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

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...