The Glass Menagerie (movie comparison)
Reading the play The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams was a interesting and pleasurable assignment. Watching the movie The Glass Menagerie directed by Paul Newman was not. The Glass Menagerie is about a lower-middle class family living in an apartment in St. Louis. The play centers around the conflict between Amanda and her two children Tom and Laura. Amanda and Tom argue constantly, and Laura is both physically crippled and painfully shy. Laura spends most of her time polishing her glass collection and listening to old records. Amanda strives to get Laura to break out of her shell and either attend business school, or find a young man to marry. Tom longs to quit his job working in a shoe factory to pursue the adventures he envisions from the movies he constantly watches. With the exception of Karen Allen's portrayal of Laura, the acting in this movie made the play uninteresting and at times almost comical. The movie was directed by Paul Newman. His direction did not deviate far from the original text. The dialogue was very close-- if not word for word--to the text. If any lines in the movie differed from the original play, it was only because the movie lines were paraphrased. The setting was exactly as William
The first of the mediocre performances is Joanne Woodward's portrayal of Amanda. In the text, Amanda is written as a frustrating woman who's only salvation from her distressing life is the memory of the endless procession of gentlemen callers from her youth. Amanda thinks back fondly on her earlier life and in comparison, her present life is tragic and heartbreaking. In Woodward's performance, Amanda is a loud, obnoxious chatterbox with an exaggerated southern accent. The scene in the play where Amanda puts on her old cotillion dress the night that Mr. O'Connor comes to dinner is written to give us a glimpse of how radiant and beautiful Amanda was in her youth, and to give her a brief moment to relive her glory days. In the same scene in the movie, Woodward comes off as almost comical. She looks exactly the same as she did during the rest of the movie except for the gaudy white dress she is wearing which appears to be too big for her. During the entire time Mr. O'Connor is at the apartment, Woodward's pasty appearance, over-the-top acting, and ridiculous dress is reminiscent of Bette Davis' character in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? It is difficult to take the character of Amanda seriously because Woodward's performance is so embellished. The only performance in this movie that is noteworthy is the performance by Karen Allen as Laura.
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 914
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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