I don't know exactly what "Baby Doll" is. It's got all the Southern Gothic trappings of Tennessee Williams' darkest work, but it's not especially dark in story or themes. Nothing about it seems significant enough to raise it to the level of serious drama. So is it a comedy? Maybe, or at least Tennessee Williams' version of one. I did laugh, but I'm not sure whether that was because I found things truly funny or whether it was a defense mechanism in the absence of knowing what else to do.
A young married woman doesn't want to have sex with her husband because he's...well, kinda gross....but she's super turned on by her husband's more successful business rival, who spends the entire film chasing her around her dead father's giant, dilapidated mansion trying to get in her pants. And that's it. That's what "Baby Doll" is about. It seems to be mostly an exploration of middle age male failure and emasculation, but I'm not sure what it has to say about the topic.
Karl Malden plays the kinda gross husband who can't make a success of anything -- his business, his marriage, his sex life. He's a failure in pretty much every way traditionally thought to define a man. Eli Wallach, on the other hand, is successful in all the ways Malden is not, including but not limited to the ability to turn on his wife. And Carroll Baker is the eponymous Baby Doll, a woman child who seems not to understand the allure she has over men, and seems to both kind of like it and kind of not.
Baker received an Oscar nomination for her performance. Mildred Dunnock, who plays an addled aunt, was also nominated in the supporting actress category, but I have no idea why. She has 12 minutes or so of screen time (I timed it) and has very little to do other than look lost. A weak year for contenders, perhaps? The film also brought nominations to Williams for his adapted screenplay and to Boris Kaufman for the film's black and white cinematography.
Grade: A-
A young married woman doesn't want to have sex with her husband because he's...well, kinda gross....but she's super turned on by her husband's more successful business rival, who spends the entire film chasing her around her dead father's giant, dilapidated mansion trying to get in her pants. And that's it. That's what "Baby Doll" is about. It seems to be mostly an exploration of middle age male failure and emasculation, but I'm not sure what it has to say about the topic.
Karl Malden plays the kinda gross husband who can't make a success of anything -- his business, his marriage, his sex life. He's a failure in pretty much every way traditionally thought to define a man. Eli Wallach, on the other hand, is successful in all the ways Malden is not, including but not limited to the ability to turn on his wife. And Carroll Baker is the eponymous Baby Doll, a woman child who seems not to understand the allure she has over men, and seems to both kind of like it and kind of not.
Baker received an Oscar nomination for her performance. Mildred Dunnock, who plays an addled aunt, was also nominated in the supporting actress category, but I have no idea why. She has 12 minutes or so of screen time (I timed it) and has very little to do other than look lost. A weak year for contenders, perhaps? The film also brought nominations to Williams for his adapted screenplay and to Boris Kaufman for the film's black and white cinematography.
Grade: A-