Ten years after her Blanche Dubois in A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, Vivien Leigh delivered another memorable Williams heroine in Karen Stone, a former actress living in Rome after a year of widowhood.
Hiding from friends and having lost her nerve for the stage, Karen drifts through days in an apartment by the Spanish Steps. She is further unnerved by a young vagabond who seems to be watching her...
Drawn into a circle of wealthy emigres, she meets Magda, an ingratiating German Contessa who procures young men for them, living off their financial gifts.
Knowing of Karen's wealth, Magda introduces her to the charming but shallow Paolo but Karen suspects the truth and keeps him at arm's length.
She eventually succumbs but Paolo treats her with disdain. Karen is again alone but knows destiny awaits her...
Shelf or charity shop? She had a spring, now she has a shelf. A bit of an over-looked film, I have always enjoyed it and find it's enigmatic ending haunting. Vivien Leigh had been away from the screen for six years, unlike her character she was being a success on stage, but also suffering from recurring manic depressions that plagued her as well as her divorce from Laurence Olivier. She gives a wonderfully nuanced performance: lost, rueful, disdainful and desperate and looks glorious, glowing in her Balmain couture. Sadly Warren Beatty gives a skin-deep performance and is effortlessly outshone by Lotte Lenya, earning her Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress with a performance of glittering malice. The extraordinary supporting cast include Coral Browne as Helen's friend Meg who knows her too well, Jill St John is great as a sly Hollywood starlet, silent screen actress Bessie Love as Karen's bossy dresser and it was the last film of Ernest Thesiger, best remembered as the eccentric Dr Pretorius in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.
