Cinema: Once a Comedy, Now an Elegy Crimes of the Heart

Directed by Bruce Beresford Screenplay by Beth Henley

The package, as they say in Hollywood, looked great. Three top stars in the movie version of a Pulitzer prizewinning comedy that was also a long-running Broadway hit. A show that found sympathetic humor in incidents that scream like headlines from a Mississippi tabloid: MAMA MAGRATH HANGS SELF AND PET CAT! LENNY MAGRATH'S HORSE STRUCK DEAD BY LIGHTNING! MEG MAGRATH VAMPS CRIPPLED EX-FLAME! BABE MAGRATH BOTRELLE SHOOTS HUSBAND " 'CAUSE I DIDN'T LIKE HIS LOOKS"! A family album of three contentious sisters who laugh and fight and cry and finally surrender to the bond of sororal love. Directed for film by...

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