Critics reviews

I never quite got around to seeing writer-director Leslie Stevens' arty Los Angeles indie Private Property when it opened in New York in 1960, mainly because the negative accounts of it from Dwight Macdonald and others persuaded me that it wasn't my cup of tea. It still isn't, although now that UCLA has restored it after over half a century of neglect, and Cinelicious Pics has brought it out in a nice dual-format package... I'm glad that I've belatedly caught up with it.

That the threat of violence (sexual or otherwise) hanging over these scenes doesn't diminish their erotic charge is a credit to Stevens' deft handling of tone and the actors' nuanced performances. The black and white cinematography is by Ted McCord, whose credits include EAST OF EDEN and THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE; the film has a noirish yet sunny look, which befits the theme of desperation amidst middle-class splendor.

The first endeavor by Stevens and his producing partner Stanley Colbert, who billed themselves as "America's only authentic New Wave filmmakers," Private Property at times feels closer to the 1961 Johnny Cash-starring home-invasion trash-classic Five Minutes to Live than to Claude Chabrol's Les Bonnes femmes. But it does sustain an admirably lurid, sticky atmosphere, and Stevens's voyeuristic premise lends itself to audience implication.

A terrific example of the spell that a confident film can weave by placing a handful of troubled characters in a confined location, and in the end it does feel like as much of a tragedy as a potboiler. Even when Allen oversells or fumbles moments that a handsome-neurotic star of that same era (like Paul Newman) could've transformed into antihero black magic, the character still holds the screen...

This tense and upsetting film has more psychological depth and empathy than the comparable sensationalist fare of its time, and shudder-inducing cinematic style to spare. "Private Property" qualifies as a genuine rediscovery.

Leslie Stevens's 1960 debut Private Property abounds in inventive low-budget filmmaking while stress-testing a pulpy, dime-store premise... Holding down the quiet end of the film's raging postwar American id, Oates is a marvel—pent-up like a bogeyman until Boots earns to communicate with Ann by coolly passing himself off as the appliance salesman he and Duke robbed earlier in the film, flawlessly regurgitating his small talk.

The film does have its burlesque extravagances, such as Duke's Eddie Haskell-esque conning technique and Bolero-scored conquest of Ann, and her flagrant yet purportedly inadvertent libidinousness. Overall, though, this valuable reclamation is a powerful, tense, and surprisingly cohesive and tightly scripted essay about America on the cusp of the 1960s. And it has Warren Oates.

...All this may make Private Property sound like a rough-hewn, indifferently shot quickie, but in fact the filmmaking has enormous panache. Leslie Stevens worked with Orson Welles at the Mercury Theatre, and he shared his former boss's taste for elegant but unsettling framing.