This Property Is Condemned (1966)

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Willie Starr (Mary Badham) is walking the train tracks next to her home in Dodson, Mississippi. It's her family's boarding house since condemned. She is befriended by Tom and she recounts the former glory days of the lively house. The beauty of her sister Alva (Natalie Wood) entrances newly arrived railway man Owen Legate (Robert Redford). Everybody wants her including mama's boyfriend J.J. Nichols (Charles Bronson). It's later revealed Owen's true purpose in town.This was adapted from a Tennessee Williams one act play. Writers include Francis Ford Coppola and the director is Sydney Pollack. With such great beautiful stars, this really can't lose. Natalie Wood is vamping for all her worth but Redford is holding back in a cool demeanor. Mary Badham played Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird. It's too bad that she couldn't succeed beyond a child star. She's loads of energy and has a very compelling screen presence. This may not be a classic but it does hold some nice stuff that movie lovers should check out. The length is a bit over-extended. When they leave the town, the movie loses a bit of intensity. It would be better to resolve the story and ride out into the sunset.

still quite watchable by great acting of n.w. and r.r. r.r. played the reluctant bad news messenger who came to town to lay off many railroad workers and killed the whole town. n.w. played the whoring beauty who was viciously pimped by her mother. the young female actor who played the younger sister of alva, well, the impression i got from this movie was her ugly nose and day-and-night differences between she and her elder sister. to me, if n.w. was not drowned so young and so early, she would have received so many Oscar or any other movie festivals awards as "the best actress" for so many times and again. what a loss and tragedy to us. she's not only a beauty but also a natural born actor. r.r. also looked so handsome and played a decent role in this film. but if you have watched this film adapted from the great American play writer, you'd inevitably find out that there were so many flaws in this specific play that have caused the screenplay writer, another great movie culture contributor, wrote a over-the-top pretentious and too much staged pretentious screenplay. if without the effortless and natural performance of the lovely actress, the movie itself would only have turned out barely watchable, since the whole movie was just so pretentious and overly staged. a mother pimping her daughter to get by? a married old guy openly obsessed with a young woman and with the consent of her mother, well, disgusting but possible.

First Natalie is breathtaking to watch and I still miss her!.. her sister ,is played by the wonderful Mary Badham. The search for the right girl for " To Kill a Mockingbird" ended up with children that had no acting experience ( IN THAT AREA they filmed) in their lives(Mary played Scout )but forever became a part of our lives with their incredible performances...and she also stands out ,a bit older then" to Kill a Mockingbird" but still that feisty character that played "Scout" in Mockingbird! but Natalie steals this movie ....I just love watching her act..and Sydney Pollack directing Redford would prove a very long collaboration.I think Redford is the same in almost any movie, if they need a wild game hunter,"Out Of Africa" but costarring with Streep, they give a wonderful performance and he does the same thing as if it was in "Barefoot on the Park" nothing differs with his acting, that's my opinion but I like him in his movies...Hubbell .another name that will always go down in Film History...another point,Natalie wears ONE dress this entire movie, a thing a Hollywood actress would shun away from...but Tennessee Williams as the writer, you can't go wrong.Anytime I hear his words, as I do Truman Capote's words.."the world is AOK!" for me..WOW...Redford did "Barefoot in the Park" one year after this movie...that's interesting!revised: I just looked at it again and she wears more than one dress in the movie..sorry Natalie fans!..still just a great movie..how times were, when all you had to worry about was"train service" but T.Williams adds the fact of so many losing jobs, from the lose of that train service

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!