Fantastic!

An Exercise In Nonsense

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This is what Karl Marx said about history repeating itself in his 1852 essay, "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte." "Brumaire" is the second month of the French Republican calendar and refers to fog. I think the same concept can be applied to Baby Doll in relation to the 1953 movie that Tennessee Williams also wrote and Elia Kazan also directed, A Streetcar Named Desire. In Streetcar, we grow to identify with and even love the characters played by Vivian Leigh and Marlon Brando. In Baby Doll we are more likely to hold the protagonists in contempt.This does not mean that Baby Doll is badly written, directed, or acted. It is just too much. Everything is extreme and exaggerated. It's hard to take seriously and sometimes appears as grotesque comedy. Yet Williams was intimately familiar with the American South. Maybe farce was a valid way to see it in 1955.

Tennessee Williams was one of the best playwrights ever. This story is not his usual play, but from the comments I've seen by the rubes on IMDb, it's obvious they have not one clue what Williams was ever writing about.THE GLASS MENAGERIE and A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, for example, are about multiple dimensional characters, although Hollywood missed the boat on "Streetcar". Most of the time, Tennessee writes about characters with normal passions, maybe a few with devious motives, but usually it's the main characters who are reacting to human monsters from outside of the play.Here, he turns the tables. He gives us three utterly complete monsters in the lead, the ones who are simply out to destroy the lives of others, although the woman, Baby Doll, is a bit less to blame than the other two.Meanwhile, he shows us the reactions of the other characters. There is no doubt that the supporting characters are the only ones it is possible to sympathize with.Malden plays a hopeless red neck. For some reason, he marries a girl who is almost a child, while he is middle aged. This isn't as normal as women want it to be, but it does happen. It's a hopeless situation in most cases. True, if a healthy 45 year old man and a 20 year old woman are both into the same poetry, speak the same lingo, and are both champion chess players, that it a relationship that may work.No such case here, although both are rooted in the deep South. It clearly is a loveless marriage.What makes Malden's character a monster is accepted by today's society way too freely. It only takes one drink from his whiskey bottle to turn modern day hypocrites against him, only because he is a Southern man without a lot of money. While in 1956, his character was partially demonetized, today he is total anathema.As the red neck, Malden is only partially a monster, and his viciousness is dwarfed by the self righteous bigotry of the invader to the town, played by Eli Wallach.Wallach's character is the epitome of self righteousness and Psychosis. This is not a man one can deal with. He is there to control everyone, to destroy everyone who doesn't fit in his genocidal desire for the world, and to haughtily consider himself superior because he is Sicilian.The superior Sicilian complex was even around in 1956. It was around before, in Capone's era in Chicago. It was at a peak in the early 1970s, when American men were not allowed to have blond hair or fair skin, unless they were super rich or from the right family. In the late seventies, men were judged solely on how much "dark blood" they could persuade others to think they had. They would either have to dye their hair, or not wash it for days, to make it look darker, in order to be acceptable, to get promotions, to be allowed in clubs, or at social functions. This is the way it was.To a lesser degree, it was that way in the times of Tennessee Williams.Wallach's self righteous monster, Vacarro, is abusive, and totally out to destroy everyone. This is a character who is not "defending" himself. He is a character who wants to steal what other people have.What he does to Malden's character is accepted by today's society, which is the very proof of what I speak. One cannot possibly laugh with Vacarro, sympathize with him, believe he is just, without being a self righteous bigot. That's the story told by Williams here.The naive bubble boy who views this, will get the impression that Malden's red neck gets what he deserves. Why? Because the naive bubble boy is taught early to be a bigot.Vacarro is doing this to everyone in the area. He came there purposely to destroy them, to take their land away from them. That is his "justice", to control others, to not let anyone who is not a proper Sicilian to live, particularly a male.Williams tells us this flat out. Vacarro doesn't "know" that Malden is guilty of the crime he accuses him of. He has no proof, and indeed he fabricates proof from a witness who wasn't even a witness, Baby Doll, who volunteers to lie, because she is a "naive bubble boy".So we can forgive Baby Doll for being a monster, even when she haughtily enjoys it. She doesn't know how evil Vacarro is. She has also been brainwashed into thinking he is superior.The real story is the other characters. Vacarro is doing this to all the black men there, all the white men there, everyone. His "syndicate" is there to make sure none of these men ever get a chance. He has allies from feeble minded, brainwashed fools like Baby Doll. The poor lady he uses as a pawn, pretending to hire, will be used and abused at his leisure. He says he needs a cook. He probably does. She'll get no special treatment from him, however. He has proved that. He is a monster.Some characters are monsters. Williams clearly shows us that Vacarro is one. He shows us that he gets away with this because too many people are like Baby Doll, bigots against their own neighbors. The bigotry of the red neck is minor compared to the treachery of the bigotry against one's friends.

A no holds barred comedy from Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan. Karl Malden is Archie Lee, a down on his luck cotton gin owner married to nubile Carroll Baker. She's a virgin who's promised him her virtue on her 20th birthday. Unfortunately rival Eli Wallach enters the picture and, with Baker, proceeds to drive Malden (literally) crazy. This is not like any other Williams production. It's populated with absolutely zero sympathetic characters and while it's bleak as all get out, it's also, at times, hysterically funny. Kazan actually has the moxie to interject some slapstick into the proceedings. Wallach's seduction of Baker is classic. Baker, in what is probably her best role ever, gives a dynamite performance. She's a half wit white trash prima donna but never a joke. Wallach is a perfect villain dressed in all black. Malden, getting rare top billing, gives a tremendous performance as a man at the end of his rope and then some. The stunning cinematography is by Boris Kaufman and the jazz-infused score is by the great Kenyon Hopkins. Mildred Dunnock is the pathetic Aunt Rose Comfort. It's based on the Williams play "27 WAGONS FULL OF COTTON" written in 1946.

In Tiger Tail County, Mississippi, the decadent middle aged Archie Lee Meighan (Karl Malden) has been married with the spoiled and stupid Baby Doll Meighan (Carroll Baker) for two years and has not consummated his marriage yet. Archie has promised to his father-in-law in the death bed to wait until Baby Doll is twenty years old to have sex with her and they live in a dilapidated mansion with Baby Doll's aunt. When the Sicilian Silva Vacarro (Eli Wallach) brings a new cotton-spinning machine to the county, Archie loses his business and is completely broken. On the eve of Baby Doll's twentieth birthday, Archie Lee burns down Vacarro's machine. The Sicilian suspects that Archie is the responsible for the criminal fire and he heads to Archie's property to use his old machine. While Archie is buying a cylinder to replace a damaged one in the machine, Vacarro seduces the despicable Baby Doll and forces her to sign a confession that Archie has burnt his equipment. When Archie returns home, he gets crazy with the situation."Baby Doll" is an unpleasant and boring film and absolutely overrated in IMDb and mislead by the storyline telling that it is a "steamy tale" of two Southern rivals and a sensuous 19-year-old virgin. Actually it is a pointless soap-opera. When this film was released, the National Legion of Decency wanted to have the film banned. Once again the censorship promotes an average film to the status of cult. My vote is four.Title (Brazil): "Boneca de Carne" ("Flesh Doll")