‘Boom!’: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in “the best failed art movie ever”
Many renowned actors have come and gone throughout the history of Hollywood, but very few have had the star appeal and talent that Elizabeth Taylor possessed. Although her career definitely had crests and troughs, Taylor was always a central part of contemporary popular culture. That’s exactly why her acclaimed body of work is still regularly visited by fans as well as scholars, as younger generations experience the magic of her on-screen presence.
Taylor was particularly fond of material by Tennessee Williams, especially because of the success of her adaptations of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Suddenly, Last Summer. Due to her previous track record, many expected her involvement in the 1968 film based on Williams’ The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore to be a hit as well. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for Taylor and her then-husband Richard Burton, who signed onto the movie.
Directed by Joseph Losey, the creative force behind masterpieces like The Servant, Boom! had all the right ingredients. For Taylor, it was an opportunity to revitalise her career after a sudden decline following recent failures. However, unlike her previous Tennessee Williams projects, Losey’s vision transformed the spectacle into an arthouse project which wasn’t really accessible to wider audiences. Widely panned by critics, Boom!’s box office numbers were significantly affected.
In an age where critical re-evaluations are in fashion, maybe Boom! is in for a revival as well. Taylor seamlessly slides into the role of Sissy, an ill woman who passes her time opulently on an isolated island by abusing her army of servants. The monotony of her sad existence is broken up by Richard Burton’s Christopher Flanders, a man who storms into her life and claims to have met her in the past. What follows is a dreamlike descent into a truly neurotic sphere.
Williams’ screenplay and Losey’s imagery combine to present a network of symbols within which the characters operate, raising fascinating questions about memory, wealth, love, art, violence, disease and death. While the critical consensus dismissed it as a spectacular miss, one artist who has supported it for years is John Waters. He once said: “It’s the other side of camp… It’s beautiful, it’s atrocious, and it’s perfect – the best failed art movie ever.”
During a conversation with the BFI, he explained why he includes it in the programming of film festivals: “I’ve presented it for many years. It’s an amazing movie. It’s staggering when you watch it, it’s so great and then so awful. So that means it’s perfect, really. And Tennessee Williams did say… that it was the best movie ever made from his work and I think maybe I, and Tennessee, are the only people who agree with it.”
Boom! is excessive in its investigations, but it revels in that excess, just like the characters who inhabit that bizarre, impenetrable world. Daring in its experiments to reimagine the traditional cinematic experience, it’s no wonder why Waters and Williams loved it from the very beginning.
Watch the trailer below.
