The Ballad of the Sad Café (film)

Actress Vanessa Redgrave championed screenwriter Michael Hirst's adaptation of the Edward Albee play (which itself was based on the novella by Carson McCullers), and her involvement in the project was integral to it receiving funding.[1] Director Simon Callow found Albee's original play "too talkative" for the medium of film, and as a result, Hirst's screen adaptation features less dialogue.[4]

Redgrave was cast in the role of Amelia from the production's outset.[1] In preparing for the part, Redgrave made certain alterations to the character's appearance and manner:

I thought I should make very simple, clear choices about how to play Miss Amelia. I discussed each choice with Simon Callow, our director. I had to make a choice about her appearance, and I am still not sure I made the right one. Carson McCullers specifically writes that Miss Amelia has dark hair, but I thought I should have as little disguise as possible in the part. Given the fact that I am blonde and basically fair, with blue eyes, I decided to go for looking like a real straw-headed Southerner...I thought that Miss Amelia should be presented like a cartoon image, looking the same way until something very significant happens in the story. When it does, she changes out of her dungarees and wears a red dress to mark the fact that she has become a woman. I wanted her to appear to have remained rather like a twelve- or thirteen-year-old boy emotionally.[4]

Willem Dafoe was considered for the part of Marvin, but demanded a salary too high for the film's budget.[1] Keith Carradine was cast in the role instead.[1]

Principal photography took place in the summer of 1990 in Spicewood, Texas, near Austin, as well as in Seguin,[4] on a budget of $3 million.[1] In order to perfect a Southern American accent from her native English accent, Redgrave studied with George Burns, an English professor at the University of Texas at Austin.[4] She added, "Not only that, [George] knew how to wiggle and flap his ears, and he made an electrical device that, placed behind Cork Hubbert's ears, produced a wiggle for the camera that convinced all spectators that Cousin Lymon could flap his ears."[4]

The Ballad of the Sad Café was met with mixed reviews from critics.[4] Roger Ebert praised the film, awarding it three out of four stars and writing: "All of this is about as believable as those breathless "Dateline America" reports you read in the British trash press about snake-worshipping cults in Louisiana Sunday schools. But it plays well, if you can dismiss from your mind any remote expectation that the behavior in the film will mirror life as we know it. And Vanessa Redgrave, imperious and vibrating with passion, makes a proud, sad Miss Amelia."[5] Vincent Canby of The New York Times was less enthusiastic about the film, writing: "Miss Redgrave was, is and will always remain one of the greatest actresses in what's generally referred to as the English-speaking theater. She is so great, in fact, that when she goes off the track, as she does here, she continues to barrel forward with the momentum of a transcontinental express train that will not be stopped. The spectacle takes the breath away. The Ballad of the Sad Cafe is that kind of movie. It's not silly as much as it's majestically wrongheaded. It's a movie in which all options have been considered at length before the worst possible choices have been made."[6]