That would be a good title for just about any Tennessee Williams play, but this one gets the honors. Geraldine Page recreates her groundbreaking stage role as Alma, a strait-laced minister’s daughter resigned to a life of pious spinsterhood. But then her childhood crush, John Buchanan (Laurence Harvey) re-enters her life and offers her a shot at love.
Of course, he’s no good, a dissolute playboy who has eyes for the town tramp (Rita Moreno, fresh off her Oscar-winning West Side Story performance, and back, unfortunately, to playing Latin-spitfire stereotypes of the sort that made her drop out of movies for many years).
Harvey (The Manchurian Candidate) is his usual indolent self, but Page is, as always, a revelation. She earned an Oscar nomination for the role, as did Una Merkel as Alma’s puerile, taunting mother.
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=C-nJvPTFOjQ]