480 - Tennessee Williams' South, Canada, 1973. Dir. Harry Rasky.

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

480 - Tennessee Williams' South, Canada, 1973.  Dir. Harry Rasky.

Jesus is earnestly, tenderly calling,
Calling for you and for me.
Patiently Jesus is waiting and watching,
Watching for you and for me.
Come home, Come home,
Ye who are willing come home. . . .
                                        - Will L. Thompson (1847-1909) (adapted)

Shall we gather at the river
Where bright angel feet have trod,
With its crystal tide forever,
Flowing by the throne of God?
                                       - Robert Lowry (1826-1899)

Where do you come from?
Where do you go?
Where do you come from, Cotton-Eyed Joe?
                                       - traditional

How calmly does the orange branch
Observe the sky begin to blanch
Without a cry, without a prayer
With no betrayal of despair.
                                       - Tennessee Williams.

It sometimes seems to me that I inhabit my own country.
                                       - Tennessee Williams.

Tennessee Williams' South is a hybrid film.  Part documentary interview.  Part staged productions of scenes from his plays.

In the case of Jessica Tandy, it is the only time her role as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, the role she originated, was put on film.

You might prefer one over the other.  The interviews over the scenes, for example.

Or you might be able to move back and forth between the two.

It is a pleasure to see Tennessee Williams walking the streets of New Orleans and to hear him talking about his life and work.  He is an engaging man, full of curiosity and wonder about the world, interested in many things, and willing to share.

He also reads to us from his works.  Some poetry.  Some plays.

"How calmly does the orange beach."

The Glass Menagerie.

Etc.

When he answers questions, he is thoughtful and open.

If you are a fan of Tennessee Williams, then you will appreciate this film.

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I was baptized into the Episcopalian Church by my grandfather, whom I loved very much.

All Southerners have a gift for idiom.  The title Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, for instance, was a favorite phrase of my father's.  When he would come home at night, he would say, "Edwina, cut it out.  You're making me nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof."

Chekhov - his letters, his journals, and of course his theater.  His short stories.
Do you think your locale, the South, is similar to Chekhov's?  Very much.  Very much.

Life is all memory except that one moment that passes you by so fast that you miss it.

Something has to have created existence. . . . There is a creative force, or we couldn't exist.

To begin with, I am a very angry old man.  I regard anger . . . as a clean and pure emotion. . . . Anger never passes for anything but what it is.

Columbus, Mississippi.

They were from Ohio and were born in Ohio.  They came South to teach school when they were young.

I have a great deal of affection for him [father] now, yes.  And I think he had a tragic life, you know.

Some of the people who have written about you have said that you come from the sad soil of America.
I don't know what they're talking about.  I don't find this sad.  I'm sure there is misery in the South, as there is everywhere, but for me, this doesn't represent sadness.  Romanticism, yes.  Romantic melancholy, yes.  I was not sad about it.  Life was too full of adventure, you know, change.

I write out of love for the South, really, but I can't expect all Southerners to realize that writing about them is an expression of love, and yet it is.

[Re: Blanche Dubois]  Not a great intellect, but she had a great sensitivity, I believe.  I'm not sure she would even exist today.  Because the South has changed so very much.  Well, maybe she would.  It's hard to say.  There are still some Southern ladies with all kids of romantic pretensions.  But under Blanche's pretensions was something genuinely sensitive and tender.  And so many of the Southern ladies that I meet nowadays with these Garden District airs about them and the plantation niceties of behavior, you find them hard as nails underneath.

I think that Blanche and Stanley Kowalski are the two sides of every human nature.  Stanley and Blanche were on a collision course, and one of them had to break, and the one that broke was Blanche.

I feel that I am both Stanley and Blanche.

My childhood was spent in the South, and childhood is always a magic part of life.
All those little towns in Mississippi that I lived in with my grandparents, like Canton and Columbus, were happy.  They made a happy background of my sisters and my childhood.

When we lived in Nashville, I remember playing in a park.  I remember picking wildflowers in the park.  I remember going to kindergarten, a sort of experimental model kindergarten in Nashville.

I was very delighted with the alphabet blocks, the colored crayons, and everything, until Mother slipped out of the room and left me.