Baby Doll Review

Juror #3 says: Well, that was a creepy movie. In a way I wish David Lynch had gotten a chance to take a stab at this screenplay first. I would have enjoyed a more surrealist view of this script I think. Where to begin... well, Baby Doll was originally a one-act play by Tennessee Williams, who then extended the plot into a feature screenplay. The story revolves around a middle-aged man who receives permission from the father of a young woman to marry her, under one condition - he must wait until she is 20 years old to have sex with her. A short time before the woman's 20th birthday we find out the married couple has fallen on hard financial times and its causing a rift between the two. The man will do anything to reach his goal of "having the woman" and commits a crime in order to gain financially and thus keep the young woman happy enough to fulfill her promise. The creepy part of the film isn't necessarily the age discrepancy between the married couple, instead it's in the child-like nature of the woman, who is first seen sucking her thumb as she sleeps in a crib in a nursery of an old house. On one hand the story can be seen as a coming of age for "Baby Doll" as the young woman is affectionately referred to. But in the end you get the feeling that she came of age a long time ago but psychologically prefers to revert back to a more simple state. There is clearly a message here about gender roles and the way men treated women in this period but I'm not sure I completely got it. Overall the movie stuck with me though, and I attribute much of that to the solid acting. My biggest disappointment was that this was basically a stageplay being filmed and reminded me of some of the films we saw in the early forties, not something consistent with the evolution of filmmaking we had scene recently in the fifties. Overall I rate it 3/5 stars on Netflix. I applaud the effort to stretch the boundaries of societal acceptance but somehow it didn't fully work for me.

girl by locker says: Wow…and people thought the love scene between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr was steamy in From Here to Eternity. In comparison to Baby Doll, From Here to Eternity was child’s play. Baby Doll is a story of a decomposing south at the end of the cotton heyday and a lovers triangle. In one corner we have Baby Doll (Carroll Baker) who is a young, married virgin who agrees to consummate her marriage when she turns 20 years old. In the other two corners, we have her husband Archie Lee (Karl Madden) a failing businessman struggling to keep his wife happy and Silva Vacarro (Eli Wallach) a Sicilian foreigner and current king of cotton in this sleepy southern town.

When Mr. Vacarro’s cotton gin ends burns down in a fire, there is one suspect (Archie Lee) and Vacarro heads to his gin in order to get proof. While Archie Lee spends the day trying to gin out the cotton, Mr. Vacarro seduces his wife Baby Doll. I am talking 30 solid minutes of raw, sexual attraction that must have shocked the viewers of the day. In fact, the Catholic Church banned the movie and probably excommunicated any of its parishioners that saw it.

The reality of the fact is, by today’s standards the movie is relatively mild – no nudity, not swearing, no visual acts of sex. However, I always find the suggestion of sex and romance much more revealing and the scenes between Mr. Vacarro and Baby Dollwere pretty stellar. In the end, you don’t know for sure whether or not they actually did the deed, but I think they did. Baby Doll goes from wearing white to black by the end of the movie and Mr. Vacarro comments on how he sees her different.

I give this movie 5 out of 5 stars. Solid acting, solid script, solid directing – and much steamier than Burt and Deborah love scene.