This Property Is Condemned (1966)

64% of critics liked it
(14 reviews)
74% of users liked it
(2,399 ratings)

Sydney Pollack's tawdry potboiler, adapted from a one-act play by Tennessee Williams, was rife with production problems, culminating in Williams' failed attempt to have his name removed from the credits. The story is set by a framing device as thirteen-year-old Willie Starr (Mary Badham) sits on an… More Sydney Pollack's tawdry potboiler, adapted from a one-act play by Tennessee Williams, was rife with production problems, culminating in Williams' failed attempt to have his name removed from the credits. The story is set by a framing device as thirteen-year-old Willie Starr (Mary Badham) sits on an abandoned railroad track with her friend Tom (Jon Provost) and relates the tale of her deceased older sister Alva (Natalie Wood). Alva is a beautiful woman living in a small Mississippi town in the 1930s with her manipulative mother Hazel (Kate Reid), the owner of a boarding house. Hazel wants Alva to marry the well to do Mr. Johnson (John Harding), but Alva has fallen in love with a good-looking stranger from New Orleans, Owen Legate (Robert Redford), who is in Mississippi to lay off railroad workers. Hazel is opposed to their love affair and when Owen is beaten to a pulp by a gang of workers, he decides to leave town and take Alva with him. But Hazel fools Owen into thinking Alva is engaged to Mr. Johnson. In retaliation, Alva marries Hazel's loutish lover J.J. (Charles Bronson). The next day, she abandons J.J. to meet Owen in New Orleans. Her mother, incensed at Alva's betrayal, sets out to ruin her daughter's reputation by exposing her marriage to J.J. to the world. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 49 min.
Directed By: Sydney Pollack
Written By: Tennessee Williams, Francis Ford Coppola, Fred Coe, Edith Sommer
Genres: Drama, Romance, Classics

In Theaters: Aug 3, 1966 Limited
On DVD: Dec 2, 2003
Studio: Paramount Pictures

Critic Reviews

Variety Staff, Variety
Derived from a Tennessee Williams one-acter, the production is adult without being sensational, touching without being maudlin.
Bosley Crowther, New York Times
Under Sydney Pollack's direction, they are all acting seamy sterotypes.
Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
Sydney Pollack's second film (1966) has Natalie Wood and Robert Redford entangled in a steamy Tennessee Williams plotline, well photographed by James Wong Howe.
, TV Guide's Movie Guide
The script is riddled with obvious problems, but the acting is top-notch.
, Time Out
Considering the wealth of talent that participated in this Tennessee Williams adaptation, the results are disappointing in the extreme.
Steve Crum, Kansas City Kansan
Pretty controversial in its time; see it for Redford and Wood.
Christopher Null, Filmcritic.com
For megafans of its leads only.
, Film4
Coppola had a hand in the script, but this is an overcooked melodrama that's easy on the eye and not too taxing on the brain.

Read all 8 critic reviews

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Veronique K

"this property is condemned" would probably be the only romantic tale from tennesse williams with less dosage of cynicism and more of an elegy of yesterday's wine and roses, of course, also the fair youth permeated with fancies and wonderful perspective despite its… More
"this property is condemned" would probably be the only romantic tale from tennesse williams with less dosage of cynicism and more of an elegy of yesterday's wine and roses, of course, also the fair youth permeated with fancies and wonderful perspective despite its predestination is ruin and decay. natalie wood plays alva starr, the glamour queen of a local boarding house with a nymphomaniac mother who literarily pimps her daughter to draw more business. and also a tomboyish sister who worships and idolizes her. regardless of the sordidness of her circumstances, alva beautifies the grim facts of life with her girlish imaginations, expecting the father who deserted the family would return to her bossom someday...then the arrival of one stranger owen(redford) from new orleans ignites her ablaze hope of escaping her blood-sucking leech-alike mother who simply uses her to get attention and money from men. unfortunately the mission of this attractive stranger is to terminate dreams, own legate is a railroad agent who dispatches the workers away for the company's demand. he sneers at alva for her lewdness and braggery, despising her for not refusing her despicable mother to assert herself, but secretly sympathizing with her unbearable state as a puppet of mama. their romantic bond would be the combination of reason and sentiments, drab realism stuck with magic wonders. alva is doomed because you cannot live on fancies and sheer romanticism while you have such a gruesome creature as a mom, why the mothers of tennesse williams' plays are the monstrous beings who devastate their seed's happiness to nuturize herself like an alien queen? mother is a like nightmarish creep who haunts our female protagonist around every corner, saboteuring her every chance of happiness, spitting at her dream pictures relentlessly, envious of her beauty which mother covets as an potential asset to drain. mother is the malicious villain within willaims' tales. eventually alva's sister wears her wretched torn scarlet gown stumbling upon the railroad tracks like a beggar fantasizing herself as a queen after alva dies of pneumonia, a grosteque irony in contrast of the glorious past, the colors of dreams faint as alva starr demises in solitude as the theme "wish me a rainbow" flows along like a funeral crooning tune. pure lyricism. (ps) edith head is in charge of wardrobe.