Slideshow
BABY DOLL
*Post-film conversation with star Carroll Baker, moderated by Foster Hirsch
U.S., 1956
Directed by Elia Kazan
Starring Carroll Baker, Eli Wallach, Karl Malden, Mildred Dunnock
Approx. 114 min. 35mm.
“Possibly the dirtiest American-made motion picture that has been legally exhibited,” tsked TIME Magazine. Sicilian interloper Eli Wallach, steamed when his new cotton gin goes up in smoke, decides to revenge himself on suspect Karl Malden by seducing his thumb-sucking child bride Carroll Baker. Adapted from two of Williams’ own one-act plays.
Reviews
“One of Kazan’s most successfully realized movies. Essentially a black comedy about a bizarre and cruel romantic triangle… the grotesquely caricatured performances and the evocation of the baking, dusty, indolent homestead make for witty and compelling viewing.”
– Geoff Andrew, Time Out (London)
“Plays out like a screwball comedy of seduction… Except, instead of humorous barbs, wrapped in sardonicism to mask the characters' true affections for each other, traded in good fun, here the bitter banter feels raw: It's pure meanness gussied up in the trappings of comic verbal sparring. This is one racy flick!”
– Henry Stewart, The L Magazine