Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 50: Wed Feb 19

Baby Doll (Kazan, 1956): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 8.40pm


This 35mm presentation, which is also being shown on February 28th (link here), is part of the Elia Kazan season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
One of Elia Kazan's most underrated movies is his only pure comedy, scripted by Tennessee Williams and shot on location in rural Mississippi. Carroll Baker stars (in her debut) as a virgin child bride hitched up to Karl Malden at his most unsavory; Eli Wallach (in another debut) is brilliant as Malden's business rival who manipulates both of them. Though this film was roundly condemned for salaciousness by the Legion of Decency when it came out (1956), its plot actually pivots around the ambiguous matter of whether sex actually takes place or not, and it's the seediness of the southern milieu—Baker's dirty neck rather than her dirty mind or morals—that seemed to have the censors up in arms. But it's largely Kazan's authentic feeling for the locale, aided by Boris Kaufman's superb black-and-white cinematography, that makes this movie so special, combined with a first-rate ensemble. With Mildred Dunnock.
Jonathan Rosenbaum


Here (and above) is the trailer.

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