The Glass Menagerie (1987 film)

The Glass Menagerie is a 1987 American drama film directed by Paul Newman. It is a replication of a production of the Tennessee Williams play of the same title that originated at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and then transferred to the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut.

Introduced by Tom Wingfield as a memory play, it is based on his recollection of his disillusioned and delusional mother Amanda and her shy, crippled daughter Laura. Amandas husband abandoned the family long ago, and her memory of her days as a genteel Southern belle surrounded by devoted beaux may be more romanticized than real. Tom is an aspiring writer who works in a warehouse to support his family, and the banality and boredom of everyday life leads him to spend most of his spare time watching movies in local cinemas at all hours of the night. Amanda is obsessed with finding a proper gentleman caller for Laura, who spends most of her time with her collection of glass animal figurines. To appease his mother, Tom eventually brings Jim OConnor home for dinner, but complications arise when Laura realizes he is the man she loved in high school and has thought of ever since. He dashes her hopes of a future together when he announces he is engaged. Infuriated, Amanda lashes out at her son for raising his sisters hopes and Tom leaves, never to return to his family.Janet Maslin of The New York Times called the film a serious and respectful adaptation, but never an incendiary one, perhaps because the odds against its capturing the plays real genius are simply too great. In any case, this Glass Menagerie catches more of the dramas closeness and narrowness than its fire . . . It starts out stiffly and gets better as it goes along . . . But quiet reverence is its prevailing tone, and in the end that seems thoroughly at odds with anything Williams ever intended. ........

Source: Wikipedia