"Redford and Bronson Together"

Its always fun to watch a movie when stars weren't stars, but "getting closer."

"This Property is Condemned" i 1966 was very much a "solo Natalie Wood vehicle." Her name is THE name above the title. Robert Redford is listed rather as "major support" -- because he wasn't a full star yet. And Charles Bronson was listed as "support" -- because nobody really EXPECTED Bronson to ever become a star. He had a great body , but a rather scary face.

Its fun here to see Redford and Bronson share the screen a few times -- the incompatibility and tension is palpable. "Pretty boy" Redford has been sent by a railroad company to fire a bunch of railroad workers -- and tough guy Bronson is one of them. It eventually leads to Bronson leading a gang of fired men to beat Redford up(though Redford dutifully gets a few punches in against everybody.)

Its interesting about Redford. In his dramatic scenes with Wood, he often says his lines and moves his "troubled" face muscles in exactly the same way he would 7 years later as a superstar with Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were. Like many movie stars, Redford had a "set" collection of facial and vocal tics -- he just wasn't a really big enough star yet to show them to the world. Redford is handsome in "This Property" but he also needed those 7 years to age and get "seasoned," get his "star making movie"(Butch Cassidy), look even BETTER, and to take advantage of the "dry look" and longer hair in the 70's. (His hair is GOOD in "This Property" and GREAT in "The Way We Were.")

Bronson, too, needed to age a bit out of his scariness and to add (often) that moustache which, one realizes , rather softened his face and made him look "cool." Bronson refused to shave that moustache for one movie, saying "this moustache made me a star" -- but he DID cut it off to play the rough Depression-era bare knuckle boxer in "Hard Times" (1975), which rather returns him to the Deep South terrain and era of "This Property."

In the final analysis, "This Property is Condemned" is a Natalie Wood vehicle of the Tenneesee Williams brand, and Redford and Bronson would get better films to make and "age into stardom."

Nonetheless, what DID make them stars is there to see in "This Property Is Condemned."