Along with "Suddenly Last Summer," "Sweet Bird of Youth" is one of the two Tennessee Williams plays the author characterized as "violent" (I don't know why he did not include "Orpheus Descending," filmed as "The Fugitive Kind," also from the late-1950s). The 1962 film version adapted by writer-director Richard Brooks (who had also taken "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" to the screen in 1958) opens up the play to a greater extent than any of the other screen adaptations of Williams plays, though there are still some very theatrical (in the pejorative sense) speeches delivered by Paul Newman, who had played the part of the desperate Chance Wayne on Broadway, and a theatrical (in the impressive sense) phone-call scene by Geraldine Page, recreating her role as Alexandra del Lago, fleeing what she assumed was a film disaster in a haze of liquor, hashish, and the driver/gigolo she can't really focus on (Chance).

Although del Lago's career appears to be over, Chance has pinned his hopes for making it Hollywood on her. He is unable to provide his full attention to pleasing his movie star, because he is back in his home town, trying to see his true love, who is the daughter of the state's boss. (I'm not sure whether the state is supposed to be Alabama or Mississippi). Boss Finley first came to the coastal town as a preacher, though this is easy to miss in the film bio within the film. It does, however, make the demand that his daughter whom he named Heavenly be pure more intense than if his background were entirely secular.

In the play, Chance gave Heavenly a venereal disease. Censorship transformed this into a pregnancy Chance did not know about, with strong hints of an illegal abortion. The play quite explicitly warns Chance and his patroness that he is going to be castrated if they do not get out of town before a big political rally in which Boss Finley will defend his methods and his minions. Although the word is not spoken in the movie, Boss Finley tells Chance about a dog he used to own that spread its seed widely and had to be neutered, and that if Chance stays around, he will have to be dealt with similarly to make the womenfolk safe. I don't know who could have failed to understand that

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even if when push comes to being held down, the "meal ticket" that is voided is his pretty face.

Brooks ends the play in more typical Tennessee Williams fashion than Williams himself did. The play ends with the thugs closing in on Chance. The movie ends with Boss Finley's sister telling him to go straight to hell (a genuinely happy ending!), following Heavenly going to Chance and the two knocked-about lovers bravely ready to try to love and jettison multiple illusions.

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The movie has impressive performances all around. It's a little hard to accept that Paul Newman could not get noticed in Hollywood in the middle of his run of major roles, but he manages to look desperate in scenes in which he is servicing the movie star.

It's also a little hard to accept that Geraldine Page was a sex symbol. That she was a great actress, which the part of Alexandra del Lago also calls for, was no stretch. As a substance-abuser fleeing reality she seems a bit tough (like the part's creator!), but when she learns on the phone that her previous movie was not the disaster she thought it when she fled the première and her narcissism blooms anew, she is a wonder to behold.

Shirley Knight has little to do except reluctantly to protect Chance by keeping away from him and playing dutiful daughter. She was quite beautiful in 1962 and remains heavenly even in league with the devil (her father).

Ed Begley plays her father, Boss Finley, with savage hypocrisy (or to borrow a word much bruited about in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," mendacity). I don't think that he deserved the Academy Award he received (in competition with Omar Sharif in "Lawrence of Arabia" and Terrence Stamp in "Billy Budd), but the scene in which he visits his long-time mistress, Miss Lucy (Madeleine Sherwood) is memorable.

Madeleine Sherwood probably deserved an Oscar nomination more than Shirley Knight. Miss Lucy is not at all heavenly: she's almost feral, but lands on her feet when she is kicked out of her love nest by Boss Finley. (Sherwood was also memorable nagging Jack Carson in Brooks's film of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof") and as the mother of the "no-neck monsters" Maggie loathes.

There are also effective performances by Rip Torn as the thuggish, not-very-bright scion of Boss Finley, Tom Junior, and the tremulous sister who attempts to ease Heavenly's suffering and suffers abuse from her brother with quiet dignity. A very Mildred Dunnock role, in short.
"Sweet Bird of Youth" has an array of impressive performances, a fairly powerful script with various dramatic and romantic and substance abuse confrontations unfolding. The film version gets out into the Gulf of Mexico sun, and is well photographed by a very able cinematographer, Milton Krassner (a recurrent cinematographer for Fritz Lang and Joseph Mankiewicz, who had won an Oscar for "Three Coins in the Fountain").

The pace is sluggish at times, but the ensemble of fine actors in top form remains impressive forty-some years later. "Sweet Bird" is also interesting as the Williams work in which politics (of the Christian Right populism kind) is central. The costs of living in glass houses while claiming a monopoly on righteousness remains very topical forty-plus years on, too.


Recommended:
Yes

Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age