The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond: Critic Reviews

Perhaps playwright Tennessee Williams' unproduced 1980 screenplay was unproduced -- until now -- for a reason.

If Tennessee Williams's script for Joseph Losey's 1968 turkey Boom! saw the light of day, just how bad must a Williams screenplay unproduced for decades be?

While this recently rediscovered screenplay won't rank with the best of Williams, the script does possess a poignancy that remains frustratingly out of reach onscreen.

It has been filmed in a respectful manner that evokes a touring production of an only moderately successful Broadway play. Understand that, accept it, and the film has its rewards and one performance of great passion.

The script is half-a-fortune at best, and visually the picture is staid. But you stick with it, because it's Williams and because certainly no one since Williams has written this sort of embroidered dialogue.

The characters and themes are redolent of earlier and better Williams works, and the story unexpectedly putters out at the end-but seeing it now, you can't help but treasure the simple, lyrical dialogue and sure-handed narrative thrust

This is minor Tennessee Williams, but times are hard. I guess minor Tennessee Williams is better than no Tennessee Williams at all.

Even if it were not filmed in the dreariest TV-movie style by the debuting Jodie Markell, this romantic melodrama set in 1920s Mississippi seems almost like a self-parody of Williams' earlier work.

Though it's dated, the larger issue has to do with those timeless problems of plot and character.

Like Fisher, the film is lovely, if flawed.

The words drip with affectation (as do the actors) and Jodie Mankell's direction is dipped in southern gothic honey and glazed over with period sprinkles.

A deservedly overlooked Tennessee Williams script set in the 1920s South, its plot makes little sense for contemporary audiences.

This is not the galvanizing, deep fried melodrama of Tennessee Williams at his height but rather, the low fat version.

As beautifully played by Howard, Fisher Willow appropriately resembles a china doll, with a pale face highlighted by bright red lips -- she is hard yet fragile, projecting something of an artificial quality that hides her pain.

Markell has valiantly created a mild bit of Williams ephemera that could have been more than a curiosity piece with a more dynamic actress at its center.

While it captures the Southern Gothic atmosphere, it's sketchy and studied, best geared to Tennessee Williams aficionados.

A clearly inferior piece of writing that doesn't have the emotional resonance of even previously acknowledged mediocre works by Williams.

It's unfortunate that an entire generation who've never seen a Williams play or film will think that this current work represents the artist. Now that this screenplay has been 'found' ... can we lose it again?

a terrible and terribly dated work that will strike Williams scholars as the cinematic equivalent of a bottle cap and everyone else as arguably the worst version of one of his works to ever hit the big screen and bear in mind, I have seen "Boom."

If you are not already familiar with Williams's best plays and film adaptations, this musty magnolia of a movie won't encourage you to seek them out.

Most effective as a reminder that Williams' works emerged from a certain time and place, and to approach them from another is fraught with peril.

A rambling, zombified pass at Williams-certified melodrama, the film is an absolute chore to finish, even while boasting a few fine performances and the luscious humidity of 1920's southern comfort.

It's minor Williams turned minor cinema, but there are nonetheless moments that resonate.

Even though Howard never quite gets it, never quite releases into the role and never quite convinces, she never makes a mistake, either.

Director Jodie Markell's fidelity to Williams simply isn't enough to make his tropes sing.