Sydney Pollack directs this steamy melodrama co-scripted by Francis Ford Coppola from a play by Southern Gothic maestro Tennessee Williams. Robert Redford stars as Owen Legate, a handsome railroad official who comes to Depression-era Dodson, Mississippi, to shut down the local rail yard and lay off its already struggling employees. When Legate begins a passionate affair with town flirt Alva Starr (Natalie Wood)--a small town girl with big dreams of escaping her dead-end surroundings--the romance angers Alva`s domineering mother (Kate Reid) and ignites the town`s economic resentments, provoking an act of revenge against the lovers.