Worth watching for its cast
A bevy of present and future supestars line this film from beginning to end. That, and the John Barry score, make it worthwhile.
But the script by Lillian Hellman was changed (she apparently wanted to make oblique allusions to the JFK assassination and Big Texas Oil) and director Arthur Penn wanted an hysterical tone which producer Sam Speigel did not.
So the final cut wasn't what it should have been, either in tone or substance.
The end result is a silly, small-town soap opera about changing sexual mores set to a mid-60s Halloween-y color scheme and shot on the back lot, with Redford miscast (perhaps he should have been in the James Fox role instead) and his imprisonment and post-escape pursuit making little sense.
Only Brando, Dickinson, Fonda, Duvall and Miriam Hopkins come off well (although Brando's best takes were supposedly removed). Janice Rule is good, too.
But it's a curio.
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