Boom! (1968)

"The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore" On Film

Film director John Waters called "Boom!" "the best failed art film ever, so genuinely beautiful and awful that it is perfect". Directed by Joseph Losey and starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, this high-budget 1968 film flopped both at the box office and with critics. The film remains obscure. I sought out the film after reading Tennessee Williams' play, "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore" on which the film is based. Williams' play flopped twice on Broadway in 1963 and 1964 before its even worse initial failure in this film. Williams wrote the screenplay for the film which itself adds interest to the work. In 2011, "Milk Train" was revived off-Broadway in a production starring Olympia Dukakis and has sometimes been performed thereafter. John Waters used the film in 1998 to open his annual Maryland Film Festival.

The film's primary character is a wealthy eccentric, aging American widow, Flora (Sissy) Goforth who lives on an island she owns off the coast of Italy. Goforth refuses to acknowledge that she is about to die. She is engaged in writing her memoirs by dictating to a secretary and she keeps a strange staff who are terrified of her and refer to her as the "monster". Christopher Flanders, a young man and a failed poet, finds his way onto the island. Flanders is called the "angel of death" because of his habit of befriending wealthy sexually frustrated women in their dying days. The film develops the relationship between Goforth and Flanders in the two days before her death. Goforth is alternately flamboyant, terrifying and vulnerable as she dresses in a kabuki and wears garish expensive jewelry. She dresses Flanders as a Japanese samurai, replete with sword, but refuses even to feed him. The two engage in long discussions about life, religion and love in the hours before Goforth's death. The unfortunate title "Boom!" is a term Flanders uses in the play when he hears the waves beating against the rocks. It refers, according to Williams, to "the sound of shock felt by people each moment of still being alive."

The film and its dialogue are have long empty stretches and the acting is mixed. Taylor is beautiful, but she is younger than Williams' Goforth while Burton is older than Williams' Flanders. With the costuming, the two primary characters, and the supporting characters, the play is over the top. Mrs Goforth is the critical actor and she dominates nearly every scene. The best acting performance in the film is that of Noel Coward, who plays the part of the "Witch of Capri", a cynical and eccentric friend of Mrs Goforth. The mansion in which the play takes place, the rocks and the crashing waves contribute to the atmosphere as does John Barry's musical score.

Williams considered the film "much better written than the play". With its weaknesses and extremes, this movie deserves a better fate. It tells the story of a frightful old woman who is afraid to die and in the process shows the viewer something of the joy of life. Both the film and the play cling tenuously to a place in the work of Tennessee Williams. This film will appeal to admirers of Tennessee Williams and to viewers who are willing to experience the bad and the good in an attempted serious film.

Robin Friedman