Golden Age of Hollywood Book Club discussion

Controversial thread made me decide to open a whole new can of worms.

Here is a filmography.

https://rateyourmusic.com/films/tenne...

I've long been on record as 'not much liking' some of the big studio adaptations of his work. Too often, his tender, intimate stage plays are ruined by expensive studio production values; frowzy big-budget stars; or the prurient mindsets of the execs at the time. Let's see if I can rattle 'em off without missing any:

'A Streetcar Named Desire' -- classic; justifiably great.

Paul and Liz in 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' --almost unwatchable.

'Summer and Smoke' - ditto

'Sweet Bird of Youth' - ditto. 'Humid' work by Paul and Julia.

'Baby Doll' - good but not worth re-watching

'The Fugitive Kind' - adequate, okay

'Suddenly, Last Summer' - acceptable, Liz (and Hepburn, somewhat) are the weak components

'Night of the Iguana' - just barely acceptable. Ava is the weak link.

'Small Craft Warnings' - meh

'Glass Menagerie' with Hepburn & Sam Waterston - adequate
'Glass Menagerie' with Jane Wyman and Kirk Douglas - meh

My favorite adaptation of any of his works is Tommy Lee Jones, Rip Torn, & Jessica Lange in a PBS/American Playhouse, 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'. Finally, justice was done. This cast really nails it.

Maybe because I haven't read much of his actual texts or seen them staged I really like the films. My faves are Baby Doll, Suddenly Last Summer, This Property Is Condemned, The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, and Sweet Bird of Youth. The only one that really bothers me is The Glass Menagerie. Kate really chews on that one for the whole 9. I had to turn it off.

Oh, I also adore Night of the Iguana. The Fugitive Kind is OK, but I couldn't believe Brando as a Southern musician. It would have been a perfect follow up for Elvis after King Creole. Too bad Hal Wallis and the Kernel had to go ruining everything. (Yes, I spelled it that way on purpose.)

Ah yeah I already spoke to 'This Property' in the other thread. I like it. This opinion makes no sense but the gritty cinematography somehow saves the flick for me.

I don't know 'Teardrop Diamond'. Have to look it up.

Oh --here's another. 'The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone'. Kinda slow; turgid; but it was worth one viewing. Location shooting and unusual casting helped the story.

All in all, I'm more of a Eugene O'Neill fan; but I routinely place Williams as my #2 fave American playwright of this caliber. Then Inge, then Miller. Lots of great US playwrights of course, never saw film adaptations of their works.

My bud Kenny runs the best theater-talk group on Goodreads. Here:
https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

Vivien Leigh is fantastic but I can't quite believe Warren as an Italian. Gigolo, yes, just not Italian. Why didn't they get a real Italian stud? In the early 60's there was no shortage of them in the film industry.

I am on record with my belief that the 1970s are the greatest decade for movies; but I also maintain a theory which supports the 1950s as the best possible era for film.

I think the 70s are where the best possible mixture of 'traditional' studio-style films vs new 'experimental mavericks' found its balance.

But why then do I also aver that the prudish, uptight, censorious 1950s were also perhaps the best?

My reasoning:

~Crime movies are much more powerful when a society around the audience, leans towards a stern, swift, legal system. The '50s were the era of the electric chair and the gas chamber.

~Romance, potboiler, and exploitation/sensation films are better if a society is prude and strait-laced.

~Comedy films are better when society is uptight, stiff, reserved, and full of authority figures.

~Horror films are better because they tap into all the social repression.

In short, everything cinema does is heightened when people enter the theater determinedly trying to free their tension. And the nineteen fifties were probably the most tense decade we've ever had; full of psychological turmoil which famously gave us a genre which had never even been imagined before: stomach-churning film noir. But everything else amped up too; even musicals had their heyday. Fantasy flicks. SF. Hollywood went nuts with offerings; and no mystery as to why that was.

Thoughts?

...even westerns and war films. In the 1950s, the highest standards were set in each of those genres too.

I hadn't thought about it, but you might have a point on some of those genres. For war films I think just enough time had passed to start really looking realistically at the carnage of WWII, and of course, Korea presented the possibility of nuclear war.

The 50s also showed the U.S. at some its worst with McCarthy and the fear of Communists everywhere, especially Hollywood. I was just a kid, but reading about that period is scary enough.

Well, its not really an argument based on particulars but one based on principles. Wouldn't you say the theory lines up nicely with what we know of psychology and (albeit thinly) with sociology? Basically the idea here is that a repressive modern society can explode creatively, when cinema is the only legitimate outlet for people to turn to for fantasy. I'm not linking this up with Rousseau's idea that decadent cultures produce worse art; because certainly the Spartans and the Russians and the Nazis did not make the greatest art (Rousseau argues that the Spartans made the better culture).