There's a category of southern drama that has a particular feel to it. You can find it in books like "To Kill a Mockingbird" and movies like this one. The plots are different, but the moods seem to come from the same place. This movie gets it just right. It was obvious there would be a sad ending and I didn't mind. I didn't mind knowing it was coming either.

Natalie Wood gets top billing in this movie, and she creates a convincing flirtatious southern belle. Robert Redford is more interesting in his role, however. I'm not sure I've seen him play cynical and laconic in any other role. Redford fans shouldn't miss this one.

This Property is Condemned was a condemned movie from the day it was made. It didn't win critical acclaim, nobody saw it and still there are only a few people who have even heard of it. And yet it's so beautiful that you really don't need to be persuaded to watch it. From the beginning, and as the story carries us to a condemned love affair between a beautiful and proud young woman who wants the world (but all she gets is all the men around her crawling on her feet) and a man (Robert Redford) that only wants to keep her safe from her pride, we witness the changes that can be brought by just one person, either that is the impact on the small town that Alva (Natalie Wood) lives or on her heart and life. The end is some kind of divine justice that we all want to prevent but no one manages to, but at the same time a lyrical hope in the form of the left behind (and astoundingly good) Mary Badham. A song that Tennessee Williams certainly wouldn't have approved for his book but at the same time what has always stayed in heart from this wonderful film. That and the glass snowstorm.

Watched this movie for the first time last night, loved it! Man alive, Natalie Wood is smoking hot, no doubt about it. I'm straight, but Robert Redford doesn't look half bad himself. Great chemistry, the characters in the town are not well developed but they don't really need to be, and Owen's character isn't too much underdeveloped, b/c the movie really is all about Alva. Good depiction of the Depression-era South, too.

Some people complain about the ending, and I agree that it is abrupt, but I don't think it is entirely insufficient. It stands to reason that Alva comes to no good end before she dies, and since it is vaguely insinuated that her mother is a prostitute herself (the way the men at the boarding house treat her, always slapping her backside), I wondered myself if this is not where she was headed when she ran out of the apartment into the rain, hysterical with shame & guilt. I hope her mother felt good that she was able to keep her daughter from becoming a better person than herself, even if that meant destroying her.

A simple, pleasant old film with good acting and two very attractive leads. Worth watching.