As Elia Kazan acquires a measure of financial as well as artistic independence, the importance of the place he holds in the American cinema increases. Intentionally or not, he has become the spokesman of certain contemporary attitudes; and from On the Waterfront to Baby Doll we have the complete circle, the picture of homo Americans as a victim of blindly destructive forces, painfully engaged in waging his battle of conscience.

Baby Doll is only indirectly and by implication a social drama: its real subject is the sexual awakening of a young girl married to a man twenty years older than herself….

Like Blanche Dubois, like the paralysed heroine of The Glass Menagerie, Baby Doll lives on the edge of the real world, creating for herself an illusory world compounded of childhood memories, but also heavily charged with sensuality. She is not just a simple, romantic teenager: like any...