one should probably not expect too much. Not a total waste of time, but nothing too insightful either, and something you'll quickly forget.

This documentary on arguably America's greatest playwright is better than the previous user review indicates.

It is made for Canadians who would not be as familiar with the colors and language of the American South, and Tennessee makes a lively and articulate interview subject, there is no need to fall back on the cliched Ken Burns approach of cutting and pasting together more talking heads and various archival clips What is interspersed instead are restagings of scenes from several of the famous plays by some quality actors, which remind us of the dramatic power and richness of language they contain The treasure is a reenactment by Jessica Tandy of her Blanche Du Bois from "Streetcar" over two decades before, the only recording we have of one of the greatest perfornances in theater history, the monologue is her reminiscing about the young man she married who turned out to be gay. It is devastating.