Boom!

How can a film be a 10 and a 1 at the same time? As serious art, Boom is a bomb. Yet, as a testimony, a very camp testimony, to the lives of Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Noel Coward, and Tennessee Williams, it is literally hysterical. As the Age of Aquarius was dawning on America, what were these pioneers of love, lust, decadence, and existential meaning to do? What is there to say, to do, to perform, two years after Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 1968. the play Hair is delighting Broadway. The hippies have overtaken the Beats. Where can the stars go? To the Old World, Europe, Italy, Capris... The movie reveals their state of mind: preoccupation with death, the emptiness of wealth, sex, and luxury. As we watch this undeniably amusing costume melodrama, we can't help wondering just what Taylor and Burton's "real" life there in Sardinia must have been like. Did they throw tantrums when their whims went unsatisfied, or was it the opposite? I'll have to leave the answer to the biographers. But this film makes it impossible not to imagine them all there in Italy, trying with desperation NOT to be what they were portraying. That is what makes the film intriguing.

`Boom' is a blast! This is one of the most fun of the Burton - Taylor films. "Boom" is also a gassy misfire that draws one into the veiled world of aging homosexual desire disguised as a heterosexual struggle between an aging, dying woman and the unattainable youth in the angel of Death.

This is story wearing a beard. Taylor's role is really that of an aging rich gay man who is trying to hang on to youth and the beauties that great beauty attract. After all, her name is `Sissy'. Burton's role is that of the hustler who is all that is left for the old queen to attract. But as with so many Williams works it all must be encrypted and coded so that the America of the late 50's and early 60's could handle his true intentions, the soft underbelly of his plays. Burton is too old for the role that was written for a man in his twenties and Taylor is too young and too healthy looking to be the dying Sissy. But despite that, the story of a struggle of great wealth against the inevitable grows from loopy strangeness to a compelling and moving ending. Here Taylor gives one of her oddly finest post Virginia Woolf studies in a dramatic/comic performance. There is in fact so much subversive humor in her performance that she is at times hilarious. Her vocal range dances from the shrill to the silly to the grand dame and all to serve her imperious and ultimately terrified Sissy Goforth. In the last desperate half hour of the film she does some of her finest work. Burton is rather cool and distant at first but builds his Angelo De Morte into a truly fine character study. In particular, listen to his fine delivery of the speech about the old man in the sea.

Particular note should be made of the cinematography, which is gorgeous, and the stunning sun washed bone toned opulent glamour of the sets. I understand that the Burtons owned the house in Sardinia for a while after the film was completed. The spare and haunting score by John Barry is an added delight to his impressive repertoire. And for you jewelry fans there is plenty of Miss Taylor's own jewelry on hand. So get out your copy of `My Love Affair With Jewelry' my Elizabeth and thumb along as she parades her diamonds in the Mediterranean sun.

Campy? Yes! Great? Maybe we will know about that in another 40 years. Is it worth your time? Only if you like a challenge and are willing to let the Burtons take you into the world of Tennessee Williams camp classic.

Boom (1968)

* (out of 4)

Tennessee Williams wrote the screenplay for this incredibly embarrassing disaster about a dying rich woman (Elizabeth Taylor) who has everything except a man and the man (Richard Burton) who has nothing except the ability to entertain women. This film has a notorious reputation but I was shocked at how bad it really was. The only good thing is the camp factor that comes from all the badness and stink that surrounds the film. I've never seen Taylor give a worse performance but she's certainly very bad here. The horrible screenplay doesn't give her too much to do except scream at people and say goddamn countless times but Taylor doesn't do anything but overact. Her constant screaming is worse that fingernails across an old chalk board. I'm not sure what drinks Burton had before filming but his performance comes across as him doing a bad version of Shakespeare. The supporting cast isn't any better but the major blame has to go to Williams and his incredibly bad screenplay. Some of the dialogue in this film gets major laughs, although that certainly wasn't the intent. I'd even say that some of the dialogue appears to have been written by Ed Wood because it tries so damn hard to be serious or touching but come off incredibly dumb. Even with all the badness there is one good moment and that's when Taylor, peaking out at Burton, decides she needs a lover and gives a little talk about it. This scene closes with a zoom up to Taylor's eyes.

Adaptated by Tennessee Williams from "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore", he obviously pulled in a few of his old friends to get this done. It's a gender-bending allegory with Liz Taylor as rich, dying Sissy Goforth, a bad-tempered recluse in her remarkable clifftop Mediterranean villa. Along comes Dick Burton, a freeloader-cum-Grim Reaper figure who sees it as his mission to help ladies in extremis.

Neither of them are right for their roles, but that only adds a certain fascination - a totally earnest rendition would be dull and pretentious. Taylor lets rip here and it's a riot. The highlight is her dinner with Noel Coward playing a role originally meant for a woman. She is wearing an utterly outrageous kabuki outfit while Coward camps it up like there's no tomorrow, which is no doubt the film's theme.

The script is full of naff psychology, Taylor is shrill and unpleasant, Burton looks like he's on vacation. With this set-up, Losey hasn't the slightest chance of delivering his usual sophisticated, simmering subtlety, and maybe that was fortuitous - this is so godawful it's brilliant.

Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and Noel Coward in a Joseph Losey film from a screenplay by Tennessee Williams with music by John Barry and cinematography by Douglas Slocombe. These credits alone should promise an award-caliber prestige film, but, unfortunately, the production of "Boom" was flawed from the beginning, and arguably one of Elizabeth Taylor's finest late-career performances was buried when the film bombed. The foundation of a film is its screenplay, and, based on one of Williams's lesser known, lesser quality plays, "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore," the film is slow, often tedious, difficult to fully comprehend, and hard to sit through. Taylor and Burton were fresh from career highs with "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "The Taming of the Shrew," and their decision to appear in such an uncommercial endeavor is mystifying. "Boom" was among the first of these missteps that led to the couple's demise at the box office.

Flora "Sissy" Goforth is a lonely woman of immense wealth, who reigns supreme over her servants and a nurse upon a rocky Italian island; evidently quite ill, Sissy is demanding and often cruel to those around her. Enter Chris Flanders, a some-time poet with an address book whose pages list the names of deceased women; also known as the "Angel of Death," Flanders washes up on the shores of Sissy's island. For some bitchy spice, Flora's flamboyant friend, the Witch of Capri, arrives and is carried on the shoulders of a muscular servant up to the villa. Taylor is much too beautiful, young, and vibrant to be a dying recluse, although she is excellent in a part that echoes her Oscar-winning Martha. Burton is always worth watching, and his magnificent voice gives some of Williams's lines the poetic justice they deserve. Coward is Coward and is amusing in his few scenes.

The visuals are often striking; the Sardinian scenery is magnificent; and a white Mediterranean villa, perched atop a cliff, and filled with striking art works, makes a suitable backdrop for the actors who are garbed in outlandish Japanese-inspired costumes. However, Barry's music is intrusive and inappropriate at times, and, unfortunately, Joseph Losey's direction is self-consciously arty, and he uses much symbolism, even beyond Williams's obvious Goforth, Angel of Death, and Witch of Capri monikers. Taylor is always dressed in white, while Burton is wrapped in a black samurai kimono and often carries a sword. Burton references the film's title several times, which is taken from the boom of the waves against the rocks below the villa. "Boom" is generally slow, pretentious, ponderous, talky, and difficult to recommend to any non-fans of Taylor, Burton, or Williams. However, for Taylor-Burton devotees, the film is essential viewing, and they will not be disappointed by Taylor's performance or Burton's reading of William's lines.