Watching this adaption of William Faulkner's The Sound And The Fury I can only wonder he must have thought of this abortion of his work. This film seems to have been influenced by Harold Robbins more than Faulkner.

For one thing the novel is a far better subject for a mini-series as it takes place over a couple of generations and is written from several points of view, not the straight linear narrative we get here. Secondly the novel was updated to present day meaning 1959 Mississippi. The civil rights era was on in Mississippi in 1959 and the attitudes expressed here would have been lost in 1959. The novel came out in the late Twenties and some of the action went back a generation earlier.

These Compsons are one dissolute bunch and the only one of the family holding them together is Yul Brynner as Jason because heaven forfend he realizes they're not rich any more and that big mansion has gas and electric bills that need paying. He actually works for a living. The hope of the family may be Joanne Woodward as Quentin who is the illegitimate daughter of the most dissolute of all the Compsons Margaret Leighton.

Leighton has been living away from the family and the genteel Mississippi folks she's been brought up with because of her disgrace with Woodward's birth. But she comes back and that sets off a whole chain of events that causes everyone to reevaluate how things are going for the Compsons.

Ethel Waters did her last role in The Sound And The Fury as the family maid. Her family even in the servile position that blacks had in Mississippi in those days is still stronger than the Compsons even Yul Brynner. Too bad no musical number got worked into the script for her.

The cast is a superbly talented one and they do their best with a hard to recognize Faulkner work, but the film as a whole comes up way short.

A talented cast is pretty much miscast in this saga allegedly loosely based on William Faulkner novel, a follow-up for director Martin Ritt and Joanne Woodward from the previous year's "The Long Hot Summer". That saga of southern decadence is a classic in comparison to this film, and it shows that when Hollywood goes overboard on a theme, a lot of times they fall on their face. While most of the adaptions of Tennessee Williams plays did very well, other authors were not as lucky. I know nothing about the William Faulkner novel so I can only judge by the film itself which is a confusing soap opera of troubled characters who serve no real purpose other than to see everybody else around them with their messed up brains.

The trouble begins with family matriarch Françoise Rosay, a hateful old woman who seems to be two different characters as far as moods and motivations. Her three faces are not like Eve's, and it seems that she lives to make everybody around her miserable. Sons Yul Brynnur (looking silly in an orange wig), Jack Warden and John Beal are equally messed up, adopted granddaughter Joanne Woodward is on the road to becoming a tramp, and the sudden return of her once beautiful but trashy mother Margaret Leighton is the yeast in this cake filled with sour ingredients.

Everything is there to make for a fascinating look at a troubled family, and it does become engrossing, if often ridiculous, starting with the miscasting of Brynnur and Woodward. Yul is fine in his acting, but he does not appear to be at all related to this family, and Woodward is obviously a good decade too old for her part. At first glance, she does look young, and I tried to suspend disbelief thinking of Julie Harris in "A Member of the Wedding", but when the camera finally does come close to her, it is obvious that she is far too old to be cast in this part, unless her character's life has been so hard that it staged her a decade even in her teens.

Every southern saga has to seem to have some sort of drifter character, and in this case, it's Stuart Whitman who shows up and begins to flirt with Woodward. It's obvious that this relationship will lead to no good, especially considering the dramatic music that plays in the background when he frantically runs through her estate trying to find her.

Other than Leighton, the only real touch of class in this film is a presence of Ethel Waters as a longtime servant, having issues with her own family which includes a young grandson who has been assigned to be a companion to the Warden. A disturbing scene has Warden being taken into a town festival as part of a supposed freak show and another scene where two young kids get together to dare each other to throw a rock at him. This film is best watched with the mentality that it will be like a trashy novel rather than the American classic that Faulkner had written 30 years before.

I'm watching "S&F" on Turner tonight (8/16/11), & I don't recognize anything from the classic novel. I had seen the ending a long time ago, with Yul (Jason) & Quentin(!!!??) (Joanne) sauntering down a southern road, musing optimistically--& I thought the same then. I vaguely recall reading something that Martin Ritt wanted to help out Faulkner ($$) by adapting his early masterpiece, & I guess this was the result: absolute garbage. Even with zilch familiarity with the novel, the film "adaptation" is just a baffling mishmash; with __any__ familiarity with the novel, the film is an abomination. Thanks to Turner & anybody else who would snooze their audience to sleep, I guess we can say with a sigh of such adaptations, like Dilsey, "they endured."