Rating: 
Summary: Natalie Wood & Robert Redford. How can you go wrong?
Review: If you are male and don't think Natalie Wood is absolutely gorgeous in the movie, something is wrong with you. I always loved Natalie Wood, but this movie is special. She and Redford are super. There is good acting here. This movie was a jewel which was overlooked at the box office.
Rating:
Summary: This Property is Condemed
Review: If you like Tennessee Williams, you will love this movie.
Natalie and Bronson are at their best, however a young Robert Redford still looks a little awkward.The sets are especially great for railroad fans as much of the movie takes place around steam period rail yards. If you look hard you can also find Lassie's Jon Provost in the cast. This movie is a true sleeping classic.
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Summary: I was there
Review: In 1966 I was in the Air Force at Keesler AFB in Bolxi Miss. One night, with a friend, I was in Gulfport Miss, I head the sound of a steam engine's whisle. This was long after steam trains. I found that they were filming "This property is condemded" in a little nearby town of Bay St Lewis Mississippi. I watched as they filmed many senes. Being from LA ...filming was not new to me. Today when I view this movie I am realistically placed back into a time in the south that I can not contradict. TPIC is a wonderful time-set melodrama. I can watch it over and over. And even though I was there in the 60s I can get the feel of the depression time. As a side note Jane Mansfield was killed in an auto crash while this film was in production just miles from the senes.
Rating:
Summary: Depression Era In Backwoods Dodson, MI- Williams Masterpiece
Review: Inspired by the great Tennessee Williams' one act, two person play of the same name, brought to the screen by sreenwriter Francis Ford Coppola and directed by Sydney Pollack, "This Property Is Condemned" is a sordid, sick, and ultimately sad story of the Starr family trying to make a go of running a boardinghouse minus their runaway father during depression era in a small backwater town called Dodson in the state of Mississippi.
Told in flashback sequence from the jaded eyes of a young pre-adolescent who has experienced and seen too much in her short life, Willie Starr who idolizes her older sister, Alva and "main attraction" of Dodson...
When Mr. Owen Legate, (Robert Redford) railroad official, struts into the small town from big city New Orleans, he has with him a suit pocket plumb full of pink slips for a good majority of the railyard workers. It will certainly be the undoing of the small town and the families who live there. Owen rents a room in the Starr boardinghouse and comes to know the oldest daughter, town flirt, dreamer and screaming to get outta Mississippi, Alva Starr, played to sheer perfection by Natalie Wood.
Alva's mother has a relationship "of sorts" with a snake of a man named JJ, played very understatedly and well by a young Charles Bronson. JJ is really hot after young, beautiful and promiscuous Alva, not Alva's 43 year old dried up horrible witch of a mother who plays Alva's pimp during the entire movie.
Owen gets to know Alva in more ways than one as they start a torrid love affair. This ignites her mother's and the whole town's revenge upon Owen and Alva.
Repressed desires of ALL KINDS, sultry women, sweltering weather and a handsome stranger... this CERTAINLY IS Tennessee Williams territory.
Highly Recommended!
Happy Watching!
Rating:
Summary: A Rue Des Ecoles Favorite
Review: My autisic aunt babysat and got me hooked on movies of this genre. This Property Condemned was a beautiful, devastating film about the traps life set for a vibrant, blooming woman preventing her from taking on the world due to the strangle-hold of constraints from society, family and men. Natalie plays the the post-depression era beautiful young woman that has been schooled (by her trashy gold-digging mom) in the ways of using your sexuality to get the bills paid, your travel arrangements and food on your table. It's all a pathetic game to have the local uneducated railroad boys jump at her whim and add to her "escape this hole" till, until she falls in love with Redford, a railroad supervisor. Her mom won't let her cash cow leave the sinking ship town to marry for love, she has plans for her to marry some middle-aged steady check. Ultimate tragedy in cinematic beauty. Watched this movie 1/2 dozen times on Rue Des Ecoles on many a rainy Paris night. Would also recommend: The Servant, Fellini's Casanova, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.
Rating:
Summary: This Property is Condemned
Review: Natalie shines in this movie she captures her character to perfection and you can't take your eyes off of her she is beautiful. Robert Redford also gives a very strong and convincing performance in the doomed love story. This movie is one of my favorites a must see I can't wait for it to come out on DVD.
Rating: 
Summary: So Much Talent
Review: Natalie Wood just never seemed to get a break. For an actress with an obvious talent, one that can usually carry a picture, her later career seems saddled with pictures that could have been good yet just do not come off. An excellent example is This Property is Condemned. Just a glance at the credits will convince you that the result of so many talents, (Tennessee Williams, Sydney Pollack, Robert Redford, Kate Reid, Francis Coppola, John Houseman, Ray Stark, James Wong Howe), the picture has got to be a classic. Unfortunately, this is far from the case. The result of so much talent ends up a mishmash of patched together themes, uneven editing and reactions that do not fit the characters. One problem is the fleshing out of the original one act play, pulling in additional material that does not seem to match the first half of the film. Laden with long drawn out pans of Wood wandering New Orleans, the movie stumbles to a clumsy ending made only worse by the "let's take care of all those loose ends" epilogue with Mary Badham as Wood's younger sister. What could have been a taut and emotionally devastating film results instead with the viewer wondering how could so many great talents create something so flat and lifeless? Natalie Wood however is wonderful and a joy to watch and makes the best of the poor script handed her. Equally good is Mary Badham, a special treat to watch in what I believe is the only film she made other than her amazing turn as Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird. If I had to pick just one thing that condemned the movie all together-the music. Some of the sappiest and inappropriate background soundtrack I have ever heard in my life. When the film cries out for a subtle dramatic score the viewer is presented instead with calliope tunes better suited for a circus themed comedy.
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Summary: Waiting for the DVD!
Review: Okay, so maybe this is a melodramatic love story. But it is also a classic tale. While Tennessee Williams wrote the play for this version, I would almost bet it is based on one of the stories in The Dubliners by James Joyce--a woman running a boarding house, trying to make ends meet, hopes her daughter will be their way out of poverty. Only the country and the era has changed--but not the passion and pain. And the class struggle as well as the struggle between a mother and a daughter. Natalie Wood is at her most beautiful best in this film, and it captures the feeling of a changing south, as well as the sultry wet of New Orleans. Also, the theme song is wonderful. (Did you know Natalie's little sister in this film is the girl who played Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird? Her only two films.) I'm waiting for them to put this one out on DVD so I can buy it. Something I rarely do.
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Summary: The Steamy South at its hottest! Bay St. Louis, wise choice
Review: The Steamy South at its best! Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, the location, has honored this Williams story by preserving the "Historic Depot District". The L&N Train Depot may be toured, the boarding house- still present, along with most other buildings, streets, bridges and the Bay of St . Louis on the Gulf of Mexico. Just 40 miles east of New Orleans, Hancock County, Mississippis', Bay St. Louis is a thriving sea-side fine arts and fine dinning, resort destination. This film has affected the entire community since its creation and will continue to do so.
Rating:
Summary: A Poignant Movie
Review: There is some great acting in this movie. I believe it was Robert Redford's first effort, at least I hadn't seen him before. I saw the movie when it first came out years ago, and I thought then that he had great a great future which turned out to be true.
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