last year, in order to read the screenplay for The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond before seeing the film. In that instance, I felt the screenplay had potential, depending on the filmmaker, to be either amazing or a total flop. It turned out to be extremely powerful, a movie that had me in tears early on and left me emotionally flattened, but in a good way. Well, mostly good. What felt like odd gaps in the text translated, onscreen, into poignant and laden silences that filled in the complex interconnections between characters.
Unfortunately, I don't think All Gaul Is Divided, the first screenplay in the book, has the same potential. It revisits the familiar Williams themes of brittle, beautiful, insane women; the vicious, conniving women who undermine them; and handsome but clueless or cavalier men. It does so with far less force and power than Williams' best-known plays. The introductory note says this screenplay is based on an eponymous play, which I haven't read; I'm curious as to whether that's more fully realized.
All Gaul Is Divided takes place in St. Louis, a less lush setting than some of Williams' other work, set against a high school and a poor, china-cluttered apartment (shades of The Glass Menagerie in the latter). Part of what made Teardrop Diamond work, I think, were the sweeping, panoramic shots of the countryside and the Mississippi River levees. Even if a St. Louis high school offered the potential for those kinds of evocative images--which I doubt--I don't think Gaul holds the same promise.
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