Brandung

"Boom!" is a film that requires a lot of patience, and if you wait it out and can accept the meandering direction, it will give you an idea of where Tennesee Williams head was at during this time! Williams was quoted to have been pleased with this adaptation of his "The Milkman Doesn't Stop here Anymore" play. Does this film work?...Well yes and no! Meandering direction tries your patience but you do get a glimpse into the mind of a self-obsessed woman by Ms. Taylor who's seen it all and done it all and isn't used to hearing the word "NO". A tighter script would of helped. It's KINDA campy but I tend to think the term "Camp" is overused a lot by too many people. I think John Waters described this film best by declaring it "failed art". I feel the acting is ok by the actors involved. You have to pump up the volume in a film like this to draw you in! Remember Ms Taylor's character is supposed to be essentially unlikeable and shrill and there is no such thing as a happy ending in such a picture. A odd and strangely compelling film if you have the patience!

Well, this is certainly SOME kind of classic!

I recently saw this film as it was meant to be seen, in a theater with a packed audience of Gay men and Lesbians (and don't panic, some token Heteros too)! This was at the 2nd Annual Provincetown Film Festival, and this evening was hosted by John Waters. (If I need to explain who he is, then forget EVER seeing this movie)

John Waters informed us that this was the movie that he shows to friends of his as his "litmus" test, if they don't enjoy it, he claims to never speak to them again! I'm inclined to agree.

If you're a fan of camp, SEE THIS FILM! If you're a fan of Elizabeth Taylor, SEE THIS FILM! If you're a fan of Joanna Shimkus, well I don't know what to say then, except congratulations! You're the first one! (although, she is great in this movie)

What more can you say about a film that has Elizabeth Taylor decked out in Kabuki-Vegas drag holding an intimate bitchy dinner party with an aged and drunken Noel Coward (in a role written for a woman, and first offered to Katharine Hepburn!) To watch Miss Taylor in action, is to behold a true screen legend fully embrace her diva acting self. She lets rip with such abandon and power, she manages to wipe everybody else off the screen, including HERSELF!

While Richard Burton, Noel Coward, Joanna Shimkus, and Michael Dunn (of Ship of Fools and Wild Wild West[tv version, please!] fame) manage to deliver the goods in this Tennessee Williams free for all, it is the incredible Miss Taylor who grounds this late 60's arthouse flop, and manages to transcend it's failing qualities, to make it a screen orgy of bad taste and over the top drama!

Try and keep a straight face during Miss Taylor's prolonged coughing fit on the balcony! I thought I was going to be sick just watching her hack up her lungs. Watch Richard Burton somnambulistically maneuver his way through a role played on stage by Tab Hunter! (I can't help but think, that this film might have actually been pulled off as a straight drama with the original casting of Simone Signoret and Sean Connery!)

We lovers of camp and all things over the top should revel in this failed artistic masterpiece!

This film gets a 10 Star rating as Camp, and a 4 Star rating as anything else!

endnote: Where is the DVD/Video release of this film????!!!!!!

Adaptated by Tennessee Williams from "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore", he obviously pulled in a few of his old friends to get this done. It's a gender-bending allegory with Liz Taylor as rich, dying Sissy Goforth, a bad-tempered recluse in her remarkable clifftop Mediterranean villa. Along comes Dick Burton, a freeloader-cum-Grim Reaper figure who sees it as his mission to help ladies in extremis.

Neither of them are right for their roles, but that only adds a certain fascination - a totally earnest rendition would be dull and pretentious. Taylor lets rip here and it's a riot. The highlight is her dinner with Noel Coward playing a role originally meant for a woman. She is wearing an utterly outrageous kabuki outfit while Coward camps it up like there's no tomorrow, which is no doubt the film's theme.

The script is full of naff psychology, Taylor is shrill and unpleasant, Burton looks like he's on vacation. With this set-up, Losey hasn't the slightest chance of delivering his usual sophisticated, simmering subtlety, and maybe that was fortuitous - this is so godawful it's brilliant.

`Boom' is a blast! This is one of the most fun of the Burton - Taylor films. "Boom" is also a gassy misfire that draws one into the veiled world of aging homosexual desire disguised as a heterosexual struggle between an aging, dying woman and the unattainable youth in the angel of Death.

This is story wearing a beard. Taylor's role is really that of an aging rich gay man who is trying to hang on to youth and the beauties that great beauty attract. After all, her name is `Sissy'. Burton's role is that of the hustler who is all that is left for the old queen to attract. But as with so many Williams works it all must be encrypted and coded so that the America of the late 50's and early 60's could handle his true intentions, the soft underbelly of his plays. Burton is too old for the role that was written for a man in his twenties and Taylor is too young and too healthy looking to be the dying Sissy. But despite that, the story of a struggle of great wealth against the inevitable grows from loopy strangeness to a compelling and moving ending. Here Taylor gives one of her oddly finest post Virginia Woolf studies in a dramatic/comic performance. There is in fact so much subversive humor in her performance that she is at times hilarious. Her vocal range dances from the shrill to the silly to the grand dame and all to serve her imperious and ultimately terrified Sissy Goforth. In the last desperate half hour of the film she does some of her finest work. Burton is rather cool and distant at first but builds his Angelo De Morte into a truly fine character study. In particular, listen to his fine delivery of the speech about the old man in the sea.

Particular note should be made of the cinematography, which is gorgeous, and the stunning sun washed bone toned opulent glamour of the sets. I understand that the Burtons owned the house in Sardinia for a while after the film was completed. The spare and haunting score by John Barry is an added delight to his impressive repertoire. And for you jewelry fans there is plenty of Miss Taylor's own jewelry on hand. So get out your copy of `My Love Affair With Jewelry' my Elizabeth and thumb along as she parades her diamonds in the Mediterranean sun.

Campy? Yes! Great? Maybe we will know about that in another 40 years. Is it worth your time? Only if you like a challenge and are willing to let the Burtons take you into the world of Tennessee Williams camp classic.

This is a film about the super-idle superrich and the people who participate in their deathwatch. The film is minimalist in nature having only a cast and a set that supports the deathwatch theme. It is probably a difficult movie to watch because it has absolutely nothing to say about life and living. William's script creates a Dante-ish abstraction of a death journey with incredibly tight and sharp dialogue that is matched by the director's use of space and time. The only problem I have with the production is the totally inept lighting direction. Here we have a Mediterranean sunwashed villa as the set of the final human drama with very little sense of light and heat.

The whole cast, what there is of it, are essentially giving solo performances. Even when they are in each other's arms they seem to be issuing soliloquies. This produces a very interesting effect of "who's on first". Everyone has such a good part with such good lines its hard to tell who to focus on. The real treat was the Taylor-Coward jousting at the dinner table. I've never seen Noel Coward before and this part seemed to be written for him. Taylor hated her part in this film but it appeared the director was allowing the cast to develop their parts themselves judging from the reading flubs that were left in the final cut.

I'm not going to say anything about the story. It should be seen by those who are looking for a Tennessee Williams interpretation of death at the top. Suffice it to say, in response to the waves crashing on the rocks below: "boom...the shock of each moment of still being alive".

I rate this a 5 out of 5. I would have rated it a 4 out of 5 if there was no close-up of Taylor's eyes.