The Ballad of the Sad Café is a 1991 Merchant Ivory film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

, produced by Ismail Merchant

Ismail Merchant

Ismail Merchant was an Indian-born film producer, best known for the results of his famously long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions which included director James Ivory as well as screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala...

 and directed by Simon Callow

Simon Callow

Simon Phillip Hugh Callow, CBE is an English actor, writer and theatre director. He is also currently a judge on Popstar to Operastar.-Early years:...

, starring Vanessa Redgrave

Vanessa Redgrave

Vanessa Redgrave, CBE is an English actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a political activist.She rose to prominence in 1961 playing Rosalind in As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has since made more than 35 appearances on London's West End and Broadway, winning...

 and Keith Carradine

Keith Carradine

Keith Ian Carradine is an American actor who has had success on stage, film and television. In addition, he is a Golden Globe and Oscar winning songwriter. As a member of the Carradine family, he is part of an acting "dynasty" that began with his father, John Carradine.-Early life:Keith...

. Michael Hirst

Michael Hirst (writer)

Michael Hirst is an English screenwriter, best known for his films Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age ....

 adapted the Edward Albee

Edward Albee

Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...

 play, which in turn was based on a novella in a collection of short stories of the same title

The Ballad of the Sad Cafe

The Ballad of the Sad Café is a novel by Carson McCullers.-Plot:The Ballad of the Sad Café opens on the set of a small, isolated Southern town...

 by Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers was an American writer. She wrote novels, short stories, and two plays, as well as essays and some poetry. Her first novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts of the South...

. The film was entered into the 41st Berlin International Film Festival

41st Berlin International Film Festival

The 41st annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from February 15 to 26, 1991.-Jury:* Volker Schlöndorff * Chantal Akerman* Laurie Anderson* José Luis Borau* Judith Godrèche* Yuri Klepikov* Renate Krößner* Gillo Pontecorvo...

.

The story's protagonist is a lonely moonshiner named Miss Amelia who dominates a small Georgia town. She changes in attitude and kindness as two men, Cousin Lymon (a small, hunchbacked man claiming to be Miss Amelia's cousin) and Marvin Macy (Miss Amelia's ex-husband) enter her life. Her general store becomes a center for culture and music, and The Sad Café itself becomes a symbol of Miss Amelia's disposition. Amid this plot, issues of work vs. pleasure, material vs. psychological health, and conflicting loyalties emerge. The short story is told in flashback—giving the reader, first, a look at the ruined café before describing its heyday and subsequent demise.

Cast

• Vanessa Redgrave
  Vanessa Redgrave
  Vanessa Redgrave, CBE is an English actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a political activist.She rose to prominence in 1961 playing Rosalind in As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has since made more than 35 appearances on London's West End and Broadway, winning...
  
   as Miss Amelia
• Keith Carradine
  Keith Carradine
  Keith Ian Carradine is an American actor who has had success on stage, film and television. In addition, he is a Golden Globe and Oscar winning songwriter. As a member of the Carradine family, he is part of an acting "dynasty" that began with his father, John Carradine.-Early life:Keith...
  
   as Marvin Macy
• Cork Hubbert
  Cork Hubbert
  Cork Hubbert was an American film and television actor.Hubbert was born Carl Hubbert in Pendleton, Oregon. He is best known for the roles of Luther on the American television show The Charmings, Rollo Sweet in Under the Rainbow and Brown Tom in the Ridley Scott film Legend...
  
   as Cousin Lymon
• Rod Steiger
  Rod Steiger
  Rodney Stephen "Rod" Steiger was an Academy Award-winning American actor known for his performances in such films as On the Waterfront, The Big Knife, Oklahoma!, The Harder They Fall, Across the Bridge, The Pawnbroker, Doctor Zhivago, In the Heat of the Night, and Waterloo as well as the...
  
   as Rev. Willin
• Austin Pendleton
  Austin Pendleton
  Austin Pendleton is an American film, television, and stage actor, a playwright, and a theatre director and instructor.-Life and career:...
  
   as Lawyer Taylor
• Beth Dixon as Mary Hale
• Lanny Flaherty as Merlie Ryan
• Mert Hatfield as Stumpy McPhail
• Earl Hindman
  Earl Hindman
  Earl John Hindman was an American actor, best-known for his role as the kindly neighbor Wilson W. Wilson Jr...
  
   as Henry Macy
• Anne Pitoniak
  Anne Pitoniak
  Anne Pitoniak was an American actress. She was nominated twice for Broadway's Tony Award: as Best Actress in 1983, for night, Mother, and as Best Actress in 1994, for a revival of William Inge's Picnic.-Early life:Pitoniak was born in Westfield, Massachusetts, the daughter of Sophie and John...
  
  as Mrs. McPhail
• Frederick Johnson as Jeff
• Lauri Raymond as Sadie Ricketts
• Joe Stevens as Henry Ford Crimp (as Joe Stephens)
• Keith Wommack as Tom Rainey
• Kevin Wommack as George Rainey
• Laura Burns as Molly Kelly

External links

• New York Times review of film, March 28, 1991