The Glass Menagerie Reviews

While given a full cinematic life, ok, as fully cinematic as a 70s-era TV-movie can get, there's something about this version of Tennessee Williams' seminal play that just hasn't translated properly. While much of the cast performs ably there have been too many alterations and removals from the text to give the proper flavor and musculature to the story. Without Tom's opening monologue telling us that everything we are about to view has been clouded by memory and emotion, that everything we are viewing is the truth but is being present as illusion, The Glass Menagerie loses some of the spark and fire that make it so richly alive. That omission of the opening monologue also causes us to lose the simple fact that this entire story takes place during the Depression, a social context that helps immensely to understand the frustration(s) of Tom as an artist in an era that asks him to be everything and anything but that.

Another major problem are the performances from the three main stars. Katharine Hepburn delivers an interesting take on Amanda Wingfield but is missing a certain spark. She lacks a once dewy sexuality with her severe angular features and the ability to project a kind of neurotic vulnerability. Her Amanda does not carry herself with the regality necessary, both in speech patterns and body language. Hepburn could have, and should have, been a fantastic choice for this part, but something is off here. Take the scene where the gentleman caller comes to visit and Amanda swoops in to charm him and seduce him, not sure any sexual reason but for an ego-stroking. She is too much of a tomboy, too strong-willed but appropriately eccentric. Taken out of the context of the play, this is a great performance. But (through no fault of her own given the amount of lines and contexts that have been removed) she seems too pushy with her children when she should remain loving and caring underneath her vainglorious daydreams and memories. It is so strange that she delivers a performance so at odds with the material when she turned in such perfect work in Williams' Suddenly, Last Summer.

Sam Waterson as Tom and Joanna Miles as Laura are good but never great. Waterson is too placid as Tom. There needs to be more a fire behind the eyes, a dream buried within himself that comes out in angry bursts against his mother, his sister, his life and job. But Tom also needs to view Amanda with more respect and resonance. Despite their disagreements these two people love each other very deeply. But is this a fault of Waterson's acting or of the removal of that opening monologue, of several of his monologues, which speak to us and explain the connective tissues between the frays and edges of their relationships. Tom also needs to love Laura, and this is a fault of Waterson's acting that he never quite sells it. One of the many reasons that Tom is so in conflict is that he feels a sense of responsibility for Laura, that he cannot leave her on her own, but he wants nothing more than to escape from his family. Miles is good, but never fully committed to the physical infirmities that plague her character. She sells the mental and emotional fragility, the timidness and shyness to the point of being handicapped.

The one performance that nails everything is Michael Moriarity as the gentleman caller. He is charming and alive, free from the shackles of this family's crazed co-dependence and damaged neediness. He is a fresh blast from the outside world that excites and stimulates them. Although his connection to the family is deep and full of history. His scenes with Laura are tender and wonderful, the best in the film.

The one last thing that keeps the film from being a truly great adaptation of Williams' play once again goes back to that opening monologue. This time it is a bit of stage-direction mentioned within it. This film should have taken place entirely within their apartment to give us a sense of claustrophobia. By keeping us within the apartment it would make us an accomplice to this family's struggles and fights. We'd be a fly-on-the-wall in their lives for a few hours. By turning the lights up and occasionally removing us from the confines of their St. Louis apartment we're given too clean a look at it all. And while everything should have been tainted with a look of dilapidation and hoarded memory, it all looks too pristine and new.

I have pointed out numerous faults in this adaptation, but I did not hate it. I'm just such a strong fan of the works of Tennessee Williams that faults and problems within adaptations become magnified to me. It's not even remotely terrible, but it's not as great an adaptation as A Streetcar Named Desire or Cat On a Hot Tin Roof. It's good, but never great. I don't think that Menagerie has been given a front-to-back classic film adaptation. Maybe Paul Newman's is the one, but I haven't seen it.