The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

I just purchased this through the Merchant & Ivory DVD collection. I must admit I was unaware of who Carson McCullers was until I realized that she also wrote "A Heart is a Lonely Hunter". True to her style, this is a dark tale with the edge of by-sexuality in the main character (as McCullers was also). The movie it self is less than imaginative with some scenic wonders and yet with placid and flat acting. Simon Callow is not a good director and I definitely love the man as an actor more. Some scenes are memorable and the color red is used beautifully as a dress and a shirt - when you see it you will know how and why. Definitely put in the rent category for a somber afternoon.

This film demonstrates an excellent use of both dialog and cinematography to evoke a mysterious, yet stark atmosphere. Redgrave is especially excellent in her portrayal of a character that defies easy description or explanation. The score, too, works to create a specific place, but never falls to the easy trap of using simple folk-music styles in order to provide a sonic backdrop.Overall, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe is a haunting and beautiful exploration of human emotions and inhuman behaviors. I would highly recommend this film to everyone interested in an eerie combination of the real and surreal.

This film adaptation of Carson McCullers' novella is the best of all the screen versions of her works. Cinematography is excellent. Vanessa Redgrave turns in a great performance as the stoic Miss Amelia, unlucky in love but yearning to fulfill her thwarted desire to love and be loved. With the arrival of a dwarf claiming to be a relation, Miss Amelia finds herself able to live and love again. But with the arrival of Marvin Macy, her absentee husband, things take a change for the worse. The other performances are good, and the scenery and costumes accurately reflect a Depression-era southern backwater. A near-literal transcription from book to screen, without annoying time changes, character elimination, or overacting to distract from it. Good.

When one considers that Carson McCullers is one of the foremost literary figures of the 20th century, it seems that it needs a very great lack of talent to be able to ruin one of her stories, but this movie shows it can be done! How do actors ingratiate their way to becoming directors? Wooden, unatmospheric, unsympathetic, totally out of sync with the poetic compassion of McCullers' writing, my jaw dropped with horror and disbelief that such a mish-mash of a movie could ever have found finance and backers. The only redeeming features are some moderately good acting, (although that said, Vanessa Redgrave seems to permanently render much the same performance whatever character she plays), and some good cinematography in places, but otherwise it is a bitter, bitter disappointment, and it could, and indeed should, have been a contemporary masterpiece. Simon Callow should hang his head in shame and stick to acting!